May 3 – October 12, 2025
THE BEE PROJECT is an outdoor, site-specific installation by artist Elena Smyrniotis that celebrates community, creativity and environmental care. Made of modular structures resembling beehives, the sculpture is populated by bees creatively and often lovingly made by participants from recycled materials, mostly plastics and metals. On Saturday, May 3, artist Elena Smyrniotis will be at the Lyman Allyn to kick off THE BEE PROJECT and to help visitors create their own bees from recycled materials and install them on the honeycombs. As the summer goes on, more and more bees made by museum visitors and program participants will join the hive!
As a Grant Wood Fellow, Elena Smyrniotis developed THE BEE PROJECT under the auspices of the Grant Wood Art Colony in collaboration with the University of Iowa Office of Sustainability and the Environment, the U of I Office of Community Engagement, and local partners in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Now traveling nationwide, THE BEE PROJECT aims to help ensure a sustainable future for pollinators, encourage protection of fragile ecosystems, engage broad and diverse audiences, particularly children, and encourage mindfulness about recycling and creative expression.
Ms. Smyrniotis partnered in THE BEE PROJECT with University of Iowa Professor Emeritus Steve Hendrix, who earned his Ph.D. at the University of California – Berkley, and has since focused on plant-animal interactions, including reactions of plants to herbivores, and pollination ecology of prairie plants. His last 20 years have been dedicated to the community ecology and conservation of wild bees with an emphasis on bee diversity in different habitats, including produce farms and prairie fragments.
“We understand that this project alone will not save bees, however, it is a way of giving people, particularly young people, the empowerment, voice and inspiration to improve the environment and make the world a better place.”
“Threats to both honeybees and wild bees are numerous. For honeybees, pests and pathogens such as mites and viruses, environmental stressors like pesticides or poor nutrition, and genetic limitations all contribute in varying degrees to what has been popularized as ‘Colony Collapse Disorder.’ For wild bees, threats come from loss of habitat, reduction of floral resources, loss of nesting sites, and the use of the chemicals in agricultur[e] . . .”
THE BEE PROJECT by Elena Smyrniotis (elenasmyrniotis.com) is sponsored by The Grant Wood Art Colony of The University of Iowa and the U of I Office of Sustainability and the Environment, and Office of Community Engagement.
Artist Bio
Elena Smyrniotis is an international multimedia artist residing in United States since 1998, with family in Russia and Ukraine. Her installations investigate relationships between architecture, space and abstracted topography to underscore environmental nexus in constructed landscape and in relationship to nature. Elena’s most recent projects seek to address climatic impact of melting ice caps and the progressive decimation and loss of bees and other pollinators. As an actively exhibiting artist, Elena has had solo exhibitions of her work and has frequently participated in national and international group shows. Her exhibition record includes shows at PINEA-LINEA DE COSTA (Rota, Spain), International Art and Design Exhibition in Selçuk University (Konya, Turkey), solo shows at Levitt Gallery (Iowa City, IA), CSPS (Cedar Rapids, IA), Artlink Gallery (Fort Wayne, IN), and at the Snite Museum of Art (South Bend, IN), where she was awarded the Walter Beardsley Award in 2017.
Elena’s background and bilingualism inform her academic interests in intercultural cooperation and her approach to teaching. Her experiences at a global network of cultural institutions includes fellowship at the Rome Global Gateway in Italy, teaching printmaking workshop at the Gems Metropolitan School in Dubai, OAE, partaking in a painting workshop at The Painting School of Montmiral in France, working as a professional architect in St Petersburg, Russia. Elena Smyrniotis was a Grant Wood Fellow and visiting assistant professor of Printmaking at the University of Iowa and a Fulbright Specialist at the Selcuk University, Faculty of Fine Arts, in Konya, Turkey.