The New Beehive Exhibition is now on view. You can see my finished artwork in the exhibit but also as the featured piece for all the marketing. I haven’t seen the exhibit yet but will be going this Friday. I can’t wait to see all the creativity from artists in Utah.
I am so honored to have been accepted as one of the artists to do the New Beehive artwork for the Utah Division of Arts and Museums. It’s a collaborative artwork made up of 30 artists’ work. The goal of the New Beehive project is to explore, expand, and challenge the uses of beehive iconography in Utah. Artists from diverse creative and cultural perspectives were invited to propose an original artwork inspired by Utah’s state symbol, the beehive, or associated imagery such as honeycomb, bees, and beekeeping.
The project gives each artist a wooden hexagonal frame in one of two sizes. The artwork has to fit within the frame. For the project, I will be creating a knitted textile artwork mimicking honeycomb and bees using paper yarn. I am using yellow for the honeycomb and black, yellow, and white for the bees.
I hope to be posting progress pictures as I knit over the next couple months.
Fruita: The historic town of Fruita, within Capitol Reef National Park, is no longer inhabited by pioneers. But visitors can still pick ripe fruit from the lush orchards under the looming orange cliffs of the Waterpocket Fold.
Sandstone Cliff: Nearly 10,000 feet of sedimentary strata were deposited in Capitol Reef National Park. This layer upon layer of sedimentary rock records nearly 200 million years of geologic history. Rock layers in Capitol Reef reveal ancient environments as varied as rivers, swamps, deserts, and shallow oceans. Fossils found in these rocks give clues that these sandstone layers were deposited when the region was at or near sea level, far below the current elevation.
Strike Valley: Strike Valley can be seen from a spectacular overlook in Capitol Reef National Park. It is named for the geological feature where a valley runs parallel to the strike of underlying rocks. From the overlook, you can easily see the 100-mile meandering valley of roads, streams, and strikes. With the Waterpocket Fold to the west and the rugged cliffs of the badlands to the east the valley makes for a dramatic furrow in the earth.
Just for fun I created this cute little pouch inspired by all the mulberry trees that were fruiting a few months ago. We have a lot of mulberry trees in urban Salt Lake City (see below) and there are many public trees that you can harvest. You can tell where they are because of the purple stained sidewalk underneath them.
I gathered some mulberries and died some bamboo silk which turned into a beautiful purpley-silver. I created this pattern to mimic the drupes of mulberries on a tree. I also knit one up in a mulberry colored yarn because you can’t have too many pouches! The pattern is in my Ravelry shop.
Notes from the pattern:
In an effort to be self-sufficient, 19th century Mormon Pioneers in Utah began raising their own silkworms to create a silk industry in the West. Silkworms must feed on mulberry leaves so LDS Church leader Brigham Young ordered 100,000 mulberry trees from France to be planted around Utah. Although Utah’s sericulture was a failed enterprise, the mulberry trees still thrive throughout the state allowing urban harvesters a bounty of berries every spring.
I have a piece in the Springville Museum of Art’s Spring Salon (happening in the fall this year). If you happen to be near there, go in (socially distant) and see this great exhibition of Utah artists. This piece is called Visible Mending: Mirror and is part of my Visible Mending series I have been doing during the pandemic. I seem to be trying to mend everything in sight to try and fix the world in some way. But the best way to visibly mend? VOTE!
With everything being virtual now, most of the shows I have entered are online catalogs only. But it’s a great way to stay home and see art. The latest show with my work is in the Friends of Great Salt Lake Alfred Lambourne Arts Program. This piece called “Bed of Hopper Crystals” has actual hopper salt crystals from Great Salt Lake embedded in it. It makes for a heavy work and pretty impractical for actually wearing, especially in the rain. But I wanted to create the feeling of the warm summer day harvesting these crystals surrounded by the pink salty water. You can see the whole catalog of art, writing, dance, video, and sound on their website.
Description of the artwork from the catalog: The salt crystals that form on the edges of Great Salt Lake are beautiful and varied. On rare occasions, the halite crystals grow so rapidly, the interior does not have time to form, creating a geometric hoppered shape. These hopper salt crystals can be removed from the lake bed like pulling teeth, giving you a perfect crystal of receding concentric squares. This piece of wearable art immerses you in the pink, salty waters of a warm summer day, harvesting hopper crystals from the lakebed like so many encrusted jewels.
