The Future of Pollination - Manufactured Ecosystems

 

Our Fate Is Tied To That Of The Insects, linocut print, 16" x20", Ele Willoughby, 2025

Pollinator Week is a great time to share this print, which expresses the central theme of my work about the Future of Pollination for Manufactured Ecosystems. I have been working on a collection of 15 prints for this show for the last several months. Our food sources and ecosystems around us are dependent on pollinators (mostly bees & other insects, some birds & mammals) but insects populations have lost huge numbers and many species altogether. Our future will be linked to their fate. Each of the bees, moths, butterflies and beetles in my print are native species here. 

Next week our art show will open at Zavitz Art Gallery at the University of Guelph. Each of the visual artists has produced work on various themes in various media about our ecological future looking forward the wake of climate change and habitat loss and at what we can learn from nature. I’m really excited to see what the others have produced! I hope you’ll come see the show if you’re able. 

Photosynthesis
Artist: Yulia Shtern @magical_zoo

Soil Formation
Artist: Lynx @amour.lynx

Cultural Services
Artist: Pablo Rios @the_amazing_world_of_redacted

Biodiversity
Artist: Melanie Barnett
@melanie.barnett.ceramics

Climate Regulation
Artist: Amanda White @thetiniestseed

These are a Few of Our Favourite Bees

So I haven't been posting much recently, but I've been busily preparing for this collective art show about bees. If you're in Toronto, I hope you'll come check it out!

Exhibition Campbell House Museum   June 22 - July 16, 2022  160 Queen Street W. Opening event  Campbell House, Saturday July 2,   2 – 4 p.m. Artists' Talk & Webcast The Canadian Music Centre,   20 St. Joseph Street Toronto  Thursday, July 7 7:30 – 9 p.m. (doors open 7 pm) Co-presented by Art-Sci Salon & The Canadian Music Centre These are a Few of Our Favourite Bees investigates wild, native bees and their ecology through playful dioramas, video, audio, relief print and poetry. Inspired by lambe lambe – South American miniature puppet stages for a single viewer – four distinct dioramas convey surreal yet enlightening worlds where bees lounge in cozy environs, animals watch educational films and ethereal sounds animate bowls of berries (having been pollinated by their diverse bee visitors). Displays reminiscent of natural history museums invite close inspection, revealing minutiae of these tiny, diverse animals, our native bees. From thumb-sized to extremely tiny, fuzzy to hairless, black, yellow, red or emerald green, each native bee tells a story while her actions create the fruits of pollination, reflecting the perpetual dance of animals, plants and planet. With a special appearance by Toronto's official bee, the jewelled green sweat bee, Agapostemon virescens! These are a Few of Our Favourite Bees Collective are: Sarah Peebles, Ele Willoughby, Rob Cruickshank & Stephen Humphrey The Works These are a Few of Our Favourite Bees Sarah Peebles, Ele Willoughby, Rob Cruickshank & Stephen Humphrey Single-viewer box theatres, dioramas, sculpture, textile art, macro video, audio transducers, poetry, insect specimens, relief print, objects, electronics, colour-coded DNA barcodes. Bees represented: rusty-patched bumble bee (Bombus affinis); jewelled green sweat bee (Agapostemon virescens); masked sweat bee (Hylaeus annulatus); leafcutter bee (Megachile relativa) In the Landscape Ele Willoughby & Sarah Peebles paper, relief print, video projection, audio, audio cable, mixed media    Bee specimens & bee barcodes generously provided by Laurence Packer – Packer Lab, York University; Scott MacIvor – BUGS Lab, U-T Scarborough; Sam Droege – USGS; Barcode of Life Data Systems; Antonia Guidotti, Department of Natural History, Royal Ontario Museum