Bee Central: UBC’s “Culture Days” Activity
What: Mason Bee Homes, free family community art event
Who: Eco Artist Lori Mairs
When: Saturday, September 26, 11 am – 3 pm
Where: Brent’s Grist Mill Heritage Park, Kelowna
UBC will have a presence in Kelowna at this year’s national Culture Days celebrations with the community art project, Bee Central. Artist Lori Mairs will be leading a series of fun, family projects to create homes for mason bees for people’s backyards this upcoming spring. Mason Bee Homes is the fourth community art event sponsored by Bee Central and it takes place Saturday, September 26 from 11 am to 3 pm. Admission is free and people can drop in at any time.
Lori Mairs
Mairs will help participants make their own home and children will be invited to create bee finger puppets. She will also display a mason bee tube sculpture to show mason bee development and the community can participate in creating a pollinator hotel to be installed on the site of a pollinator pasture next spring. Bee Central is a Community Art Project sponsored by UBC Okanagan and the City of Kelowna and takes place at the historic Brent’s Grist Mill Heritage Park at the corner of Dilworth Rd and Leckie Place. This event is being held in conjunction with the Central Okanagan Heritage Society who will provide information about the Grist Mill and Culture Days in Kelowna.
Lori Mairs is an ecological artist-researcher who lives in a companion-species relationship with the 22 acres that is the Woodhaven Nature Conservancy. Mairs is a sculptor, writer, and photographer, and she has an MFA degree in Visual Arts from UBC Okanagan.
Bee Central is part of a larger plan to introduce and stimulate a ‘buzz’ about bees and the Brent’s Grist Mill Heritage Park, particularly to attract a diverse community to help with the planting, building and maintaining of a Public Art Pollinator Pasture in Kelowna, explains UBC Assoc. Prof. Nancy Holmes. Bee Central is made possible by a Community Public Art Grant from the City of Kelowna and UBC’s Eco Art Incubator.
Culture Days is a national celebration organized by “a non-profit organization dedicated to building a national network of cultural connections devoted to providing Canadians with opportunities to participate in, and appreciate, all forms of arts and culture. Through an annual three-day national celebration each September, hundreds of thousands of artists and cultural organizations in hundreds of cities and towns come together and invite Canadians to participate in free interactive and ‘behind the scenes’ activities to discover their cultural spirit and passion.” culturedays.ca/en/about-culture-days.
For more information about UBC Okanagan Eco Art Incubator projects or to become a volunteer, please contact Holmes at nancy.holmes@ubc.ca, 250-764-9666. More information can be found at: blogs.ubc.ca/theecoartincubator/ .