For All Is For Your­self is a poet­ic expres­sion of the labour of bees designed by Cameron Cartiere and the chART Col­lec­tive. With the aim of bring­ing the pub­lic art pol­li­na­tor pas­tures out into the com­mu­ni­ty, the project involves two phas­es: a series of mobile seed paper-mak­ing work­shops and an exhi­bi­tion of 10,000 bum­ble­bees laser cut from the paper cre­at­ed in the workshops.

The Kelow­na Art Gallery is the exhi­bi­tion site for For All Is For Your­self from June 20th 2016 to Octo­ber 9th 2016. The exhi­bi­tion will be in The Front Project Space.

Over the past win­ter, Kelowna’s Pub­lic Art Pol­li­na­tor Pas­ture Team cre­at­ed 300 sheets of seed-embed­ded paper with mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty (Okana­gan Mas­ter Gar­den­ers, Club­house Child Care Cen­tre, Kelow­na Homelearner’s Group, Lake Coun­try Gardener’s Club, Mount Boucherie Sec­ondary School, the Beta Sig­ma Phi Soror­i­ty, the Good Samar­i­tan Soci­ety at Moun­tain­view Vil­lage and at The Kelow­na Art Gallery). Spe­cial thanks to vol­un­teer Leanne Stringer!

This hand­made paper was then sent to our part­ner, the ChART Col­lec­tive in Van­cou­ver, who got it laser-cut into 5 000 of the 10 000 bees for the gallery wall. The oth­er 5 000 were cre­at­ed in Rich­mond in 2015 and brought to Kelow­na from the Rich­mond Art Gallery’s exhib­it of For All is For Yourself.

The seed in the paper is donat­ed Gail­lar­dia seed from sev­er­al Kelow­na gar­dens, from the Okana­gan Xeriscape Association’s UnH20 demon­stra­tion gar­den, and wild seed har­vest­ed by Seed­Co from land slat­ed for devel­op­ment. Gail­lar­dia is a hardy, drought-resis­tant plant that is native to the Okana­gan and an ide­al choice for our pas­ture and for local gardens.

Through­out the sum­mer, in con­junc­tion with this show, the pol­li­na­tor pas­ture team will be host­ing events at the Kelow­na Art Gallery and around the community.

  • Make Seed and Petal Paper: Sun­day, June 16, 1–4pm at the Kelow­na Art Gallery
  • A Talk with Okana­gan Bee-keep­er Claudette Lam­ont: Thurs­day, July 21 7 – 8:30 PM, Kelow­na Art Gallery
  • Cre­at­ing Bee-Friend­ly Signs for Your Gar­den and Home: Sun­day, August 21 1 – 4 PM, Kelow­na Art Gallery
  • Poet­ry Post Cel­e­bra­tion, TBA
  • Build a Bee Hotel for the Pol­li­na­tor Pas­ture: Sat­ur­day, Octo­ber 1 Times – TBA In asso­ci­a­tion with Cul­ture Days!

Border Free BeesOn Thurs­day, Octo­ber 6 at 7 PM you are invit­ed to come to the gallery to hear a talk by Dr. Mark Win­ston, author of the Gov­er­nor Gen­er­al Award-win­ning book, Bee Time: Lessons from the Hive. You can take home paper bees removed from the gallery walls to plant in your gar­den! Pre­reg­is­ter at https://drmarkwinston.eventbrite.ca.

The instal­la­tion, For All Is For Your­self, encour­ages com­mu­ni­ty aware­ness and long-term envi­ron­men­tal­ly respon­si­ble behav­iour around bee stewardship.