The Outside Gallery has a growing reputation for large, bold installations. In an unexpected way, Jenny Ellerbe’s Will Work For Food might be the boldest. Ellerbe chose to exhibit only two small works of art as a call to arms to protect one our greatest natural resources. Bees. Without these insects, we would have virtually no food, but we take them for granted everyday. We rely on bees while never really considering how the chemicals we use impact them. If you miss the images on view, you have made Ellerbe’s point. We, bees and humans, are in this together. We must work for our food! Below is a poem that inspired Ellerbe’s installation: 

Letter to Someone Living Fifty Years from Now 

-Matthew Olzmann

Most likely, you think we hated the elephant, the golden toad, the thylacine and all variations of whale harpooned or hacked into extinction. 

It must seem like we sought to leave you nothing but benzene, mercury, the stomachs of seagulls rippled with jet fuel and plastic.

 You probably doubt that we were capable of joy, but I assure you we were.

 We still had the night sky back then, and like our ancestors, we admired its illuminated doodles of scorpion outlines and upside-down ladles. 

Absolutely, there were some forests left! Absolutely, we still had some lakes! 

I’m saying, it wasn’t all lead paint and sulfur dioxide. There were bees back then, and they pollinated a euphoria of flowers so we might contemplate the great mysteries and finally ask, “Hey guys, what’s transcendence?”

 And then all the bees were dead.