A Bee’s-Eye View

Two Alberta artists offer a whimsical tale about pollinators.

by

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed these days. Some mornings, I don’t risk even a peek at the latest headlines. With news of floods, forest fires and global warming, it’s tempting to opt for escape and watch Sleepless in Seattle for the umpteenth time. Apparently, I am not alone. More and more people are tuning out the news because it negatively affects their mood. But understanding – and change – come through information. How can difficult news be communicated without driving us under our covers? 

Two Calgarians, Alana Bartol, a multidisciplinary artist, and Bryce Krynski, a lens-based artist, have found an answer. Their whimsical video, all roses sleep (inviolate light), on view at the Art Gallery of Alberta in Edmonton until Oct. 2, will delight viewers of any age. At the same time, the gentle, poetic and, at times, funny, 14-minute storyline – a solitary native bee’s perspective on her search for delicious wild rose nectar – is a stark reminder of looming environmental challenges.

The duo shot the video during one of the worst wildfire summers on record, 2021, when Alberta’s skies turned orange. They drove to the Pinhorn Provincial Grazing Reserve south of Medicine Hat, a largely undisturbed area of prairie grass, trying to shoot video in the elusive ultraviolet light seen by bees. 

“Because of the smoke, we only had a few hours to film,” says Krynski. He eventually ordered “a ton of ultraviolet lights” because this spectrum wasn’t penetrating the haze. “It would have been an all-black movie without that,” he says, with a laugh. Their struggles echo that of the bees, which can’t see landing pad-like striations on petals without ultraviolet light.  

The video begins with a bee sleeping between the fuzzy petals of a blazing star, and then follows her meandering flight through a dim and dream-like prairie landscape. “These creatures,” the bee grumbles in a caption as she flies past a herd of cattle. “The more of them, the less of me.” 

Scratch-and-sniff cards provided at the exhibition’s entrance allow visitors to smell such adventures. There are glorious scents like sage and wild rose, but also pointed jabs at human food choices: the herd of cattle reeks of manure.

Creating such smells was a challenge for the artists. “We wanted to make the scratch and sniff ourselves,” says Bartol. After taking courses at the Institute for Art and Olfaction in Los Angeles and a lot of testing, they made the scent of yarrow, which was impossible to find elsewhere. In the end, the printing process proved too complex, so they commissioned a printing company in Tennessee to make the cards with scents they curated.

Watching the bee’s journey is both soothing and exhilarating. For a moment, we almost become a bee and experience the world through their senses. That disarming experience, coupled with the quirky captions, allows some uncomfortable truths to penetrate. The current threat to food production due to the rapid decline in pollinators becomes tangible and personal. 

“Art has a huge role to play in conversations about the environment and climate change,” says Bartol, who teaches at the Alberta University of the Arts in Calgary.

As the video demonstrates, art can offer a kind, empathetic, and, perhaps, more convincing portrayal of hard-to-stomach realities than science alone. ■

Alana Bartol and Bryce Krynski, all roses sleep (inviolate light), at the Art Gallery of Alberta from June 18 to Oct. 2, 2022.

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