Decompositions: Photography by Nancy Macko

October 5, 2024–January 12, 2025

Artist and Scripps College professor Nancy Macko’s new body of work transports viewers through art history and the cycles of life. In 38 photographs of her kitchen compost bin, Macko transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary. Discarded onion and garlic skins, apple peels, cauliflower florets, asparagus stalks, and artichoke leaves create ethereal and earthy scenes. The images are simultaneously realistic and abstract, evoking artistic traditions from the Renaissance to Surrealism. A visual alchemy of art and science, loss and transformation, the exhibition is a striking exploration of scale and time as well as a serene meditation on decay as a new beginning.