Aliens Escape the Herbarium. Written by Annette Townsend (Interdisciplinary Natural History Artist) & Sally Whyman (Curator: Botany Curator, Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales). Plants growing on the wall of a London art gallery!! On closer inspection you discover they are alien plants, introduced to the UK. Looking even closer you realise they are delicate sculptures, handmade from beeswax, paraffin wax, tinned copper wire, tissue paper, cotton thread, artists’ pigments, acrylic paint and acrylic varnish. Mounted on stainless steel plates with stainless steel strips, and epoxy printed collector labels, in a juxtaposition of historic and modern materials and techniques, each sculpture mimics a real herbarium sheet, found in the Welsh National Herbarium, Amgueddfa Cymru.
Annette and Sally are no strangers to working together, having previously spent many years as colleagues at Amgueddfa Cymru when Annette was employed as a scientific artist and Natural Science Conservator. Aliens 1956 Dimensions – 26cm x 41.5cm. On my way to Venice for my master artisan live demonstration at the #homofaber event with these little beauties all packed up in my hand luggage. Fingers crossed they’ll get there in one piece□✈️ #conservationskills #botanicalsculpture #sciart. Passion flower, Passiflora caerulea Sculpted with beeswax collected from the beehives on the roof of @Museum_Cardiff #wip for the Collect Art Fair 23-27 February 2022 @SomersetHouse #sciart #collaboration.
Making a Wild Strawberry Sculpture from Honey Bee Wax. A Scientific Art Collaboration with Cornell University, New York. | NatSCA. Written by Annette Townsend, Natural History Artist, Designer, Maker, Cardiff. © Annette Townsend In November 2017 I attended the Cross-pollination, Revaluing Pollinators through Arts and Science Collaboration conference at Swansea College of Art. The conference marked the end of a successful and pioneering project funded by both the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Arts Council of Wales, combining Art with Science to explore new insight into perceptions of the value of honeybees and wild pollinators. As an artist I’ve spent most of my career working alongside scientists on science communication projects and my current work focuses on the protection of nature and features pollinating insects, so the project was of great interest to me.
Scott’s NYS Beekeeper Tech Team at Cornell had been conducting research to promote best management practices to improve honey bee health and reduce colony losses. The final sculpture took several weeks to complete. Like this: Beeswax orchid sculpture #wip #sciart #botanicalart. My beeswax flower model next to a real flower specimen. This was a test piece that I created last spring, to see if I could make flowers with honey bee wax samples from @cornellento #sciart #SciArtTweetstorm #lessercelandine #PollinationCornell2019… My #beeswax ‘Life Support’ series of sculptures, on display @DesignCentreCH until Tuesday 29th June. #botanicalart #sciart #contemporaryart. Annette Marie Townsend - beeswax flower models;
I’ve spent the last few months working solidly on my beeswax wildflower installation for Collect Open and the piece is really taking shape, so with one month to go until the fair, I thought it was a good time to share a little more of the making process. For the installation I’ll be arranging my sculptures in compartments and drawers within a transparent jewellery box. The first stage was to design and make a cardboard mock-up of the box to see out how the sculptures might fit in each space. When I was happy with the design, it was drawn up in a 3D sketch and then manufactured in clear acrylic. I knew that it would be a challenge to make the sculptures over the winter months when very few plants were in flower. Therefore, I began collecting, documenting and pressing flowers in late summer and autumn to give myself as much reference material as possible for the duration of my project. The beeswax was then shipped to my studio in Wales, where I melted it down ready for sculpting.
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