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Waxhouse Drips Eternal, 2014
Insights by the artist
My title “Waxhouse Drips Eternal” juxtaposes death with a symbol of eternal existence. The last line in Sylvia Plath’s bee poem, "Stings", compares death of the queen bee with domestic oppression, “Over the engine that killed her—The mausoleum, the wax house,” whereas "Drips Eternal" refers to the eternal stores of honey, the byproduct of the sacrifice, created and ever dripping from the hive.
Our interspecies exchange with honey bees is evidenced by venerable appearances in art, mythology, the sacred, social customs, architecture, poetry and language dating back 10,000 years. Yet honeybees remain feral and impossible to domesticate. Instead, we manipulate the partnership. They don’t pollinate crops for us, they collect pollen for their hives but we place our crops in the pollinator's path.
And so it is with Plath’s poem, where the queen bee is in a predictable state of decline, yet through the poet’s pen, becomes a feminist symbol of an oppressive existence, steeped in the rhetoric of vulnerability, loss of power, sacrifice and ultimately death. This poem belongs to a series of poems referencing bees written shortly before her own death. The metaphor of the hive invites comparisons about domestic female oppression, but to complete the metaphor, one can look at the historical female’s characteristic role in building community, in creation and procreation for the perpetuity of the human species, represented not only by the social organization of the hive but the legacy left after the ultimate sacrifice of the female worker bees life, the creation of honey, the natural world's only imperishable food supply.
Today, the headline story is about unscripted death of honeybees, as populations decline, imperiled by our actions (pesticide use, over development, and imbalances in the environment causing a proliferation of parasites and diseases). This is critical because insect pollination services are valuable to our food productivity. Bees are responsible for as much as ⅓ of the perishable foods that we eat. Ironically, the honey they produce is imperishable, the only earth sourced food that doesn’t decompose.
Lifting oppressive practices affecting vulnerable populations, both human and invertebrate is critical to allow creative productivity to flow such as bees gift of honey, the eternal gold.
Isobeldavisart.com
Insights by the artist
My title “Waxhouse Drips Eternal” juxtaposes death with a symbol of eternal existence. The last line in Sylvia Plath’s bee poem, "Stings", compares death of the queen bee with domestic oppression, “Over the engine that killed her—The mausoleum, the wax house,” whereas "Drips Eternal" refers to the eternal stores of honey, the byproduct of the sacrifice, created and ever dripping from the hive.
Our interspecies exchange with honey bees is evidenced by venerable appearances in art, mythology, the sacred, social customs, architecture, poetry and language dating back 10,000 years. Yet honeybees remain feral and impossible to domesticate. Instead, we manipulate the partnership. They don’t pollinate crops for us, they collect pollen for their hives but we place our crops in the pollinator's path.
And so it is with Plath’s poem, where the queen bee is in a predictable state of decline, yet through the poet’s pen, becomes a feminist symbol of an oppressive existence, steeped in the rhetoric of vulnerability, loss of power, sacrifice and ultimately death. This poem belongs to a series of poems referencing bees written shortly before her own death. The metaphor of the hive invites comparisons about domestic female oppression, but to complete the metaphor, one can look at the historical female’s characteristic role in building community, in creation and procreation for the perpetuity of the human species, represented not only by the social organization of the hive but the legacy left after the ultimate sacrifice of the female worker bees life, the creation of honey, the natural world's only imperishable food supply.
Today, the headline story is about unscripted death of honeybees, as populations decline, imperiled by our actions (pesticide use, over development, and imbalances in the environment causing a proliferation of parasites and diseases). This is critical because insect pollination services are valuable to our food productivity. Bees are responsible for as much as ⅓ of the perishable foods that we eat. Ironically, the honey they produce is imperishable, the only earth sourced food that doesn’t decompose.
Lifting oppressive practices affecting vulnerable populations, both human and invertebrate is critical to allow creative productivity to flow such as bees gift of honey, the eternal gold.
Isobeldavisart.com
