Summer Slumber

Summer Slumber by Alice Kunst



Title: Summer Slumber
original 9"x12" felt ink pen
on 60lb 98GSM acid free paper
June | 2020

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Works >> Sommer Seed Series >> Sommer Slumber

Summer Slumber is part of the Sommer Seeds Series. Summer Slumber was created deliberately to include and honor the role of bees who play a critical function in the life-giving cycle of nature. In a cluster of blooming orange Californica I came upon a small bumble bee sleeping on an open petal facing the sun. It was one of the cutest little creatures to behold unexpectedly and I kept thinking of it for a long time afterwards.

If the light of summer days fosters the creation of seeds the bees are in their own way a similar dispersion effect like light. Through the process of polination almost 70 percent of all plant life depends on the existence of bees. This piece is to provoke the viewer to contemplate how we as humans are still very unconscious to the other species of our planet much less life-forms in and beyond this galaxy. Humans have for so long taken for granted how much actually other highly evolved species like the bee contribute to our own lives - not to mention the beauty bees' dedication to their work enhances the aestetic all around us.

It's only become relatively recent knowledge, for example, when Walter Kaiser's study in 1983 revealed for the first time that bees not only rest they require on average between five and eight hours sleep a day! Bees follow a chircadian rythym much like humans, during which scientists now conclude bees also dream. Before this became known it was considered only mammals could dream yet new evidence suggests that sleep is needed across all animals. The notion that animals much less an insect can dream is something I invite us to consider as we appreciate that we are still in the dark as much about the consciousness of other life forms on this planet as we are about our own. The call perhaps in this is to begin to appreciate we are not the only sentient beeings (pun intended) on this planet or in this grand and largely unexplored universe we call home.

Join in...

I invite you to become part of the unfolding consciousness experience and email Alice about your insights/thoughts/ideas about what this artwork invokes for you.