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| Gearing up for the Northern California bee art show, a benefit for honey bee research at UC Davis, are (from left) artists Olga Barmina of Davis; show coordinator Laurelin Gilmore of Sacramento, and Jeffrey Granett and Marilyn Judson of Davis. (Photos by Kathy Keatley Garvey) |
The beleaguered bee will get its day in court on Saturday, May 8.
In a courtyard, that is.
The “Bees at The Bee” art show,” a benefit for the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility at the University of California, Davis, will be held from 3 to 8 p.m. in the Sacramento Bee’s open courtyard at 2100 Q St. The event, free and open to the public, is part of the Sacramento Bee’s and annual Second Saturday celebration.
Artists from a 12-county area were invited earlier this year to submit their work. Submissions include acrylic paintings, watercolors, pen and ink drawings, metal and paper sculptures, photographs, fused glass plates, pendants, a fleece blanket, crocheted multimedia, collages, monoprint-woodcut, neckpiece, individually painted CDs, and a scrimshaw engraving on a mammoth ivory.
“I’m really blown away by the level of quality, the ingenuity, and the variety of content we’re seeing for this show,” said art show coordinator Laurelin Gilmore, an artist based in Sacramento. “It’s a relatively narrow theme, but concern for the plight of the honey bees is filtered through each artist in a different way, and the results run the gamut from funny to beautiful to profound. Every time I see a new piece for this show, I am re-energized!”
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| This is the postcard created by artist and art show coordinator Laurelin Gilmore. Click to enlarge. |
The “Bees at the Bee” will feature more than 60 artists from a 12-county area. All of the artwork on display will be for sale with a portion going toward UC Davis honey bee research. In addition to the artists, political cartoonist Rex Babin will be showing his cartoons and signing postcards.
The public is invited to meet the artists and to hear the music and enjoy refreshments and generally celebrate the importance of bees and how artists depict them.
Four bands will be playing from 3 to 8 p.m., including Mae McCoy and the Neon Stars. The Old Soul Coffee Co. will be selling drinks and sweets and Scoopy, The Bee’s mascot, will be handing out chocolate “bees,” said Second Saturday event coordinator Pam Dinsmore, community affairs director at the Sacramento Bee.
Free samples of Honey Lovers, a new line of candy (fruit chews) by Gimbal’s Fine Candies, San Francisco, will be handed out. Gimbal’s is donating 5 percent of the proceeds from the sale of its Honey Lovers for UC Davis research. Also planned are hand-outs from Burt’s Bees, Haagen-Dazs (one of the UC Davis honey bee research partners) and the Pollinator Partnership.
UC Davis Department of Entomology will provide a bee observation hive, a glassed-in hive showing hive activity and the three castes of bees--queen bee, worker bees and drones. Extension apiculturist Eric Mussen, a member of the UC Davis Department of Entomology faculty, will be there to answer questions. One third of the food we eat is pollinated by bees, Mussen said.
Other educational exhibits are also planned, as well as a huge cut-out of a bee, part of the entomology display at the UC Davis Picnic Day. The Bohart Museum of Entomology will offer, for sale, T-shirts and other gift items.
Parking is free in The Bee lot on Q Street, which is just a short walk to Midtown and all the other festivities occurring at Second Saturday. Across from The Bee is Revolution Wines, site of wine tasting.
Artists include:
Auburn: Linda Farley
Benicia: Chloe Valdez
Cameron Park: Janet Campbell
Carmichael: Donnella Hurley
Chico: Mary Wurlitzer
Citrus Heights: KC Moore
Cordova: Georgette Crawford Livingston
Davis: Emily Bzdyk, Jeffrey Granett, Marilyn Judson, Melissa Ann Wood and Olga Barmina
Diamond Springs: Karen S. Lewis
Elk Grove: William Bajar and Rachel Cate
Fair Oaks: Vicki Campbell
Folsom: Carol Rogala
Gold River: Vicki Foote
Grizzly Flat: Laurie Hicklin
Herald: Irene Grubba
Lincoln: Charlotte Cooper
Rancho Cordova: Marcia L. Ballard
Roseville: Anj Olmstead and John F. Johnson
Sacramento: Eric Royal, Petra B. Wynbrandt, Cree Hudson, Rebecca Rizzo, Ronald Musser, Mike Dickau, Carrie Markel, Tj Lev, Jennifer Rose Jacobsen, Matt Evans, Susan Ballenger, Sharon Okada
Vacaville: Johanna Hoagland and Kathy Keatley Garvey
Vallejo: Patricia Hall
Valley Springs: Dan O'Boyle
Shingle Springs: Lee Fitzgerrell Smith
Wilton: Teresa Steinbach-Garcia and Katherine Plumer
Woodland: Jane A. Thompson, Alice Micheltorena, Candy Taylor Tutt and Jamie Zane
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| Marilyn Judson with her art work. |
Davis Artists Showing Their Work
Among the Davis artists showing their work are fused glass-jewelry artist Olga Barmina, a staff research associate at the UC Davis Department of Evolution and Ecology; multi-media artist Jeffrey Granett, emeritus professor of entomology at UC Davis; and Marilyn Judson, who does paper sculpture, calligraphy and watercolors.
Barmina is showing a “bee-flower” fused glass plate; Granett, a linoleum block-print colored with ink wash and somerset paper and titled “Carpenter Bee with Tattoo” and Judson will show a framed paper sculpture, “Queen Bee,” and a framed calligraphy and watercolor piece based on a quote from the book, “Archy and Mehitable” by noted American humorist and newspaper columnist Don Marquis.
Barmina, who teaches at the UC Davis Crafts Center, was born in St. Petersburg, Russia and is a graduate of St. Petersburg State University (degree in biochemistry). “I’ve always been interested in the arts, and I was drawing, painting and sculpting for as long as I can remember myself. I began taking classes in ceramics and oil painting when I was 12. As time passed, I found myself doing less painting, and more and more ceramics – in retrospect, the three-dimensional art had a greater appeal."
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| Olga Barmina with her fused glass plate. |
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| Jeffrey Granett with his "Carpenter Bee with Tattoo." |
During her five years at St. Petersburg State University, she had no time for art. Later when she accepted a job at St. Louis University, she took an evening jewelry class and “realized that I found my true medium - metal." Throughout the years, she has improved her skills at fabrication, casting, chain making, stone setting, enameling, and other techniques.
Judson is passionate about calligraphy and paper sculpture. “I have always loved letters and studied calligraphy in London and taught calligraphy in the local school district and the Davis Art Center,” Judson said.
“Paper sculpture is something I have always want to do and I really have enjoyed the possibilities that it produces,” she said. “Manipulating the paper into a three-dimensional piece can be challenged.” Her paper sculptures include “lots of insects and flowers.” Her husband, Charles, an emeritus professor of entomology.
Her paper sculptures of moth brains, moth antennae and bacteria have drawn wide acclaim.
Judson has shown her work throughout the area and worked on in partnership with Davis artist Donna Billick in creating area murals.
Her calligraphy-watercolor focuses on a quote from Marquis (1878-1937), an American humorist and longtime columnist for The New York Sun who claimed that a cockroach named Archy jumped on his typewriter at night and wrote bits of wit and wisdom.
Archy couldn't punch two keys at the same time so his work contained no punctuation or capitalization. In fact, he wrote his name as "archy."
The "night-writing" cockroach wrote this:
as a representative
of the insect world
i have often wondered
on what man bases his claims
to superiority
everything he knows he has had
to learn whereas we insects are born
knowing everything we need to know
Granett, who retired from the Department of Entomology in January 2007, enjoys working on his art, docenting at the Crocker Art Museum “and learning from my grandson.” Although his work is titled “Carpenter Bee with Tattoo,” he says he has no professional experiences with carpenter bees “but enjoyed seeing them turning my backyard fence to sawdust.”
“The insect-art is a carpenter bee, probably male but I'm not sure,” Granett said. “It has tattoos on its femurs and tibias and should be hung as if it were hovering over a flower. It is cut from a linocut printed on Somerset paper with ink washes for the coloring. Although I tried to make the insect somewhat realistic morphologically, it clearly has some anthropomorphic characteristics for the viewer to figure out.” |
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--Kathy Keatley Garvey
Communications specialist
UC Davis Department of Entomology
(530) 754-6894
