Lesley Smitheringale Fine Art

Featured Artist: Toma Gabzdil Libertiny

This is an interesting project by slovak artist Toma Gabzdil Libertiny and what a magnificent outcome.

Libertiny constructed vase-shaped scaffolds (to be removed at the end of the process) and then let nature take its course: a group of bees went to work building a hive, layer by layer, in the same shape as the scaffold. The work takes from two to ten days, depending on the weather, the season, the size of the colony, and the colony’s need to expand.

It took one week and approximately forty thousand bees to complete this particulat honeycomb vase. The process, which the designer calls “slow prototyping” in an ironic counterpoint to today’s rapid manufacturing technologies, potietically brings a natural phenomenon full circle, starting with flowers, which nourish bees and enabled them to produce the vase, and ending with a vessel that is meant to contain flowers.

“The Honeycomb Vase ‘Made by Bees’ Prototype” is part of an exhibition entitled “Design and the Elastic” Mind at MoMA in New York City