Sara “Tink” Mapelli & Theodore Holdt

Sara “Tink” Mapelli, aka The Bee Queen, and Theodore Holdt are multidisciplinary artists whose work crosses painting, performance, sculpture, storytelling, and virtual worlds. From Tink’s Bee Dance, where thousands of living honeybees become a moving garment, to Holdt’s paintings and handmade constructions, their work explores the porous boundaries between nature, consciousness, imagination, and technology. Together at Wildskil Sanctuary Studio & Gallery in the Columbia River Gorge, they create worlds where the handmade and the digital meet. Their collaborative project GARY (Galvanized Autonomous Roaming Yacht) began with a dream of a sentient RV and has grown into an imagined post-apocalyptic universe of book-powered intelligence, mutant companions, and unconventional forms of survival. Through sculpture, film-poster imagery, and augmented reality, GARY invites viewers to consider what happens when machines dream, stories become tangible, and technology takes a wild turn toward empathy.