The Beehive Design Collective will present a guest artist lecture about the group’s unique style of making art at the West Virginia University College of Creative Arts on Thursday, March 22.

The lecture starts at 5 p.m. in the Bloch Learning and Performance Hall (200A) of the Creative Arts Center and is free and open to the public.

The Beehive Design Collective is a group of volunteer activists, artists, storytellers and educators who make giant banners, using hand-drawn cartoons and stories from grassroots communities, to explore the connections between local, everyday stories and the bigger picture of our historical moments.

Their discussion will include the banner they made for a project on mountaintop removal called “The True Cost of Coal.”

They will also present a public workshop/lecture at Arts Monongahela in downtown Morgantown on Wednesday, March 21, titled “The True Cost of Coal.” The event begins at 6:30 p.m. at 201 High Street.

Over three years in the making, the “True Cost of Coal” depicts the history of Mountaintop Removal coal mining, the most extreme form of surface mining for coal. To create their elaborate illustrations, Beehive volunteers first interviewed hundreds of people throughout the Appalachian region whose lives and livelihoods are affect by the coal industry.

“People are experts in their own lives and experiences,” said one representative from the Collective. “No one understands the story of coal better than people who are living it every day. Our goal with this poster has been to amplify these stories— to create a visual megaphone for the people most affected by resource extraction.”

For more information on the event, contact the College of Creative Arts at 304-293-4359 or Chris Barr, WVU professor of graphic design, at 304-293-2214.

See the Beehive Design Collective’s website at http://www.beehivecollective.org.

-WVU-

lb 3/16/12

CONTACT: Charlene Lattea, College of Creative Arts
304-293-4359, Charlene.Lattea@mail.wvu.edu

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