I am in the early stages of a new environmental installation that looks at the unique characteristics of wild bees and their movement. Rumblings will be composed of 50 plus 30” X 44” watercolor monotypes. Each monotype will be of one wild bee. I will carefully manipulated the ink to reflect the synergistic impact of applied chemicals in industrial agriculture and the fragility of the wild bees. I am currently weighing how I will present these works. One possibility I am considering is- I will then layer them in a collage and then deconstruct the layers. The goal of the monumental piece is to inspire interest in wild and native bees and lobby for their preservation. As in nature Rumblings forewarns a forth coming problem. Or I may exhibit them in a carefully composed grid as I did my Hurricane Harvey Heroes.
below are details of one of the early experiments on
Osmia Texana - The Berry Bee is about as big as a housefly. If you look at one with a macro lens you can see they are a beautiful metallic blue. The underside of their abdomen is a fuzzy pollen mop. These pollen magnets are the perfect shape to collect pollen from blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, melons, and veggies, to name a few. They are not picky pollinators.
A single Texana Bee visits 20,000+ blossoms per day, whereas a honey bee visits 50-1000. They are not- aggressive and non-colonizing, solitary bees.
They emerge in the spring and have an average pollinating season is 6-8 weeks, after which they die. Their offspring will hibernate over the winter and emerge the following year.
