I am very grateful to be included in this show exploring food security at the Salmon Arm Art Gallery!
A place for the Pollinators
We don’t notice them at first when we look out over a landscape of fields or garden. Then a gentle buzz reaches our ears and we have to turn our head and look closer. Pollinators are on the periphery. Where do the wild bees live and why would we care? Wild pollinators feed us. They do their job, often without us even noticing. They live in our peripheral vision, on the edges of gardens, in the fractured wild spaces between perfectly manicured properties. We need messy, wild areas full of biodiverse native plants, dry dead branches and trees, and grassy holes. This is where the bumblebees live who pollinate tomatoes we eat and the mason bee who pollinates our fruit trees.
Sarah invites the viewer to notice the space between the land we use by quite literally fracturing the landscape in two. With curved shapes of dead standing trees, there is a place provided for pollinators. We begin to turn our heads and look for the source of that buzzing, questioning: what can we do to help the bees? Leave wild spaces, plant diverse plants, stop using pesticides. Even a small area left to be wild helps the bees and in turn brings life and food for ourselves and the next generation.
