Blog: Working with Wasps
Working with Wasps
To create art together with nature and the environment I started an experiment some years ago.
I took an old and interesting looking log from my garden. I put it aside and covered it with soil. As it was a piece of European Elder (Sambucus nigra) with rather soft wood and especially a soft wooden core, the molds and animals hollowed it out. When this process was far enough, I dried the object. From then on the Yellow jacket wasps (Vespula) used the soft parts of the wood for building there nests. It took them 3 years to further hollow out the object.
Saturday, June 4, 2011
Now is the time for sculpturing together in further detail. So I covered the parts and details I consider finished with an all natural hard wax (Osmo hard wax oil), which hardens and preserves the wood. Other parts are left untouched, so the insects can still harvest there wood there. Slowly the form of the object gets more defined. I expect we need another year or two to finish the whole.
Fresh log starting
Older log to be finished by insects
Log partially covered with hard wax