Nancy Macko: The Fragile Bee
Nancy Macko
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. Today, she combines elements of painting, printmaking, digital media, photography, video, and installation to create a unique visual language. This combination of media allows her to examine and respond to issues related to eco-feminism, nature, and the importance of ancient matriarchal cultures, as well as to explore her interest in mathematics, and prime numbers in particular, in which she attempts to make explicit the implicit connections between nature and technology.
Throughout her career she has had an enduring love and use of photography in her artistic practice. She became immersed in a world she refers to as intimate spaces and developed a body of purely photographic work that takes the viewer into a space of light, air and unfamiliar textures. Using a macro lens to shoot nature subjects from her garden at close range, the images are then realized as large scale photographic works. The images are erotic and sexy, poignant and tender, sometimes abject and unsettling challenging the viewer to experience an image that is not easily defined by familiar landmarks or visual cues. In this work Macko looks at beauty, aging, intimacy and subtlety showing us the essential core that runs through all of her work.