K Stevenson

"Pollination #’s 1,2,3,4,5,6"

in collaboration w/ "The Honeycomb Project" medium: hand-printed paper, decorative paper, paint, encaustic, butterfly, mica, illustrations, wax

​The American poet, Mary Oliver (1935-2019) had a knack for the process of distilling the layered & contradictory aspects of our lives; grounding these first in (mother) nature, then reflecting them back to our (human) nature, and then cracking us open. She seizes the humble and then exalts it (equally, with the implication of its opposite.)

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“it is a serious thing

just to be alive

on this this fresh morning

in this broken world.”

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The hum of bees evokes enduring work & service, the (honey) comb- its

organization and community to which this care and love are

contributed. Pollination invokes ideas of possibility, its wax is

preservation, & never to be left out, the honey- oh, nuggets of joy.

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Oliver wrote several poems about bees; “Hum, Hum,”

“To Bee” and ”Honey at the Table,” among them. Like so

many of her ‘word concoctions’, these float, thread and connect us-

to this world and each other.