NORTH CAROLINA MUSEUM OF NATURAL SCIENCES

The Bees’ Struggle to Survive

This project happened really quickly because they called me a couple of weeks before “Bugfest” (basically exactly like it sounds) at the museum. 35,000 bug enthusiasts visit the museum during one weekend every year. How could I pass that up? We had an awesome time as kids painted bees at the mural while I painted on the wall. Of all of the murals this year, this one just unfolded easily. I didn’t think about it, I just started painting because there was no time to do otherwise. Sometimes the small walls really have a way of speaking intimately about something. I purposefully left the background as raw concrete to show the bees against the most ‘man-made’ of substances- concrete. It is symbolic of the bees’ struggle to survive in a human-centric world. They have just one small dandelion to hopefully get nourishment from. And even then, they hover above it, unsure if it has been sprayed with weed killer. This mural turned out to be much more poignant than I’d originally thought.

My assistant Nick and I both ate grasshopper brownies at Bugfest. I didn’t see anyone eating bees, thank goodness!