Is it a bird, a spaceship or a Bumbleship?
Guest blog by Dylan McLernon
Introduction
Dylan McLernon is the owner of BEESHIP: Native Bee Homes. He is professional sculptor and eco-artist whose work focuses on the creation of functional sculptures that serve a dual purpose as habitat for native bees and aesthetic objects to be enjoyed by people. Dylan’s research currently questions the practices of developing urban infrastructure and how we can better design our cities to serve both humans and native bees. Dylan’s artistic practice is driven by the philosophy of Spaceship Earth, first introduced during the green movement of the 1960s by economist Barbara Ward and others. Spaceship Earth is an enclosed ecosystem, where the imperative for our survival is to work as a crew.
What is a Bumbleship?
I am often asked: Why bees? To put it bluntly, I am a big fan of the aesthetics of biodiversity. My aim as an eco-artist is to protect biodiversity for my son Lucan and his generation’s future. There is a long story about how I got to this point and if you catch me in person I will definitely tell you all about it. For the sake of your time and the blog space, I am going to try and keep this short and sweet, like a bumblebee flitting from flower to flower. So what is a Bumbleship you might be wondering?
A Bumbleship™ is a ceramic home for bumblebees that I began designing while completing a graduate program at the University of Calgary (U of C). While at the U of C I had the honour to work collaboratively with Dr. Ralph Cartar who is a bumblebee specialist. From our work, two different models of ceramic bumblebee domicile were created and field tested in rural Bragg Creek. One model was designed for trees and the other to be put in the ground. There was initial success with the tree domiciles, which ended up having a forty-percent occupancy rate.
After gathering data from the field research of both tree and ground domiciles I began to think about how the design could be altered so that one sculpture could be used in a tree or in the ground. Bumbleship is the distillation of this research. Of course, when one is concerned about the plight of native bees, the work does not stop at one sculpture. The only way Bumbleships can function as an urban habitat for bumblebees is to put them in your hands. Therefore, in partnership with the Alberta Native Bee Council (ANBC), Bumbleship will become part of their Alberta wide bumblebee monitoring program.
The partnership between myself and ANBC began earnestly during the summer of 2022, after a phone call with council president Megan Evans. I was crowdfunding at the time, to purchase an electric kiln to get Bumbleships firing. Thanks to the help of Megan and ANBC, who got the word out about Bumbleship, I was able to raise enough for a kiln that is now installed in my home. Mold making has started and Bumbleship is nearing production. If you are interested in being one of the first people to own a Bumbleship for your native bee friendly yard you can contact Dylan at info@beeship.ca
To see what Dylan is working on: https://www.instagram.com/dylan_mclernon/