2 minute read
Feature Gallery: Bee Kingdom
Bee Kingdom
April 6 – July 2, 2013
Bee Kingdom is a four-person art collective consisting of Ryan Marsh Fairweather, Phillip Murray Bandura, Tim Belliveau, and Kai Georg Scholefield. The collective works primarily in glass sculpture. Together they grow and evolve artistically through collaboration and experimentation with media, techniques, and concepts. For the past seven years, Bee Kingdom has made work and shown locally, nationally and internationally due to partnerships with other artists and organizations in Canada and abroad.
Bee Kingdom is named so for a couple of reasons. Firstly, Bandura, Fairweather, Belliveau, and Scholefield all live and work communally at the home studio which they refer to as the hive. Also, the glass blowing process inherently requires teamwork, choreography and clear communication to be successful. Most pronounced, however, is the similarity molten glass has to flowing honey along with the group’s infatuation with the material… literally attracted to molten glass like bees to honey. Our attraction to glass is drawn from the natural beauty of glass. Glass as a medium is unique and working with the raw, molten material has limitless possibilities.
A recent grant from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts has allowed Bee Kingdom to create a body of work that encapsulates each member’s specific practice, as well as the collaborative sculptures that represent the group’s dynamic. Titled bee kingdom, this show has been curated by Mary-Beth Laviolette (a visual arts writer and freelance curator based in Canmore) who has also contributed to the fantastic catalogue that accompanies this exhibition. The overarching theme of the show is conceptually linked more than visually as it orbits experimentation and collaboration. Specific themes touched on include cute culture, high art in glass, and political satire.
