Propagation: Bees + Seeds
During this year’s Venice Art Biennale, artist Judi Harvest displays glasswork, paintings and a video installation in PROPAGATION: Bees + Seeds, part of Beauty and the Beast, an exhibition in Palazzo Tiepolo Passi, 2774 San Polo, Venice. The show runs May 10 through November 26, 2017.
Propagation: Bees + Seeds participated in the inaugural edition of The Venice Glass Week. As part of The Venice Glass Week, Judi Harvest hosted a panel discussion of the role and importance of honeybees in our environment, and the relations between art, nature and Murano glass:
Watch the video of the
Cross-Pollination: Honeybees and Murano Glass
panel discussion here
Harvest’s new works are a rumination on seeds, bee pollination and plants as metaphors for life and renewal. The exhibition is imbued with the spirit of the flowers and plants in the Honey Garden Harvest planted in Murano in 2013.
The work is also inspired by global seed banks, like the world’s largest, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway. Harvest created over 150 different glass seeds, plants and flowers to highlight the beauty, purpose and sacred symbolism of seeds and vegetables. She showcases the beauty of a glass artichoke or pomegranate seed, but also the intricate artistry that glassmakers practice to create form and reimagine nature. Her work is a comment on how global demand for foods or spices is unrealistic, damaging to nature’s seasonal order, and ultimately a threat to the bees that pollinate the world’s crops.
For PROPAGATION, Harvest worked with seven Murano glass masters, employing three ancient and challenging Murano glass techniques: cera persa (lost wax), lume (flame work), and soffiato (blown). For over forty years Harvest has lived, worked and exhibited her art in Venice. She worked for the last 28 years in a Murano glass factory owned by Giorgio Giuman, which went from employing 75 people to a mere four. She began to see parallels between the disappearing bees and Murano’s disappearing glass-making families. She has had many exhibitions in Venice, including 2015’s Room of Dreams and her massive 2013 exhibition DENATURED: Honeybees + Murano, for which she created 100 amber toned glass Honey Vessels, other honeybee-related paintings and sculptures, and the permanent installation Honey Garden, a bee-friendly garden which has transformed the grounds of Giuman’s glass factory. The garden is home to six healthy honeybee hives which produce the first Murano honey.
Limited edition pieces available from PROPAGATION exhibition:
Seeds are Jewels boxes
Archival Photos on metal
Scarf
Pocket square
Catalog
DVD
Other artworks by request
Download Propagation press release
Download Beauty and the Beast press release
