Iowa Lakeside Laboratory is now home to an installation of The Bee Project. Multi-Media Artist Elena Smyrniotis says she came up with the idea a couple of years ago. “The Bee Project was conceived in 2021. I was entering my Fellowship at The University of Iowa, and I really wanted to do an art project that involved community with not only me as creator, but also I wish to have members of the community as co-creators of this public project.”
She add that each installation is different. “This site at Lakeside Laboratory is the 4th location of the project, and yes, they all are different and that’s the whole idea. We are all different people, and there are more than 20,000 species of bees on the planet and 500 hundred or 600 hundred bees you can find only in Iowa. So, yes, this is the whole idea, to create this vibrant and meaningful installation to reflect biodiversity and support the idea of creating a safe environment for nature.”
The public is welcome to view and interact with the project at Lakeside Lab.