Sunny Monday

The Sunshine Coast is living up to its name. Spring is definitely here. Sunny weather. More stuff in the garden responding the the warming trend.

I seem to have acquired a cough. It may be the nasty cold/flu thing that is going around. Or not, given the current condition of my lungs. Also have a bit of trouble sleeping due to increasing discomfort on my left side. The result: I lost my temper with a neighbour yesterday. Have since apologized for my shoddy behaviour. Totally uncalled for. Guess all this is bothering me more than I'm willing to admit, at least when I'm tired. Will be chatting with my psychiatrist later today. Lovely man, he got me through my last round of travails. I'm sure he'll help pull me through this. Enough of a pity party for today. On to more interesting things.

I found the world's largest bee on a window sill of my mother's condo. How big? If it were a honey bee, I have little doubt it could make a decent sized jar of the golden ambrosia all on its own! It was quite dead when I happened upon it. Good thing because it sported the world's largest stinger! (Perhaps it died from exhausting of having to schlep that thing around all day.) Am thinking of a way to incorporate the bee into an art project, like the series of wee mixed media pieces I did while living in Vancouver. I never got around to naming that series and left its completion rather open-ended. Have collected several dragonflies, butterflies, and various other winged creatures since then in case I felt moved to added to the series. Here's a taste of what I have done so far:

I don't read or write any form of Chinese, but found the text (in the reddish vertical patch near the upper left corner) in a discarded book at the library. My friend Fang tells me it says, "There once was a girl named Lily," which seems to fit okay with the rest of the piece, wonder of wonders. The hand is a magazine cutout. The honeycomb stuff is thin balsa wood mesh, apparently used in the making of model airplanes, that I picked up during a venture into Urban Source. The drips are beeswax. The canvas measures 3"x5", so you have an idea of the size of this bee - which is smaller than the one mentioned above.

Same sized canvas. Average-sized house fly on magazine cutout. Illo is from a discarded book of Chinese medicine. Acrylic paint, as with the other pieces.

I did another piece, which featured three lovely little yellow jackets. I first covered the entire canvas with broken quail shells and then lay a thin layer of beige tissue over that to create a better working surface. Final addition was an outline of a hand skeleton that I first outlined in silver, and then black. The silver still shows through a bit, which is a nice effect, me thinks. Unfortunately, it doesn't photograph well, so you'll have to use your imagination.