Affiliate Spotlight: Award-Winning Pollinator Art in Gastonia, NC

Author: Juliann Lehman, Keep Gastonia Beautiful Administrator
Bee City Affiliate: Gastonia, NC
USDA Plant Zone: 7b
My top 5 native pollinator plants: Milkweed, Salvia, Coneflower, Black-Eyed Susan, Bee Balm
Lessons learned: Well, to be honest, before taking this job, I didn’t know how important bees truly were! Now I’m the “queen bee” around here, connecting both citizens and students with information that is age appropriate.

A Great Place to Bee

Keep Gastonia Beautiful is always looking for unique ways to highlight our Bee City USA affiliation. We decided public art—a large mosaic piece and smaller place-making metal bees that “waggle” through Main Avenue—would add a flourish to our downtown. This project, titled “Great Place to Bee,” has created a buzz of excitement and interest throughout the community.

Choosing an Artist

With the completion of the new multiuse stadium near downtown Gastonia, and the arrival of the Honey Hunters baseball team, Keep Gastonia Beautiful was excited to create unique public art and educational opportunities for citizens and visitors to downtown. Our volunteer Art Committee was very involved with the search for artist’s qualifications in 2021 and finally selected the artist in 2022. The chosen artist, Carlos González García from Hillsborough, NC, created a mosaic piece that showcases both our Bee City USA affiliation and our mission of recycling. His mosaic studio, NC Mosaics is the first in North Carolina to create smalti glass for projects from recycled glass.

A person smiling and giving the peace sign stands on scaffolding in a high-viz vest, straw hat and shorts, with blue sky and a road in the background. — Artist Carlos González García of NCMosaics, from Hillsborough, NC (also a Bee City USA affiliate) working on the column. Credit: Juliann Lehman

The glass mosaic tiles to be used on the column are laid out on a cement floor. It looks like a large, multicolored rug. — Some of the recycled glass tiles for the column laid out on a floor. Credit: Juliann Lehman

With honeycomb geometry and Main Street Gastonia architectural elements together in the mosaic column it begins to bring the original vision of a “Great Place to Bee” to life, creating a vibrant, colorful landmark that will spur a look to the future of Gastonia while embracing the past. The place-making bees “waggle” through downtown and make their way to the mosaic column near the stadium where the Queen Bee will be waiting by the Hive. The artist has decided to call the column “Serenity,” as all the buzzing bees around the hive might seem like chaos but inside the hive there is much order.

Looking up at a colorful mosaic column with a light gray sky in the background. — Looking up at the colorful mosaic column. Credit: Juliann Lehman

Creating a Sense of Place

The place-making bees represent our city’s motto, “Great Place, Great People, Great Promise,” and we love to think that they truly highlight that this is a “Great Place to Bee.” The metal bees feature both facts on bees and pollinators and also highlight the historical significance of many of the buildings featured in “Serenity.” The bees have QR codes that can be scanned to access information, which we will change and update from time to time to keep the project always evolving. It’s bringing whimsy and fun colorful bees to downtown. Bees are on light poles, in flower beds, and welded onto bike racks.

Photos of one purple and two yellow metal bees mounted to a bike rack, in a garden, and on a lamppost. — Metal bees “waggle” throughout Main Avenue on light poles, in flower beds, and welded onto bike racks. The bees have QR codes that can be scanned to access information. Credit: Juliann Lehman

A screenshot of one of the QR code-linked "Bee-Facts", this one describing their Bee City USA affiliation. — The metal bees have QR codes that can be scanned to access information. One link includes information on Gastonia’s Bee City USA affiliation. (Click image to read more)

An Award-Winning Idea

This multifaceted project demonstrates that Keep Gastonia Beautiful is enhancing the quality of life and investing in our community. We submitted it for an “Innovation Award” through Keep America Beautiful and were thrilled to be one of nine affiliates, out of 700, to be chosen for the 2022 award.

A tall, glass mosaic column with a honeycomb pattern shines in a glowy sunset on the left. There is a glass and red brick building in the background on the right, and large yellow metal cutout of a bee graphic in the foreground. — The mosaic column with one of the a metal bees under glowing skies. Credit: Juliann Lehman

Pride in the Community

The new artwork brings pride in the community, reminding people to explore downtown. With the new baseball season right around the corner, we anticipate that citizens and visitors alike will be found up and down Main Avenue looking for bees and learning that Gastonia is a “Great Place to Bee”—and a Bee City USA affiliate!