Margo Farnsworth
Nature Writer - Educator - Biomimicry Fellow
Biomimicry and the Bee
Gouache and colored pencil on paper
7 x 10” Amanda Gehin - 2018
This painting imagines the geometry of honeycomb interfacing with the rays of the sun and a flower mandala, creating a hypothetical polarization pattern. The wave of this pattern resembles the path of the waggle dance.
The bees are guided by this pattern, drawn to the center of the flower mandala, which dictates a physical opening in the painting. This opening in the hive reveals a deeper layer: a salt-wash sky, another plane. Hexagonal geometry also guides the formation of a hypothetical ant hill, from which ants are drawn into the unifying flower form.
Raising more questions than answers, the intention of this work is to incite meditation on the relationship between the waggle dance, the sun, and the flowers bees seek.
Amanda Gehin