Toronto-based artist Ava Roth creates striking interspecies collaborations with thousands of local honeybees, embedding her encaustic collages and textile-inspired forms directly into living hives. Her ongoing Honeycomb Collection celebrates the meeting point of human craft and the natural world, honoring the bees as true co-creators. Through this work, Roth imagines more hopeful, harmonious possibilities for how humans and nature might shape each other.
Materials: Japanese paper, encaustic medium, gold leaf, embroidery floss and Ontario honeycomb on wood panel
Photo courtesy of Ava Roth
(TSA) To start, could you please share a bit about your work?
(AR) For the past seven years I have been working on an interspecies collaboration with thousands of local Ontario honeybees. Together we have developed a collection of work that explores the boundaries between humans and the natural world.
Each piece begins in my studio, where I make encaustic based mixed media collages and objects using largely local and entirely organic materials. Through stitching, weaving, beading and papercutting, my work celebrates and mirrors the bees’ delicate and complex honeycomb patterning. I leave ample space for bees to add their unique and always revelatory contributions. The collages and three dimensional objects are then placed into traditional Langstroth bee hives across southern Ontario. Inside their hives, thousands of local bees explore the pieces and ultimately complete it, by building their lush honeycomb into the work. The result is a true interspecies collaboration that is unique, wild and beautiful.
This project is, at its essence, a collaboration. It requires tuning into the particular needs of the apiary (a collection of beehives) I am working with, and both monitoring and adapting to environmental factors such as the population, pollen flow, temperature, and the overall health of the hives. I consider the bees to be my co-workers and collaborators in every sense. The bees are not harmed in any way during the process, and I do not manipulate conditions, such as the structure of the hive or the time it takes the bees to naturally build their comb. Integral to the project is Master Beekeeper, Mylee Nordin, who oversees every interaction with the bees to ensure their well-being.
My series, The Honeycomb Collection, is grounded in hope at a time when many of us feel overwhelmed with despair at the state of the climate, and our role in its destruction. Bees are often considered a harbinger of the health of our planet, and their mass global disappearance is interpreted by many scientists and environmentalists as an indicator of our environment’s peril. This project explores the boundaries of where humans collide with the natural environment, and imagines a more beautiful outcome of our encounter.
(TSA) What is your first textile memory?
(AR) I was born and raised in Montreal, with some connection to the farther north. One of my earliest textile memories is seeing an Inuit women’s parka—an amauti—with its beautiful embroidery and rich combination of fur, felt, and animal skin. I remember being dazzled that women took the time to decorate winter coats in such elaborate ways, and feeling what a shame it was that my own parka was so plain in comparison.
The experience left a deep impression on me, shaping my appreciation for textiles that reflect care, community, and a close relationship with the environment. While my work is not part of any Indigenous tradition, I hold great respect for the knowledge and artistry of Inuit and other Indigenous makers whose practices continue to inspire reflection on what it means to create in connection with place. The Honeybee Collaboration draws from these same values—attention to the natural world, the interweaving of beauty and function, and the honoring of women’s work through thread and craft.
Materials: Japanese paper, encaustic medium, black seed beads, thread, Ontario honeycomb on wood panel
Photo courtesy of Ava Roth
(TSA) Does your work tend to reflect a communal process or more of an individual practice (or both?)
(AR) My work absolutely reflects a communal process, although I spend most of my time alone in my studio! Nonetheless, every aspect of my project, from concept down to execution, is inextricably linked to the life cycle, rhythm, well being, and needs of local bees. Even my work schedule is shaped by the bees’ pace, since the project requires me to wait until the summer months, when the bees are actively building comb in this region, to realize the work. I also rely on the expertise of Mylee Nordin, as well as the craftsmanship of a woodworker named Bernoel Quintos, who helps make custom frames and troubleshoot innumerable technical problems that need solving. So between the vicissitudes of the environment, the bees, Mylee, and Bernoel, my work feels extremely communal.
(TSA) If given the power to master any skill instantaneously, what would it be?
(AR) Funnily enough, I think about this question more often than I should admit! I love learning new skills, and there are so many I would love to master. I have dreamed of being a kintsugi master–have dabbled in sashiko–, in paper weaving, in hand quilting, and in pojagi – just to name a few! But above all I have longed to study traditional basket making. I took a wonderful intensive online course with an artist named Harriet Goodall, whose approach and work I deeply admire. And while I continue to practice and develop my skills, if I could instantly be an expert I would be over the moon. The possibility of applying these techniques to my local environment, using local materials, and even creating works that become permanently part of the landscape is intoxicating to me.
Materials: Encaustic medium, Japanese paper, birch bark, seed beads, gold leaf, embroidery floss, Ontario honeycomb on wood panel
Photo courtesy of Ava Roth
(TSA) Lastly, we’d love to hear what projects you are currently working on!
(AR) I am currently working with wire, which is a new material for me. I have become increasingly interested in encouraging the bees to build what I’m referring to as ‘wild comb’, which is to say comb that is not constrained by the dimensions of a beekeeping frame, but rather free to take the shape it naturally does. Around these wild organic shapes I am experimenting with weaving and looping wire sculptures, which will hang from the ceiling. I was lucky enough to see the Ruth Asawa exhibit in San Francisco this summer. I was already experimenting with this idea, but seeing her work in person was very inspirational, and helped explode the possibilities of this new direction in my mind.
Ava Roth is a Toronto-based encaustic painter, embroiderer, and mixed-media artist. A lifelong maker, Roth has spent the past decade working almost exclusively with beeswax. Her approach to artmaking is holistic in concept, method, and medium—combining techniques from both fine art and craft to explore the intersection between human beings and the natural world.
Her current body of work is an interspecies collaboration between the artist and honey bees. Each piece begins in Roth’s studio as an encaustic collage, weaving, or sculpture, which she suspends in custom-made Langstroth frames and places inside beehives. There, thousands of bees embed the work in comb. Like all of her practice, this project examines the boundaries where humans and the natural environment meet, imagining more harmonious and generative outcomes of that encounter.
Roth is represented by Wallspace Gallery in Ottawa. Her work has been exhibited in galleries, museums, and both solo and group shows, and has been featured in numerous online and print publications. She has also been a featured guest on several podcasts, and her pieces are held in private collections across Canada and internationally. Ava has been a member of the Textile Society of America since 2025.
Website: https://www.avaroth.ca/
Instagram: @avarothart
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