Video
Meet James Rego - Recycling Artist
Since I graduated from school last year, I have been fortunate to have met James Rego, a local artist who works exclusively with materials that he has collected from the rubbish dumps in and around Harare. He has taught me to create papier mache sculptures out of wire and scraps of paper, but more importantly, he has taught me how to see the world from a different perspective. James sees the artistic potential in everything, he sees the tools that he needs to create his story.
Bees
Before I created my abstract hive, The Hive of Activity, I did a lot of research with actual bee hives. We have a bee box at home and a professional beekeeper helped me to remove the lid of the hive and to film the bees in close proximity. I visited the local Bee Lady, who is well known in Harare and provides most of the commercial honey to local supermarkets and grocery stores.
She talked me through the complex and precise workings of a bee hive, and explained the different roles of different bees within the colony. I also read a book written by her husband, Mike Schmolke, entitled “Beekeeping in Zimbabwe” which gave me invaluable insights into the workings of an African beehive.
The Chair
The Chair was a piece from my AS year and was a comment on the death of bees. It was a hive revolving around a skull showing the rapid decline of bees and the death of bees. The chair was an interesting structure that I used to hang small cards of honey comb and images of bees and when they were in the wind they moved and hit against each other and made a noise and represented the way bees move and the sound they make (the video is best viewed with the sound on). I also used 2 real pieces of honey comb on the seat of the chair and placed the skull on top of that. It was supposed to look like and behave like a beehive in the right conditions.