Client: Unison Arts and Learning Center

Overview

Politics and Pollinators (2022) is an open air structure designed for collective decision making, made from rough sawn mountain ash made from three trees felled by a local woodsman, and pre-fabricated Plyex stair risers procured from Home Depot. The geometry of the sculpture takes after the bee’s cell. The dimensions are 20 x 10 x 5 feet (6 x 3 x 1.5 metres), in length, width and height. Honeybees have been studied since antiquity for a few good reasons: for the way they build, and the way they communicate. Imagine if our society were formed on the steps of the Parthenon.

Goals

"Inclusion is a design decision:
Inclusion is being asked to the party.
Diversity is being asked to dance.”
-Vernā Myers
Walk Boldly Toward Them (2014)

Two previous works that use diversity as a premise for contemporary design are Kitchener and Waterloo. How language developed among honeybees is not clear. A confluence of design elements, (including geometry, material, duration, and scale) consider how language can transform any society, even our own.

Process

Honeybees communicate through dance. Workers fly by the angle of sun and reproduce these directions through a series of movements called the waggle dance. Actions speak louder than words. An academic artist Eleanor King invited me to make this work with her in 2019. Because of the pandemic and her schedule we worked independently, meeting with completed work in the field. I drew plans in Rhino 6 to visualize the design in advance. The structure was made with trees felled and milled in Sullivan County to my specifications, set upon steel structure I made by repurposing stair risers in my studio, and assembled in the field for a period of two years. If our society was formed, let's say, on the steps of the Parthenon, by people hanging out, looking up at the night sky to discuss its’ stars.

Additional Information

“The most famous of all hexagonal conformations and perhaps the most beautiful is that of the bee’s cell.” -D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson, On Growth and Form (1917) Jars of artist-made honey on the sculpture are for sale. Pollen influences the taste and color of honey according to flowers in bloom. I keep bees in Sullivan County. In 2013 I introduced 'flow frames' to isolate one color of honey from another, depending on the flowers in bloom. Letters serve as labels which in turn make words. The sculpture was presented in a field upstate for two years (2020 - 2023); currently it is in the collection of the artist, in a field, in front of the the bee yard. The concepts articulated by this work can be revisited for a public artwork to suit a public or private developments like a park, garden or courtyard.