Fatback Bees!

The first in a series of promo Flyers & Posters for the Exhibition.

Here’s one of the first flyers for the show.
The title of it is based on the term, ‘Fatback Beats’, which, musically referred to the drums of late 60s, early 70s-style funk music rhythm (a style originating in the Southern US by African-Americans which was typified by a loud or accented backbeat, kept in time by the hi-hat – See Dennis Chambers - Fatback Groove Lesson). It also referred to that music’s Fatback bass of the rhythm guitar. Great examples of this can be heard in the music of James Brown from that era (late 60s, early 70s).
However, it originally was an African-American traditional soul food term, being the fat side of a slab of bacon that was often fried. So it meant something was crisp and funky, just like the fried pork rinds made from fatback.
In the context of our Beauty Of The Bees project it refers to phat and funky bees!

So there you have it!

More will be posted tomorrow.

Later this week, I’ll be putting up the finished edit for the latest Bee Mural. It’s also inspired me to expand on the concept. More on that at the end of this week.

As an aside, Ria – one of the artists in the exhibition – dropped off 2 of her pieces for the show, and may I say, they look great! I’m sure she’ll get a good response from them. They’ve actually inspired me to get cracking and finish my pieces!

The Magnificent 7even!

There has been a lot of organising in terms of getting together the right team together for the Exhibition & Workshops but I’m pleased to say that now, we have it!
For a full line up, take a look on the About Us Page.

There are also a few images added, as now that the ‘back-end’ is under way, we can start to get back to the fun stuff of actually creating visuals.

This week I’ll also be getting back to producing murals, so expect another update by the weekend!

See you soon!

Bee Happy!

There are lots of aspects of bees that we want to convey with our Beauty Of The Bees art project and despite there being much to do, we want to keep it creative and fun!

As a reminder to ourselves, I wanted to convey that through the introduction to the first of our Bee Murals entitled, Bee Happy!

The filming of the painting can be seen on the Murals Page.

A shot from the Bee Happy! painting in progress.

Prepping The Beauty Of The Bees Project

A year ago, myself and 2 others, fresh from participating in an arts and activism project in Ukraine, returned to London with the aim of creating an arts project linked to social awareness. The project was to be centred around bees.
The interest was there, the funding was not, so, we decided to put it on the back-burner and proceed with our own creative projects.

Six months later, I get a call from the Hill Station in Brockley South London, asking if I would be interested in holding our Bees project in their space. Meetings were had, plans were drawn up and proposals written; now here we are.

The two other artists who were originally going to facilitate the project with me had moved on, so on the back of a few local as well as international Negative Space projects, a new team was put together and thus, the Beauty Of The Bees project was born. What was originally going to be just a 3-day event, has now been extended to 2 months! (May-June 2015).

It’s a small project with a big heart, and we welcome you to join our journey.


A. Dee
Negative Space 2015