Bee Taxidermy for Beginners Workshop w/ Ruth Marsh

Bee Taxidermy for Beginners Workshop w/ Ruth Marsh
Saturday, November 3rd, 12-3pm
PAVED Arts Gallery (Main Floor)

Learn techniques from the World’s Foremost Bee Taxidermist!If you’re an aspiring bee taxidermist and want to grow your craft on a strong foundation, the best way to do it – by far – is one-on-one instruction. You could learn from video tutorials, but you can’t stop a video and ask the instructor if you’ve done it right. In Ruth Marsh’s one-of-a-kind workshop, you’ll get direct feedback and you won’t move on to the next level until you know your work is correct.As the world’s foremost Bee Taxidermist, Ruth Marsh brings nearly a decade of experience to PAVED Arts for this one of a kind workshop.

At the beginner level you will learn three key foundational techniques of bee taxidermy:
1. How to construct bee legs out of reclaimed electronic resistors;
2. How to braid bee antennae out of fine wire and;
3. How to mould bee wings out of salvaged copper.

Given that the full process of Bee Taxidermy requires several weeks to complete and time is limited, you will be provided with a pre-preserved and reassembled, taxidermic bee-body-base (head, thorax and abdomen). During the workshop, you will be given instruction on how to properly and safely attach antennae, wings and legs to this basic bee body. Workshop participants will be provided with take-home information on how to prepare and preserve a dead bee body from scratch. All of the pieces that you work on during the workshop will be yours to take home.

This workshop is intended as an entry level course which will give you the confidence you need to prepare and preserve heirloom quality taxidermic bees for your family to enjoy for generations to come!

Ruth Marsh is a Canadian multidisciplinary artist of settler ancestry based out of Kjipuktuk (Halifax, NS) which is located on unceded Mi’Kmaq territory. Her work employs an absurdist and often comically deadpan approach to address absence, longing, memory and healing both in bodies and environments. She is interested in exploring the ways in which modalities of labour can translate into enacted care: exertion as meditation, repetition as litany, effort over time as love. Since graduating from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 2006, her practice has spanned painting, drawing, taxidermy, video, performance, installation and stop-motion animation. Her work has been shown in galleries, museums and festivals in Canada and abroad including The Confederation Centre of the Arts (Charlottetown, PE),The New Gallery (Calgary, AB) and Bideodromo International Film Festival (Bilbao, Spain).

For several years, Ruth has been creating a series of artworks which focus specifically on bee disappearance and decrepitude. Summoned through an ongoing public call, hundreds of found, dead bees are sent through the mail to my Halifax studio from individuals across Canada. Once received, the bees are taxidermically preserved and meticulously repaired using discarded technology. The newly refurbished bees are then revived, frame-by-frame, through the process of stop motion animation.

Approaching this work from a perspective which is part cyberpunk mad-scientist and part devoted, repair technician, her work mindfully employs techniques which mirror bee life itself. Through processes which are inherently labour intensive, repetitive and painstaking, she is building a wry vision of a future wherein the world’s bees have perished due to human causes. Ruth is assembling this invented story through animations, still images, immersive video installations, a DIY instructional video and a growing museum of taxidermically preserved bee specimens.

To register for our FREE members’ workshops:
• Email technical@pavedarts.ca
• Call Lenore at 306-652-5502 ext 3
• Drop in – Upstairs at 424 20 ST W, Saskatoon, SK