Beeswax House

The beeswax house was made using different batches of handmade paper with pressed flowers and beeswax.

I make paper and keep recipes of the contents; train tickets from journeys made, research document drafts, buttercups and daisies from the meadow on a summer day. Each paper tells a story, fragments of where I’ve been and what I have encountered. The page embedded with a narrative of place. Cornish wildflowers sealed in Cornish beeswax, mixed ecologies of human and environment. Fragmented elements weave together an intersection of time and place, my time in this place, of earth time, life unfurling, oak leaves fallen, winter gorse flowers and damp damaged books.

In my research into materials I met with the head of the head of Cornish Beekeeper Association. I bring beeswax from his hives in Portloe. I learned how hives hold a sort of map of their immediate environment. Bees forage for about five miles around the hive so their stores of pollen hold information about the flowers of the immediate surrounding. The flowers are gathered on walks in my immediate environment as I learn the flora and fauna that surround me. The pollinators hold this together. I melt the wax to seal the flowers with the paper, translucent layers, the flowers visible from both sides seen through the light, a dialog between the internal and external. The house holds a narrative that encompasses human ecology, pollinators and plants all interconnected.