1. Cross Pollination
516 ARTS
August 19 – November 11, 2017

3. Steve Barry’s honeycomb inspired sculpture invites the viewer to interact with both the media and the message. Rather than serving as a storage space for honey, pollen or larvae, these cells hold pennies that can be placed to create words or patterns. The audience, then, becomes an active participant in creating meaning.
Steve Barry
Corrales, New Mexico Common Sense 2006 Steel, urethane rubber, bronze, copper

4. Susanna Carlisle & Bruce Hamilton Santa Fe, New Mexico Vanishing II 2017 Multi-media video installation and glass globes
Vanishing II captures honey bees in action as film is transformed into a multi-dimensional format, projecting specially processed bee images onto the wall and into hanging glass spheres. Carlisle and Hamilton create an experience akin to being with the bees. They also present their video work in virtual reality, where viewers can don special viewing equipment to see bees in their natural environment without danger, real or imagined.

5. Santa Fe, New Mexico As Above, So Below 2017 Datura pods, cast bronze
Chris Collins captures the Sphinx moth pollinating the Datura plant (Jimson weed). The moths hover amongst the curled flowers in a frenzy of activity. The pod forms are cast in bronze and center to a swarm of moth chrysalises cast in aluminum, making physical reference to metamorphosis and ordered structure. According to Collins, “As Above, So Below, refers to both the physical life cycle of these interdependent life forms, and the likeness of the macro and micro, the cosmic and the atomic.”
Chris Collins
Santa Fe, New Mexico As Above, So Below 2017 Datura pods, cast bronze

6. Sterling and fine silver, 14K gold, 24k gold in glass/S
Sterling and fine silver, 14K gold, 24k gold in glass/S. Frank enameled head pin, brass accents, tiny amount of copper, rainbow moonstones, rutilated quartz, rubies, tourmalines, Ethiopian opal, citrine, white moonstones, black cabochon (India), garnets, topaz, shell buttons, metal button, fluorspar, glass, handmade lace, beeswax, mica, found objects, gifted objects
According to Kristen Diener, “I have found such joy in the abundance of forms, functions, and beauty that reveal themselves in pollinators. The plethora of designs awe me. In the act of pollination there is no single connection made that does not benefit a multitude of other life forms. This truth remains central to all that I make.”
Kristin Diener Queen Bee & Pollen Collector Talisman in the Golden Age of the Predator: Pectoral Reliquary with Handmade Chain 2017

7. Aganetha Dyck and Richard Dyck
Winnipeg, Canada Hive Scan Archival photo prints
Courtesy of Michael Gibson Gallery, London, Ontario
Aganetha Dyck is interested in environmental issues, specifically honeybees, which she deems the “power of the small.” From , Aganetha and her son Richard collaborated on Hive Scans, a series of photographs created by placing a flatbed scanner inside of a beehive. These scans captured the frenzied bee activity inside, as well as non-bee objects (salt and pepper shakers, lace, drawings), which are other artworks in-progress. The bees move as the scan head moves, creating compressing and smearing, and capturing various moods, dark and light.

8. Kelly Eckel’s images are made from collaged photographs that are transferred to etching plates. Her work explores the relationships between pollinators and plants; the organic forms are reminiscent of seeds, water, and wind. According to Eckel, “I try to create images that reflect a deeper understanding that started by looking closely at plants to see what was buzzing inside a flower, as well as looking at pollen, plants, and insects through a microscope. This led me to ask questions about what is needed for the survival of each plant and animal. What are the relationships that they have formed, and how have they evolved over time?”
Kelly Eckel
Albuquerque, New Mexico Morphogenic Series (bilateral modification) 2017 Photopolymer etchings

11. Talia Greene
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Colony (Bostwick) 2010 Archival pigment prints
The group of prints exhibited in Cross Pollination pairs altered portraits of 19th century Westerners with Orientalist postcards taken and traded by Westerners in the Colonial era. The themes of sensuality, concealment, and exposure, already implicit in Victorian and Orientalist imagery, are taken to an absurd degree. Shown together, the comparisons play with assumptions regarding the colonizer and subject. The insects are the invaders, modestly cloaking the body, or burying a Victorian man in the chaotic swarm of his own beard. 
The insects seem to become part of the people, yet at the same time are alien and uncontrollable. The swarms grow; run wild; start to conform; then run wild once more. Even as we attempt to impose our will on nature, these insects impose their anarchy on us.”

12. The Pop Flower series has its origin in the geometric motifs found on buildings in Cappadocia, Turkey, where Mary Judge had a residency in She seeks to fuse the mystical with rational divisions of a circle by exploring botanical sources. She is interested in the forms themselves, not flowers per se. The drawings are made using stencils on rag paper and pouncing the open spaces with a sack of powdered pigment. According to Judge, “My approach to the color is intuitive so that harmonies are spontaneous and evolve over the course of the drawing process. I am interested also in the presence of accumulated debris or the unplanned, casual things that happen during the making of a work. The best things are never planned, they just happen.”
Mary Judge
New York, NY/ St. Louis, MO Pop Flower powdered pigment on paper

15. The Moth Migration Project is a crowd-sourced installation of hand printed, drawn, and cut paper moths. Hilary Lorenz put out a call for participation on social media, inviting people to create paper moths native to their geographic location. The moths became a symbol of community as the project branched into satellite exhibitions, printmaking workshops, school art projects, and family and community gatherings. Lorenz cataloged each submission into a database and she mails each participant a specifically-designed postcard recognizing their contribution and acknowledging the value of their collaboration. For the installation, each paper moth’s placement represents how the project digitally pollinated. Artists from twenty-four countries are represented. 
Hilary Lorenz
Brooklyn, New York / Abiquiu, New Mexico Moth Migration Project 2017 Cut paper

16. Buenos Aires, Argentina Lethal Gasp 2017 13-color serigraph
This print is a representation of the two new murals in Downtown Albuquerque by renowned Argentinian artist, Pastel. Commissioned by 516 ARTS for Cross Pollination, the murals depict local, native plants that pollinators love. Pastel says, “Much of the flora that I use as references can be found growing in the cracks of the sidewalks and in fields of empty spaces. These cracks and spaces, sometimes generated by poor construction, are a reflection of the human need to control and subdue space for rational and autonomous use. Taking these small plants and glorifying them by changing their scale is a way to critique how our modern society has evolved.” Pastel, who is both an architect and a painter, has created murals on almost every continent on the planet.
Pastel
Buenos Aires, Argentina Lethal Gasp
2017
13-color serigraph

17. Courtesy of K Contemporary and David Ethridge
With the series Forgetting is so Long, Daisy Patton collects abandoned, anonymous family photographs, enlarges them past their familiar size, and paints over them. Her aim is to disrupt, to re-imagine, to re-enliven these individuals until they are no longer recognizable or their presence is too piercing to continue. According to Patton, “Each person’s newly imagined and altered portrait straddles the lines between memory, identity and death. They are monuments to the forgotten.” For Cross Pollination, Patton examines human relationships with nature through photographs of a beekeeper and a gardener. But the landscape disrupts any sense that they control the natural world.
Daisy Patton
Aurora, Colorado Untitled (The Gardener) 2017 Oil on archival print mounted to panel
Courtesy of K Contemporary and David Ethridge

18. Jessica Rath and Robert Hoehn
Resonant Nest is a human-scaled native bumblebee nest sculpture that emanates human voice interpretations of bee communication. The 6-part score is sung by a 40-person Chamber Choir. The nest’s modular units are embedded with speakers whose score shifts with sensory inputs based on current weather, time, and gallery viewer closeness to the nest (feel free to put your head in the nest). The resonance of the nest ebbs and flows with feeds from the National Weather Service report on local conditions and Arduino Uno inputs from the proximity sensors in the nest. MAX composing program translates this information to shift and layer the scores played including: languid wander, afternoon forage, quiet sleep, cold huddle, too close, and single voice pollinators—from the nest. Data illustration by artist Vivian Sming displays these shifts and names score changes through the day. Cell units are designed by Jessica Rath. Music is composed by Robert Hoehn and performed by CSU Long Beach Bob Cole Conservatory of Music Chamber Choir, directed by Dr. Jonathan Talberg. iPads displaying live Albuquerque weather forecasts are programmed by Robert Hoehn and designed by Vivian Sming. Bee sounds are inspired by research from the Leonard Bee Lab, University of Nevada, Reno. Recordings are by Dr. Stephen Buchmann, University of Arizona, Tucson.
Jessica Rath and Robert Hoehn
Los Angeles, California Resonant Nest 2014 Sound, polyester resin, fiberglass, electronics, speakers

19. Ren Ri Yuansu II – #6-78 2014 - 2015 Archival print
Ren Ri has collaborated with bees to create sculptural works and performance art. In Yuansu VII, Ren Ri’s has was in contact with bees for seven days. He washed his right hand with honey and pollen and then kept it in the beehive day and night. After a while, the bees began to build their honeycomb on his hand. Ri considers the bees to be co-creators of his works. According to Ri, “With my work, human consciousness combined with bee consciousness is the key point. I believe my sculptures and performance represent the truth of how humans interact with nature, which involves harmony, destruction, molding, and interference—which can result in unpredictable, sometimes volatile, but often wondrous results.”
Ren Ri Yuansu II – # Archival print

20. The USGS Native Bee Monitoring Program designs and develops large and small scale surveys for native bees. As part of that program they also develop identification tools and keys for native bee species. One aspect of creating those tools is creating accurate and detailed pictures of native bees and the plants and insects they interact with.

21. Curated Honey by Valerie Roybal Varietal New Mexico Honey
Top Shelf (left to right):
desert wildflower
Ridgecrest, Albuquerque comb honey
South Valley, Albuquerque wildflower and alfalfa
South Central New Mexico clover comb
South Central New Mexico sage and willow
Southern New Mexico desert
Middle Shelf
Far Northeast Heights, Albuquerque sage wildflower garden (M.Griffin)
Corrales, New Mexico wild flower
Central New Mexico cats claw, mesquite
Ridgecrest, Albuquerque garden and flower honey
Albuquerque buckwheat honey
Bottom Shelf
Downtown, Albuquerque light comb
Northern New Mexico clover
Central New Mexico desert wildflower
New Mexico white and purple clover
Central New Mexico mountain gamble oak
Ridgecrest, Albuquerque early harvest, fruit blossom, garden
Curated Honey by Valerie Roybal
Varietal New Mexico Honey
Honey and comb
2017