Artists of Bee Kingdom
TIM BELLIVEAUPHILLIP BANDURA
Phillip Bandura is a third generation Calgarian and born politician. Having lived in Calgary his whole life Bandura graduated from the Alberta College of Art and Design in 2005 from the glass program and established Mecha Glass (soon to become Bee Kingdom in 2007) with fellow studio and school mates, Tim Belliveau and Ryan Marsh Fairweather. Bandura's main interests and inspirations are based in imperialist policital and social systems and presents his views through his artwork in politically rooted satirical mixed media sculpture and performances via his fictional company, FreedomCo.
Find Phillip's websites at:
http://www.phillipbandura.com/
http://www.pinebeetleutopia.com/
Timothy Belliveau’s biography is currently hard to obtain and littered with potential inaccuracies due to a lack of records and circulated myths. According to his own words, his early years were all filled with adventure, hardship and traveling, claiming improbably to have killed a bear at the age of 10. He was raised in Calgary in an upper middle Roman Catholic family though there are no documents to support date or place of birth. As a child, Belliveau became fascinated with natural history, when his father took him to see the The Royal Tyrrel Museum in Drumheller, AB. He soon became versed in numerous aspects of Prehistoric zoology, primarily through drawing. When he was 16, Belliveau left home for a long series of part-time jobs including coffee barrista, night janitor, security guard, dishwasher, video rental, flyer delivery and ditch digging for home irrigation. During this period of financial crisis he lived in a good number of different places including, half a dozen apartments, a church, under some plinths at art college, a motorhome in a parking lot and illegally squatting on government land in a tent.
His middle-class background and academic success masked a growing contempt for what he saw as the empty materialism of North American society. The works of Alexander Wilson, Hans Peter Duerr and Carlos Castaneda had a strong influence on Belliveau, and he dreamed about leaving society for a Thoreau-like period of solitary contemplation. This he achieved, living in a tent in a Yukon forest for a summer. Upon his return to Calgary he went through art college, and set to work on a glass art studio with his friends, Ryan Marsh Fairweather and Phil Bandura.
view Tim's website at: http://www.futureforest.net
Kai Georg Scholefield is a graduate of the glass program at Alberta College of Art and Design and has shown in galleries across Canada. His practice as a glass artist also intersects other disciplines such as painting, sculpture, and printmaking. His work is heavily influenced by the work and ideology of modernist sculptors Isamu Noguchi and Constantin Brancusi (contemporaries of Marcel Duschamp), whose creative mandate was to expand the boundaries of art through form.
In 2007, Kai opened the Glass Cube Contemporary Art Space, an exhibition space dedicated to providing public exposure to contemporary conceptual glass art, and later expanded to a second location. Kai is currently the President of the Calgary Glass Initiative foundation, a non-profit society mandated to create a larger awareness and appreciation for contemporary glass art internationally. Kai has recently returned from his first European exhibition in Berlin, Germany and is a founding board member of Berlin Glas e.V., a non-profit glass art society based in Germany. In March 2011 Kai joined Bee Kingdom as their 4th member.
view Scholefield's websites: http://www.kaigallery.ca
Ryan was born in Calgary but raised also in Houston, London, Dubai, and Scotland. In 2000 he returned to Calgary and in 2001 through 2005 studied glassblowing at the Alberta College of Art and Design where he met the other bees and later established Bee Kingdom. He's also interested in the world of yoga and teaches part time. This interest, with others such as, cute culture, hindu mythology, and designer toy culture, is directed at his Weathermachines universe, a narrative about utopian robots that succeed mankind and embody a new era that embraces cuteness and balance.
view Ryan's website at: www.weathermachine.ca