The Fragile Bee: Works by Nancy Macko
About the Exhibition
Nancy Macko’s exhibition, The Fragile Bee, includes the installation Honey Teachings: In the Mother Tongue of the Bees, 2014. This wall installation is composed of 104 hexagonal wooden panels displaying bee imagery. Sometimes statements about the bees are included: “Worker bees are born to serve the greater good.” Installed on the wall, the individual panels look very much like a hive, completing the implicit metaphor of the project. Her botanicals are remarkable visions of the hidden intimacies of nature, while her bee imagery is both beautiful and indicative of a larger purpose. In addition, also included is an earlier multi-paneled work, The Honeycomb Wall, 1994, comprised of 92 hexagonal panels that include mixed media, printmaking, digital images, and vinyl phrases. Macko’s works also include fine art prints and her photographs are clearly related to the 2007 suite of etchings entitled In the Garden of the Bee Priestess. These prints combine abstract, decorative imagery with specific depictions of bees and flora, thus bridging some of the interests of 1980s Pattern art with a more contemporary view. In Nirvana for the Future: The Divine Reading Lesson Series (2011), Macko employs hive imagery and combines it with a regularly appearing image, an arrow-like shape which stands in for an ancient matriarchal goddess. These prints are highly skilled, eclectic gatherings of images taken across time, across cultures and across geographies.
Highlights
