Its own room
Here, Carpenter Bee is an Architect
Britt Freda · Egg tempera, gold leaf and graphite on clayboard panel · 24″ h × 18″ w
Nothing here has been enhanced. Everything you see is derived from the object — the record below says exactly how each view was made.
Set your screen once. Hold a bank card against the screen and slide until the orange outline matches its width.
The surface under moving light
This view is built only from real photographs of the work, each lit from a different angle, so you can move the light yourself and watch the real surface answer. It is being captured in the studio and will appear here. Until then we show nothing rather than an imitation.
“It is essential to compel a person to love something before they'll risk what it takes to defend it.”— Britt Freda
The bee is seen from directly above and takes almost the whole panel. Its wings are the argument: irregular cells of gold leaf, slate blue, cream and black, each separately outlined, closer to leaded glass than to entomology. The thorax is a dark faceted dome, the abdomen banded, two fine antennae running off into bare ground. The detail worth crossing the room for is the shadow — beneath the body Freda has laid a dense passage of graphite that resolves, at close range, into handwriting. Her notes on the carpenter bee are literally what the insect casts. Architect is not a metaphor here: the bee bores to build, and she has given it a drawn structure to match.
The Authenticity Record
| View | Made from | Processing |
|---|---|---|
| The whole work, deep zoom, loupe, true size | Gallery photograph of the work | None beyond resizing for the web |
Nothing on this page is retouched, relit in software or generated. A full studio capture of this work is scheduled.
ArtistBritt Freda
MediumEgg tempera, gold leaf and graphite on clayboard panel
Size24″ h × 18″ w
Price$3,600
MediumEgg tempera, gold leaf and graphite on clayboard panel
Size24″ h × 18″ w
Price$3,600