The Hum of Bees
Author Elizabeth Lawrence said “The hum of bees is the voice of the garden.” This quote embodies for me the importance of bees in our natural world. They pollinate about 80% of our crops and are therefore crucial to our food security. I admire their highly organized social structure
Ecosystems
For our next challenge I would like you to think about biological communities, that is: communities of animal and/or plant life. These are not really ecosystems as those consist also of the inorganic components of the environment. “Ecosystems” is just a catchier title for our challenge. A biological community
Dual Allegiance
I am a German citizen living in Canada, that definitely fits the “International” theme. It is an important part of who I am. I’ve been living in Canada for over 16 years now, but the ties to Germany are still strong: family, old and new friends, traditions, landscape, cities
Wave Optics
Looking out over water every day when we got the theme “Reflection” made it natural for me to chose reflections on water as my visual. I was doing an artist residency close to my hometown, on the coast of Nova Scotia. The setting was beautiful, I worked in
Looking at reflections
When we got the theme “Reflection” I was in the middle of an artist residency. This residency was close to my hometown, on the coast of Nova Scotia. The setting was beautiful, I worked in a barn overlooking the ocean and an inlet. I was working there
Unique Identities
My final piece for the theme “Identity” is somewhat different from what I envisioned initially, and what I wrote in my last blog post. Instead of focussing on the multiple identities that one person might have I ended up with a piece that speaks (at least to me) about
Multiple Identities
I was thinking about our last theme, Masks, and how this new one really ties neatly into it. I think we all have within us multiple identities, which we show to the world wearing different hats or masks. Not to be confused with multiple personality disorder which
Same/Different (Homage to Jawlensky)
I wrote in my blog post last week about my inspiration for the mask piece. It goes back to an exhibition I saw a long time ago in Germany featuring works of the painter Alexej von Jawlensky (1864-1941). He was a Russian expressionist painter who worked mainly in Germany and
Masklike Portraits
As I was reflecting on our theme “Masks” I started to see that a mask is basically a reduction of the human face to a minimalistic set of features. Most masks have at least 2 eyes and a mouth, sometimes a nose, and are oval shaped. This makes them
The Great Divide
When I wrote about our theme Disunity a few weeks ago I had written about a chasm between factions in societies that could not be crossed easily anymore. This picture somehow nestled itself into my head and wouldn’t let go. So I decided to make just that, a wide chasm,
The Fabric of Society
Humans are hardwired to want to belong to a group. We are social animals, and in human history it was paramount for survival to belong to a group, a tribe, a clan, a family. I think that right now fear is a major driver for people to organize
The Time Within
All living organisms, be it plants or animals, share in their genes the same structure that helps them adapt to the time of day. We all have “time” embedded on a molecular level of every cell. We carry our own time within us. The biological clock in our bodies