The Swarm Buzzes to Oswestry...

Needle Felted Bee Swarm

Major excitement in the Lost in the Wood camp last week when my first proper exhibition piece was accepted in The Willow Gallery's 'Natural Selection' exhibition which opened on Saturday! There's some small changes and a few more bees have been added round the base but essentially it looks like this. Each bee was sculpted from merino tops fleece by hand using a barbed felting needle which is an enjoyable but fairly slow process, then they were layered up to create a busy swarm effect. I gave up trying to count the number of  bees that went into this piece. Trying to count them once I'd already fixed quite a few on was in hindsight a bit tricksy, it's over 100 at least. The dome is a piece of old lab equipment while the base is bespoke, made by a fantastic local wood artist John Roberts of Ogwen Art and Craft. In case you're wondering why the bees are unconventionally colourful, here's the artist statement that accompanies the piece (although more prosaically it also helped keep the project interesting for me to make and the colours had to be strong/ bright to be seen through the very thick glass dome!).
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Artist Statement- Laura Cameron:

“Alive. Alive in the way that death is alive”

(John Fowles, 'The Collector').

Suspension is central to my interests and work. Food which cannot rot, creatures which will not decay, all held in a protected but unnatural limbo. Removing the cacophony and flurry generated by the living, stripping back the aromas of food and erasing the sticky, visceral marks, suspends them in a curious detached state.

The softness and tactile nature of crochet and needle felt allows me to round off the stark corners of morbidity and mortality. Fascinated by Victorian taxidermy's curiosity towards the natural world and its anthropomorphic playfulness, I aim to re-create both the scientific and the spectacle. The fibrous nature of my soft sculptures helps temper threatening reminders of mortality while encouraging closer examination and contemplation of the vivacity of life against the undeniable immediacy of death.

The unnaturally colourful bees in the swarm intend to convey a vibrant relationship between the bees and the plants they pollinate. The bees carry the essence of each flamboyant bloom they touch, they affectand are in turn effected by their interaction with other living things.

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Needle Felt Bee Swarm (detail)

 Hopefully not too ridiculous, best not to tell me if it is (although constructive comments are always useful I uncomfortably acknowledge). If you're going to be in the Oswestry area between now & 19th October the Willow Gallery is well worth a visit (as indeed is Oswestry generally, a very pretty & interesting looking town) and the panninis in the cafe are delicious (yes, always a food reference somewhere in the blog!). Sadly I couldn't make the preview (soggy Welsh weather) but will be going back there soon to see the exhibition. I also have some mounted crochet rabbit heads & a few brooches in the lovely Gallery shop which I'm delighted about.