Design Story: HONEYCOMB

Method: Photography and digital art

Artist: Persephone Singfield

Artist Quote:

Bees and frogs. Bees are responsible for pollinating our plants and the health of frogs is closely linked to the health of our environment. Both can be seen as early warning systems of the problems that may eventually affect the rest of us. The Honeycomb design is a vibrant way of alerting us to the health of our planet. I love the perfect symmetry of a honeycomb and have a fascination with the colour and texture of amphibians. I wanted to tell a story about our environment and give it a mythical feel. I imagined the colours of dragon skin and created a palette to digitally overlay a macro image of a honeycomb. This design draws us in with its 3D texture, mesmerizing and hypnotizing as if looking into a dragons’ eye. When I was a small child my father used to tell me stories about frogs. I was fascinated by the way he would start the story with miners in the old copper mines near where we grew up. He had taken us kids to visit the copper mines a few times and we’d go into abandoned mining shafts with flash light torches and experience the cool and quiet of the inner earth. Once, while in the shaft with all the lights off he told us that miners used to bring canaries into the deep mineshafts with them to monitor the air. If the canary died then the miners had to get out and get fresh air, or they could die of suffocation too. Later that day when we were having a swim in the nearby creek after our mining expedition, where we caught frogs. My Father explained to us that frogs monitor the air quality for the planet just like canaries did for the miners. He urged us to be aware of our frog population as we grew up as it would let us know about our air quality.