Commissary Arts is currently showing Hive Moments, an exhibition featuring the prints and mixed media works on paper of Los Angeles-based artist Nancy Macko. Macko explores the themes of society, art, science, and technology through the matriarchal culture of the honey bee. In honey bee society, a queen bee reigns over the hive and controls the activity of other bees. This matriarchal society inspires Macko, who grew up in a household of only women after her father died at age six. The interactive and organized realm of school became her world and separated her from the chaos at home. The hive, with its highly controlled chaos, combined both of these realms for the artist.

Macko is presenting recent etchings and lithographs in two parts, In the Garden of the Bee Priestess and The First Ten Prime Numbers. In addition, that artist will present mixed media works on paper from her series Conversations. Macko incorporates the intrinsic shapes of both a plumb bob and circular reinforcements used for paper into her compositions. The rotundity of the plumb bob evokes the female shape and the body of a bee. The artist scans, photocopies and layers images of these shapes to create one compelling image. The small circular reinforcements represent unity and float freely and in clusters through her carefully constructed worlds.

Using repetition with this unique visual language, Macko creates abstract scenes of a feminist-inspired universe, which is at once conceptually compelling and visually beautiful.

Macko cites Nancy Azara, Nancy Spero, and Ana Mendieta as influential and inspirational female artists. Macko participated in the making of The Dinner Party in 1979 and has studied feminist utopian societies in science fiction novels.

Macko is originally from New York and attended University of Wisconsin, River Falls. She received her M.F.A. in Studio Art from the University of California at Berkeley and an M.A. in Education. Macko is currently the Chair of the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies at Scripps College. She has had over 20 solo exhibitions, participated in over 140 group shows, and received over 30 research and achievement awards for her work. Hive Moments is the artist’s first solo exhibition since her mid-career survey show in 2007 and will be on view at Commissary Arts until June 14th.