This is a print-based art zine consisting of twelve pages which visually illustrates a topic that I am passionate about.
This topic is environmentally orientated and evolves around the solitary bees of South Africa.
South Africa is globally recognised as a bee diversity hotspot. There are over 1000 different bee species surrounding our country and most of them don’t receive the enough recognition they deserve.
When we think bee, we immediately think of the honey bee. Honey bees are most popular around the world, because of what they give us, honey. All we associate bees with is honey. And this is where we have gone wrong. The honey bee receives too much media attention and this zine focusses more on the other relevant bee species that are as important than the honey bee, if not more.
This zine shines the spotlight on South Africa’s solitary bees. They are the most important crop and flower pollinators in the country. The main goal for this zine is to communicate to the public that there is so much more to a bee than just producing honey. This zine also focusses more on the other bee species who do not receive recognition for what they are responsible for.
The single-minded message for this project can be defined as there’s more to the bee than just honey.
Solitary bees do not produce honey, they do not sting and they do not live in colonies.
They live in solitude, they are fluffy harmless little insects with big responsibilities. They mostly pollinate the earth and insure that crops and flowers get distributed around the world.
Without them, we wouldn’t have been able to survive. Albert Einstein determined that without the bee, mankind would only have 4 years left to live.
Noticing the solitary bees importance and how little recognition they receive from us, I wanted to created this zine to inform the public on how interesting and important they actually are.
10 Different solitary bee species have been illustrated by hand and colour and more information has been added digitally. Each species is captured in a different composition to communicate the solitary bees’ diversity.
The name of each bee and a special renowned fact has been added digitally.
After completing this zine I also realised that me, as a person, can relate much more to the solitary bee. I also function better on my own, I might act tough, but am actually quite harmless and the odds are often stacked against me, but I always manage to pull off what I don’t think I can achieve.
