(removed after toppling in a winter storm in 1997)
The large beehive, constructed according to old traditional principles of straw and straw and poles, was suspended with rope four high poles in the middle of a group of TICKON's old oak trees.
It swayed slightly in the wind, fulfilling the artist Jan Norman's wish to create a quiet touch of civilization in the middle of the more untouched part of nature.
The inspiration came from Jan Norman from Hungary, where he temporarily lived in Budapest and in a museum they saw somewhat smaller beehives made of straw. He was so fascinated by the cubes that he took a lot of photos in the expectation that the shape and craftsmanship would be able to be used at some point.
This time came when he was invited to work in TICKON Park and actually worked on the task for a few years before the sculpture was finished in TICKON's inauguration year, 1993. He himself says that he was so excited about TiCKON and about it Langeland's landscape, that he was certainly not in a hurry to get his work delivered.
Both a local Langeland beekeeper and a roofer from Djursland contributed to having the five-metre high beehive made, which was carried out according to detailed craftsmanship principles. In order to attract bees, Jan Norman also created a garden with wild flowers under his work, but the bell-shaped and highly sculptural beehive did not have a long life, and his hope of creating "a place for bees" was not fully realized. The wild bees did not manage to move in before the adventure ended when the surrounding scaffolding collapsed and took the cube with it in the fall.
However, he himself calls it 'his most memorable day*, when beekeeper Skov from Langeland got down on his knees after completion and looked up into the hive and said: "My bees can live well here".
Jan Norman was born in 1951 in Denmark. Is a self-taught artist and has most often worked with quite small, but very minute, fragile and poetic sculptures in fabric, bast, paper, wickerwork and rooted in myths and song. Lives in Aarhus, and today mostly works with processed photos, most often with nature as a motif.
Artist: Jan Norman
Year: 1993
Jan Norman was born in 1951 in Denmark. Is a self-taught artist and has most often worked with quite small, but very minute, fragile and poetic sculptures in fabric, bast, paper, wickerwork and rooted in myths and song. Lives in Aarhus, and today mostly works with processed photos, most often with nature as a motif.