MELISSA WOOD:  hive

Exhibition dates:  September 15 – October 20, 2006

Reception for the Artist:  Friday, October 6, 6:00 – 8:00 pm

The Davis Art Center announces hive, an installation of new work about bees and honey by Melissa Wood.  In hive, the artist examines the metaphor of the honey bee hive using materials commonly associated with agriculture (chicken wire), gardening (tomato cages, copper coils) and apiculture (wax comb sheets) as well as more traditional artistic materials such as paper, metal, photography, paint, and graphite.  Wood continues to use photography in this new work, but now her photographs are bottled in glass honey jars. 

Wood draws on research and discussions about honey bees and their social structure through interviews, books, the internet and personal inspection of the insects.   Her past work involving bees began during her Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco residency and a simultaneous discovery of the book, The Beehive Metaphor From Gaudi to Le Corbusier by Juan Antonio Ramirez (Reaktion Books, 1998) in a local used book store.  In her 2006 hive, Wood’s work expands from flat graphite and wax drawings on copper to organic sculptural hives which protrude from the wall and dangle from the ceiling as well as altered objects which (in the case of the bee shoes) seem to fly through the air.  The proportions of her hive sculptures relate to stages of human lives as infants and adults.  Some seem swaddled and protected, some eaten through with anxiety.  As in her past works, Wood references history and text:  In hive, the honey that is being produced and the pollen and nectar being collected relate to Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Gettysburg Address, to the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, and to Jean Luc Godard’s 1963 film, “Les Carabiniers” (The Riflemen). 

MELISSA WOOD received her BFA from Washington University in St. Louis.  She moved from the San Francisco Bay Area to Davis, CA in 1999.  Recent exhibition venues include:  San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, The Collectors Gallery at the Oakland Museum of California, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Artists Gallery.  She was also awarded a 2000 U.C. Davis Nelson Gallery ArtFriends grant and a 2003 Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco residency at the de Young Art Center and the Legion of Honor.  In 2005, Wood’s work was chosen by the Bolinas Art Museum for its’ survey of modern abstract art;  the Crocker Art Museum’s “Crocker – Kingsley Biennial”;  and the SFMOMA Artists Gallery Photography survey. 

Directions:  The Davis Art Center Tsao Gallery is located at 1919 F St. (at Covell Blvd.), Davis, CA; Exhibition Hours:  Monday-Thursday 10-7   Friday 10-5   Closed Sat/Sun    Free admission / Free parking