The Bee’s Knees
2024 Street Wise Mural Festival
Location: Garage door of 4747 Pearl St Unit V3-D Boulder, CO 80301
Photos by Dona and Niko Laurita, and Cam Margera
Assisted by Natalie Wurmel
Pictured here on the garage door is the queen-like bee. What would happen if this was the last bee on earth?
That’s the question posed by artist Daniel Levinson, who wanted to spotlight the bee in for the 2024 Street Wise Mural Festival. The artist paints the bee from a bird’s-eye view, blowing up the insect to much larger than life size. He chooses to depict the subject in a painterly style, fuzzy and not completely in focus. Inspired by the aesthetics of old photographs, Dan renders the bee in a muted color palette of black, gray, white, and gold.
The monochromatic nature of the mural pays homage to the daguerreotype, the first publicly available photographic process widely used during the 1840s and 1850s. Additionally, Dan paints the frame of the garage door gold to reveal the bee as worthy of memorialization, as if this framed daguerreotype was sitting in someone’s living room. He incorporates trompe-l'oeil (translating to “deceives the eye” to refer to an optical illusion) by rendering the bee’s legs popping out in front of the gold frame.
In the mid-1800s, the daguerreotype was celebrated as a technological advancement that simultaneously furthered American values of democracy, progress, and technology. The photographic method was relatively affordable, allowing the growing middle class to document and memorialize themselves for the first time. It was faster, cheaper, and more efficient than painting to capture likeness.
But, progress also has downsides. Progress in the Western world has led to many technological advancements, but it’s also led to overconsumption, pollution, climate change, and loss of habitats for many keystone species, including the bee. Many bee species are at risk of extinction, and scientists agree this would have huge consequences for the human population. The insects play an important role in pollination, supporting our agricultural systems including crops of fruits and vegetables we eat everyday like tomatoes, squash, and cucumbers.
So, how would our world change if this was the last bee on earth?
Artist Bio:
Daniel Levinson (b. Colorado, 1986) is a visual artist and educator based in Denver, Colorado. His art practice consists of drawing, painting and mural work. After receiving an MFA at Pratt Institute in New York (2015), he established a career in the visual arts. Levinson’s projects have been exhibited in Denver, Pueblo, Taos, New York City, Accra (Ghana) and Medellin/Bogota (Colombia). Currently, he is represented by Blo Back Gallery in Pueblo, Colorado. Outside of making art and teaching art classes, he enjoys time with his family, adventuring, food, music and friends.