MacKenzie In the Garden With Bees

Last summer I wrote a bit about my cat MacKenzie who died under mysterious circumstances. MacKenzie, as some of you might remember, was my assistant beekeeper; he simply loved following me into Beelandia where he would sit with me and watch the bees' comings and goings. My partner Monta is now working a mosaic to memorialize Mackenzie. On her blog, you can follow this work in progress.

Bee Sculpture is Done

I've been following the artistic collaboration going on between bees and beekeeper at Hive Mind and it looks like the girls have finished their work. I'm very impressed with the results. Are there art galleries out their that would display this work?

More On Encaustic Painting

My favorite contemporary encaustic paintings are created by an interdisciplinary artist named Monta Gael May. (Ms May is also co-founder of Magnetic Aesthetic Art-Cars.) Her bold, abstract paintings have this organic feel to them, almost as if they were painted from the perspective of some insect or ground-level forest creature. If you're interested in seeing some of Monta May's work, close-up and live, her new show "Interstices" will be appearing at the Saint Mary's University of Minnesota art gallery, starting in late August.

Collaborating With Bees

In a past post, I mentioned encaustic painting, an ancient art form in which pigments are mixed with beeswax, melted, and then painted on a board with a brush like you would do with watercolors, or acrylics. (See photo to the left as an example.) Sociologist Howard Becker would probably see this art, as not simply the work of an isolated artist, but the collaboration between artist, beekeeper, bees and all those other individuals indirectly involved in producing the tools and materials needed for this medium.

The people at the Hive-Mind blog have taken bee collaboration one step further, however. The bees not only produce some of the materials used but they also are involved in the creative process. The beekeeper there places beeswax-coated objects in their bee's hives and allow the bees to draw comb around the objects, building their own additions to the sculptured objects. This is truly artistic collaboration with the bees.