On View: April 14 – September 4, 2023
Since the early nineties, Nancy Macko has drawn upon images of the honeybee society to explore the relationships between art, science, technology, and ancient matriarchal cultures.
In her most recent exhibition, The Fragile Bee, Macko combines painting, printmaking, digital media, photography, video, and installation elements to create a unique visual language. This combination of media allows her to examine and respond to issues related to eco-feminism and nature, as well as to explore her interest in mathematics, and prime numbers, in which she attempts to make the implicit connections between nature and technology explicit.
The Fragile Bee also explores the artist’s love of plants, and her images investigate the botany world as seen through the honeybee’s eyes. She photographs botanical specimens that the honeybee pollinates and visually records nature's exquisite beauty, fragility, and often, cruelty. The recent decline in the honeybee population and, more broadly, the idea of life and death in nature are prevalent themes in her work. Macko is deeply concerned with the disappearance of honeybees and through her art seeks to raise awareness regarding the vulnerability of their ecosystem.
This exhibition was organized through Katharine T. Carter & Associates.
Blanket Flower (Gaillardia aristata), 2018
Archival digital print mounted on white sintra and faced with Plexiglas®
40 ½ x 40 ½ inches
Honey Teachings:
In the Mother Tongue of the Bees (Detail VIII), 2015
Mixed media, archival digital prints, vinyl signage affixed to 105 hexagonal panels (cumala, bird’s eye maple, yellowheart, birchwood plywood)
144 x 240 inches
Lessons From The Hive, 1993
Cibachrome prints, silk-screened Plexiglas®, custom lacewood frames
13 x 65 inches
Great Golden Knapweed (Centaurea macrocephala) Edition 5, 2018
Archival digital print mounted on white sintra and faced with Plexiglas®,
40 ½ x 40 ½ inches
Rocky Mountain Beardtongue (Penstemon strictus) , 2018
Archival digital print mounted on white sintra and faced with Plexiglas®
40 ½ x 40 ½ inches
Desert Candle 2 (Eremurus ‘Romance’) , 2018
Archival digital print mounted on white sintra and faced with Plexiglas®
40 ½ x 40 ½ inches
Honey Teachings: In the Mother Tongue of the Bees (Detail), 2015
Mixed media, archival digital prints, vinyl signage affixed to 105 hexagonal panels (cumala, bird’s eye maple, yellowheart, birchwood plywood)
144 x 240 inches
Honey Teachings:
In the Mother Tongue of the Bees (Detail VIII), 2015
Mixed media, archival digital prints, vinyl signage affixed to 105 hexagonal panels (cumala, bird’s eye maple, yellowheart, birchwood plywood)
144 x 240 inches