When Ava Roth adds the last stitch grasping horsehair or porcupine quills to her embroidered artworks, she passes the fibrous material on to her black-and-yellow counterparts. The Toronto-based artist collaborates with bees to encase her mixed-media pieces in waxy honeycomb. What emerges are organic artworks that consider interspecies interactions and the beauty that such meetings can garner.

Since 2019, Roth has been expanding the wooden frames of her works to twice the size as previous projects. She receives help from master beekeeper Mylee Nordin, and together, they vertically stack hive boxes, which are known as supers, and insert large, custom-made structures. The artist also has developed a more detailed practice in recent months. “Because this project has required so much trial and error, I was still experimenting with materials last season, trying to find substances that the bees would consistently respond to positively,” she writes. “I was trying to find organic substances that would not harm the bees but also that the bees would not eat or otherwise destroy.”

“Porcupine Quill Flowers,” encaustic, Japanese tissue, porcupine quills, metal thread, seed beads, and embroidery hoop embedded in honeycomb, a traditional Langstroth hive frame, 19 x 9.5 inches

When the bees finished wax production in late October, Roth says her understanding of the species and confidence in her choice of raw matter had grown.[…]

More: Bees Encase Raw-Material Embroideries with Honeycomb in New Encaustic Works by Ava Roth