Buzzing Bees

Inspiration: Honey Bees are essential pollinators of food crop and wild plants and they produce Honey.  My inspiration came from watching the bees gathering pollen, talking bees and honey production with a couple of friends who have bees and gather honey.  This inspiration along with a desire to dust off my math and geometry skills while practicing precise glass cutting let to the design of the honeycomb.   

Artistic Process:

For the background, I cut multiple 6"hexagons and fired them together to create the  desired thickness as well as color and depth.  I then cut many hexagons in different shades of amber.  These were fired to the base larger hexagons to create the honeycomb design.

Cutting hexagons is the geometry and math challenge - decide size, then cut the right width in rectangle shape, determine correct angle and cut one way, flip cut another way, which gets diamond shape then make it a hexagon.

The bees are kilncasted and permanently adhered to the honeycomb. 

The stands are made of multiple layers of glass cut into a complementary shape to fit the overall design.  I made amber glass "hone drops" and added them to the front and back of the stand to create drops of honey. 

Dimensions:  7" wide x 6.5" tall x 5" deep