The Beehive — Debbie Chessell

T H E B E E H I V E

Photography by Debbie Chessell

Photography by Marty Stevens

WHAT IS THE BEEHIVE?

The Beehive is a touring public art installation created for SHEDx that champions community cohesion and celebrates individuals, offering them a supportive space to exhibit their skill sets and methods of self-expression.

Built from UK chestnut and Build with Hubs joints, the 4m x 3m handmade geodesic frame is covered in carefully appliqued recycled gazebo fabric. Inside is a honey-coloured den of donated textiles, materials created during community workshops and bees made by local artists.

The Beehive is on tour around Tolworth and surrounding boroughs between November 2019 and March 2020 offering a wide range of activities for the general public. Event details will be listed here very shortly. If you are part of a community focused space that would like to host The Beehive, or are a creative wanting to run an event, please email hello@debbiechessell.com

THE BUILD

The final construction of The Beehive took place at Tolworth Railway Station. SHEDx adopted the station shortly before, then offered me one of the outer buildings as a studio space to build the hive.

I sewed the donated fabrics into an internal and external lining with support from Anita Cauchi and Christine Chessell, a local welder created a custom metal door-frame and volunteer Jeff Lawrence designed brackets to support the base of the structure.

Photography by Marty Stevens.

All of the fabrics in The Beehive (except the appliqued velvet on the cover) were donated from the local community - The Beehive received everything from boat sails to jumpers to gazebo covers to wedding saris - quite an astonishing array of textiles! I have worked hard to preserve the individual characteristics of each donation through careful tailoring, cutting, shaping and dying - below are photographs of volunteer Marty Stevens and I using natural and donated synthetic dyes to highlight the textures of a selection of the natural fibre textiles.

Photography by Marty Stevens

As part of The Build, I ran over 60 hours of free creative workshops to local organisations to help local people learn new skills and more importantly, to come together.

I hosted weaving workshops in which participants made their own weaving from wool and recycled fabrics, worked together on a large A-frame loom I’d built to create a collaborative work and made paper bees. I ran these workshops for St John’s C of E Primary School, Kingston LGBT Forum, The Sunray Estate, Handmade at the Lamb, Kingston Carnival and SHEDx’s event Tolworth Nature Day in Tolworth Nature Reserve.

I also created a transportable Community Mural which was painted during SHEDx’s Bespoke Cycling event at Tolworth Station - creatives from the age of 2 - 78 years old participated by painting with acrylic onto the large canvas base and drawing on the station pavement with chalk.

To help support local artists, I ran an artwork open call asking creatives to submit handmade bees. These bees would be advertised online throughout the project, featured on this website and exhibited within the Beehive as it toured. The aim was to share the platform the project was creating, therefore helping other benefit from the audience it generated, and to encourage new connections between the local art communities.

‘Plant me a Garden’ hand embroidered bee by Daisy Bow Craft

'Triptych of Bees (Ancient)' linoprint bee by Sara Adams

Fimo bees by Cara and Elen Windross, aged 5 and 7

'Triptych of Bees (Future)' ink bee by Sara Adams

'Triptych of Bees (Present)' linoprint bee by Sara Adams

To help spread the word about The Beehive project, to abstractly represent the project’s concepts and to provide content for the project’s crowdfunder, Anita Cauchi, musician Max from Greece and I collaborated to make the following short film/stop motion animation.

Structure planning

I worked collaboratively with SHEDx and the 121 Collective to design both a physical structure and a project timeline. Architectural model by Georgia Neesham and myself.

Bee research

I visited the Farm of Futures to research bees - that’s me in the white beesuit! Beekeeper Ann kindly opened the farm’s hives, teaching me all about the bees habits and letting me take portraits of the bees for the project’s crowdfunder.

Crowdfunding

To support the project I applied for grants and ran a crowdfunding campaign, gaining support from many local organisations including Surbiton Law, Narratives, Kingston Pound, Kingston Beekeeping Association and more. Local artists also created project merchandise which is available in my shop.