Nancy Macko

Early explorations of the mother/daughter relationship and a female lineage using wallpaper from my mother and grandmother’s homes. The predominating rose imagery seen here becomes an important visual signifier in my later digital and print work.

The Honeycomb Wall, 1992-4, was comprised of 100 wood panels each 11 1/2” in diameter. The panels contained found objects related to honey bees, the geometry of hexagons and the chemistry of honey as well as printed images produced from linoleum blocks and scanned and layered computer-generated images output as cibachrome photographs. In 1999, I translated the digital images from The Honeycomb Wall into a suite of five prints called the Honeycomb Series. These large ink jet prints were printed with permanent inks on Arches cold press paper using a Roland printer. Each one captures a distinct configuration created by the architecture of the wall.

Bucrania, 1-12, is a suite of twelve archival digital prints, in which I am tracing the process of regeneration. The goddess Artemis is thought to be ruled by the moon and was called Melissa of Ephesus. The bull too belongs to the moon. Both the bull and the goddess Artemis belong to the moon and to the bees. Souls are bees and Melissa draws souls down to be born. Good souls can be reincarnated in bees. It is said that if you plant a bull’s head (a bucranium) in the ground in the spring, when the sun is in Taurus, a swarm of bees will issue forth from the horns. The notion is that the spirit of the bull passes into the life of the bees and the bees are thus “bull begotten.” The series imagines this movement of the soul as an almost physical form in the bucranium, as juices and bodily fluids, and as vapors disappearing out to the stars returning to an etheric state. The stardust and the clusters of rings act as references to the bees and the hive. As there is “life in death,” the bees represent resurrection and regeneration.

One in the “Our Very Lives” suite of large scale digital prints. Using images from old wallpaper, ancient artifacts from the Cucuteni period (5000-3500 BC) and paint-by-number drawings with the talisman of the bee priestess, these works draw upon notions of memory, time and the ancient past to pay homage to a female lineage that harkens back to the beginning of time. As women our experiences—both personal and public—are inscribed in and on our bodies like cultural tattoos that are often easily recognized and understood.

Part of the “Our Very Lives” suite of large scale digital prints. Using images of old wallpaper, ancient artifacts from the Cucuteni period (5000-3500 BC) and paint-by-number drawings with the talisman of the bee priestess, these works draw upon notions of memory, time and the ancient past to pay homage to a female lineage that harkens back to the beginning of time.

In the Garden:Cornucopia, a two-plate color etching and spit bite, is a bleed edge measuring 32 X 25”. The work recalls a time when the feminine was sacred and women were truly revered. The mysteries of fecundity and the life force are re-enacted through rituals that honor the sacred feminine. The visual reference to rich textiles and wall coverings may appear to give the work a sentimental edge but that is neatly overridden by the powerful images of an active feminine that knows no bounds allowing the work to sustain a sense of irony more than anything else. As part of a larger series of prints, this intaglio print creates an important intersection between my digital prints and my installations.

Using a Canon EOS 20, a digital SLR camera, I shot images at Joshua Tree National Park in the spring of 2005 as part of a 24-hour photo shoot project and subsequent exhibition, Site Lines, at the California Museum of Photography in Riverside. The images were shot on the path of the 49 Palms Trail and from the property of the Homestead Inn on Two Mile Road in 29 Palms, where I stayed during the shoot. The images were manipulated (layered, color corrected) using Photoshop CS and printed on Epson Premium Glossy paper using an Epson Stylus Pro 9600. In using actual images of the landscape at dawn and pre-dawn, I wanted to convey the idea of another culture looking on—“surveying” as it were—thus the inclusion of the tripod and plumb bobs in the sky to suggest constellations of ancient cultures, and another albeit “feminine” presence. A four minute video tracking the desert light of dusk, pre-dawn and dawn and the predominating sounds of the wind and the animals accompanied the photo work in the gallery.