Fifty Bees: The Interconnectedness Of All Things

Bees are amazing, unfortunately they are getting screwed.

I am honoured to have been selected for this year’s Fifty Bees project, brainchild of long-admired Lydia Needle.

Each of the fifty artists taking part is allocated a bee species (mine is Colletes Daviesanus), and asked to make an artwork in response. The brief is broad and relaxed, you can pretty much do anything.

Lydia has made the most exquisitely sculpted bees, to exhibit alongside each guest artwork, at Richard Jefferies Museum in June.

I am flailing around like a netted fish. Unbelievable I know, but it has only just dawned on me that my work does not do briefs (however broad) and deadlines. I am still stitching work I started thirty years ago.

I’d had the information for a good month, when panic set in. Having already looked through newspapers and magazines, to no avail,  for pictures of hogweed (my bee’s ‘food’) and the like, I ordered some Wild Flower books on Ebay. It felt wrong, but I felt desperate. The books were described as being in disrepair. They are not. I couldn’t bring myself to cut them up and took them to a charity shop.

Lydia, and my ‘beekeeper’ Joy, are not putting any pressure on me. They have total faith.

Anyway, when I wasn’t looking, I found a path. I’m using this. More to follow.