THE FRAGILE BEE
HONEY TEACHINGS: IN THE MOTHER TONGUE OF BEES
Installation View at MOAH, May-June, 2015
MEADOW
Meadow, 2015, Digital output on vinyl, 12 X 36'
“THE FRAGILE BEE” INSTALLATIONS AND GALLERY TOURS
Gallery tour at the Hilliard Art Museum, Lafayette, LA, 2021
Webinar at the Phillips Museum of Art, Franklin and Marshall College, 2022
Installation at San Bernardino County Museum, 2025
Catalog
"The Fragile Bee: Nancy Macko at MOAH," Katheen Stewart Howe, Carole Ann Klonarides, Stephen Nowlin with an introduction by MOAH curator, Andi Campognone ©2015
FRAGILE BEE VENUES: 2018-2025
Alden B. Dow Museum of Science and Art, Midland, MI; Buffalo Museum of Science, Buffalo, NY; Discovery Museum, Bridgeport, CT; Ferris State University, Big Rapids, MI; Hardin Center for Cultural Arts, Gadsden, GA; Hilliard Museum of Art, Lafayette, LA; Irving Arts Center, Irving, TX; Loveland Museum, Loveland, CO; Mayborn Museum, Waco, TX; Memorial Union Gallery, University of Wisconsin, Madison; Museum of Arts and Sciences, Macon, GA; Museum of the Southwest, Midland, TX; Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, Chicago, IL; Pentacrest Museums, University of Iowa, Iowa City; Phillips Museum of Art, Franklin & Marshall College, Lancaster, PA; Reynolds Gallery at Texas A&M, College Station, TX; San Bernardino Museum of Art, Redlands, CA; Stamford Museum and Nature Center, Stamford, CT; Victor Valley Museum, Apple Valley, CA.
Hilliard Museum Installation
Nancy Macko’s exhibition, The Fragile Bee, is an outcry to realize the plight of the bees in relationship to the environment and our interdependent relationship to them. She looks closely at the world of bees, not only to examine their biology and somatic features, but also to study their habitat and highly organized society.
The installation is comprised of several significant works. Honey Teachings: In the Mother Tongue of the Bees, 2014, is composed of 104 hexagonal wooden panels displaying bee imagery, mixed media materials and phrases, such as: “Worker bees are born to serve the greater good” and “Bees nurture the cycle of life.” Clustered together the individual panels look very much like a hive, emphasizing the implicit message of the project. 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 like, “Did you know worker bees are female?” While Honey Teachings is an outcry to the plight of the bees, The Honeycomb Wall celebrates the magic and beauty of the hive and its intrinsic similarity to a feminist utopia.
A suite of lithographs, The First Ten Prime Numbers, re-create hive clusters represented by small circular rings. This imagery is derived from her work with the honeybees and references the hive with the explicit intention of rendering each of the first ten prime numbers as a developing cluster, constellation, cell or hive.
The Botanical Portraits series (SoCal and MileHigh) are remarkable visions of the hidden intimacies of nature’s cycle of life, death and renewal as each portrait of a native, bee-attracting plant reveals its stages of life at a close range. While her bee imagery is both beautiful and indicative of a larger purpose, each portrait examines the flora the bees draw nourishment from and so carefully attend through the process of pollination.
In this exhibition Macko’s basic fascination with the form of the hexagon prevails as she examines the life cycle of all things as a personal, social and universal experience. She says, “The simplest thing everyone can do to help the bees is to plant wildflowers because they provide the bees with the healthy nutrients they need to flourish and survive.”