Honeybee Blueprints

Light and Labor

The Honeybee Blueprint Project is a collaboration with living honeybees and local beekeepers, resulting in large works on paper. The images are life size unique photograms, made in the sun (not from a digital negative). These images were made using organic components, construction materials (salt, earth, broken glass and plastic) and the presence of honeybees. Each blueprint is a record of light, time and labor. In the fleeting moments that pass during exposure, bees move and vibrate. This movement causes the bees to appear as little ghosts, or soft glowing orbs of light. Their presence is recorded over long exposures. Whether it be rising sea levels or the rise of poverty, it is the “worker bees” who feel the brunt of relating hardships. Honeybees are in no way harmed by this project.

Project Medic Statement: My grandfather was a medic in world war II. Honeybees carry their dead to the front of the hive as a ritual within their life cycle. These two concepts inform this installation of works on paper. Each red cross image is made up of many dead honeybees and salt. The bees were donated to my project by local beekeepers.

About the Artist

Dedas was born and raised in Louisville Ky. Growing up in a working-class blue-collar southern American family has greatly influenced his artistic themes. Being on and around construction sites, as a child and through adulthood continues to inform his concepts of building and destroying. Years later these ideas have led to a focus on the “worker bees”. His work employs processes which explore labor, geography and the systems around us.

Dedas maintains an extensive exhibition record both in the U.S. and internationally. His work was included in the Art/NaturSci Pavilion: Equilibrium exhibition at the 2019 Venice Biennale within Palazzo Albrizzi-Capello in partnership with the German-Italian Cultural Association (ACIT). In 2018 his work was exhibited at Humboldt-Universität in Berlin Germany. Other international exhibitions include: Art Prague International Art Fair, Solo Project Room, Kafka’s House, Prague, Czech Republic (2014), and in the Personally Political International Juried Exhibition, at Kunsthaus Tacheles in Berlin (2009).

His Masters of Fine Arts degree along with a Museum Studies Curatorial Certificate is from the College of Design, Art, Architecture, and Planning, University of Cincinnati. His Bachelor of Fine Arts is from the Hite Institute of Art & Design, University of Louisville.