Category Archives: drawing

spring 2022

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I haven’t added anything to my site since he exhibition at the High Desert Museum in Bend, Oregon, so I thought I would start with some spring wildflowers from the native Garry Oak Meadows from my neck of the woods.

The first image is a small bouquet of Camassia leichtlinii, (Great Camas), Lomatium utriculatum (Spring Gold), and Plectritis congesta (Sea Blush). These are merely 3 of the many wildflowers to be found in a Garry Oak meadow. Beautiful wildflowers much visited by a diversity of pollinators.

Garry Oak Bouquet.

Wallpaper of Spring Bouquet and Garry Oak acorns and leaves.

Thought I’d create a repeat wallpaper design from the flowers, and add to them the iconic and rare Garry Oak environment, suggested here by the acorns and leaves.

Garry Oak acorns and leaves

Not too long ago, I attended a wonderful and informative walk and talk at the UBC Botanical Gardens. The talk was given by the curator of the Westcoast native gardens, Ben Stormes. Ben is creating research Garry Oak Meadow so it is a work in progress, but nontheless, it is beautiful and I learned a great deal about this rare environment, which, like all things in nature, is shrinking because of habitat loss, development, pesticides, etc. A story we know all too well. I’m not going to end on a negative note because there are organizations, like the one on Vancouver Island, the Garry Oak Ecosystem Recovery Teams, which are restoring these beautiful native habitats.

Wallpapered bees at the Miller Library

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April 21, 2020 of the Covid year.

Well, sadly, the library is closed and has been for some weeks now.  I understand that the show might go on if the library is permitted to open in June. So, maybe there’s a light at the end of this viral tunnel.

Covid  is taking a toll on all of us. I wish for everyone to be safe and healthy despite the restrictions and closures.

Bee well until we get the OK!    jasna

I’ve just installed an exhibition of my work at the Elisabeth C. Miller Horticultural Library at U.W. It’s a pleasure to be here in Seattle, but sadly with the Corona virus health situation, so many events are being cancelled. The opening of the exhibition was postponed to March 28th, but it is not at all certain if that planned event will proceed.

The library and the exhibition are open!

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w h e n

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To mark this first day of December 2019, and this last month of the year, here’s another experiment in animation continuing with the bees and text that I posted a week or so ago.

As these are only experiments, the science parts here – the relationship of bees to flowers needs more research, but I enjoy the challenge of balancing the art with the science.

The text fragments are from the beautiful poetry of Eleanor Rand Wilner, and the incredible bees from the Rolfs/Robinson specimens which I am still working through. The plant drawings are based upon my wildflower specimens which I collected last spring and summer in a dream meadow in the Okanagan.

 

Some of the bees which I have used in this animation:

small atlas of bees

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In honour of World Bee Day, May 20, 2019, I’ve created a composite of experimental cyanotype works using actual bee specimens. (Only dead bees found in the garden were used here). With the 3-dimensional bee forms, the resulting images have considerable blur — where the bee actually touches the sensitized paper, the silhouette  of the bee is recorded with some degree of clarity, but in other areas, the forms are more ambiguous. In terms of the text, the work of British poet, Carol Ann Duffy came to mind; her book “The Bees” is a marvellous compendium of her ruminations on bees, on us, and our relationship to the environment. I’ve used fragments from two of her poems to create this animation.

 

the bees do dream

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Recently I made a very cool discovery — that snowflakes can form around a variety of different particles — rain, dust and even grains of pollen. This idea that high up in our atmosphere, the renmants of summer’s glorious flowers are swirling around in the dark, cold skies is just astounding. And, even more, that these tiny beautiful particles which are intrinsic products of plant life and critical resources for bees, can create the exquisite beauty of snowflakes, is inconceivable. The connection–pollen—bees—-pollen—-snowflakes is the inspiration for this little animation, “The Bees Do Dream.”

bee-neighborly pollinator week

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It seems early, spring is not officially here yet, but there are bulbs pushing up their bright heads through the soil and early shrubs and trees are bursting with delicate blossoms. Time to plan ahead for Pollinator Week 2018 (June 18-24).

I have the very great pleasure of having an exhibition in June and Pollinator Week falls within the duration of the show, so I’m creating a series of postcards that will be offered gratis to visitors to the gallery.

The postcards are little reminders/suggestions on creating a pollinator and bee-neighborly environment.

drawing from the herbarium

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I have been collecting botanical specimens for some time now. The idea of ‘collection’ as a form of knowledge is of interest to me. What happens when one attempts to recreate nature by bringing as many objects as possible into one space? How can renmants and fragmentary things represent the whole or the real?

 

flutter

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Sorting through piles and piles of old work, more precisely the cast off sheets of imagery on gampi from the large bee-themed work from 2015, I started to play with the materials; exploring, in a sketchbook, the idea of collections, of possessing nature. Specimens, both botanical and entomological, are instrinsic parts of my new work, and I am reflecting upon my own need to see nature as a collectible entity.

 

gleaning, sorting, printing, considering

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As the season of bee observation, floral collection and study draws to a close, I am starting to look through my image archive, considering the printed ones, what to keep, what to set aside–what thematics to consider in preparation for next year’s exhibitions? Soon, I will be starting the intensive task of printing new images, most probably with the help of a new Epson printer, as I have devastated my present one with the abundantly free-floating fibers in the gampi paper I use.

But despite the hate-hate relationship of gampi+printer, the paper is lovely to work with, and because it is not coated, there is not the same sharpness in the image that real photography paper has. It has a natural warm hue. These aspects I really like.

Then the long, slow task of dipping each image in melted beeswax. The paper is already translucent, but the beeswax renders it more so, and adds a further warmth to the tone.

gampi

after dipping in beeswax

a tiny life, a tiny death

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Lesser Burdock, Arctium minus. Asteraceae. 17″x 22” Archival print on gampi, beeswax. 2017 jasna guy

Recently I attended a native bee identification workshop at Shawnigan Lake on Vancouver Island given by the wonderful entomologist and bee specialist, Lincoln Best. (Instagram: @beesofcanada). Just close by our classroom, there were gardens, hedges and some wild areas. In the wild part, there was a small bush of Lesser Burdock–a new plant to me–which my bee-buddy, Lori (Madame Beespeaker) said was Burdock. Sadly, Burdock is an invasive plant, but that negative aspect notwithstanding, Burdock is very generous in the pollen and nectar it offers its visitors, and that plant was buzzing with activity.

Every day of our workshop was a fantastic learning experience, but if I had to choose one experience only, I think it would be the delight, awe, sadness and beauty in the intense observation and exploration of a tiny black bee, a Dianthidium species, and the life and death that I witnessed on one of its floral resources, this very same Burdock, Arctium minus.

Lesser Burdock, Arctium minus. Asteraceae.

 

Dianthidium foraging on Lesser Burdock, Arctium minus.

Note the frayed edges of this little bee’s wing. She must have been working very hard provisioning and building her nest. Bees in your Backyard states that Dianthidium collect various materials for their nests, including pebbles, soil and resin, and that it might take up to 1000 trips for a female to build, provision and conceal one nest. No wonder her wings are in tatters!

Male Dianthidium circling a female on Lesser Burdock

The females do not lose their attractiveness to males after mating, rather, the male continues to pursue the female because he wants to be the last male to mate with her before she lays an egg, to increase the likelihood that his genes will get passed on to the next generation.

Dianthidium mating pair

Working on the next generation: The female just goes on with her foraging and nest building after her encounters with the male. Note in the photo above, the female has very light-coloured pollen on her head, probably the pollen from these disc florets she was foraging on before the male accosted her. Dianthidium belong to the Megachilidae family of bees, which means that the female carries her load of collected pollen on special hairs under her belly.

Lori and I did not manage to find any of the Dianthidium nests, sadly. That would have been fantastic!

Dianthidium male caught in the web of a tiny spider. Burdock leaf.

And finally, the same plant that offers food and a mating-bed also brings death with it! The cycle of life.