Rayne MacPhee

Rayne MacPhee’s Honeycomb Cities project turns the tables on humanity. Each piece emulates the way mankind has choked off honeybees' societies through our overproduction, depicting our own cities smothered in honeycomb in response. Fresno droops with the weight of the bees’ world, Aleppo blooms in rose-like layers, and Los Angeles is encased in a shadowy mass. It is both imposing and graceful, daunting and beautiful. It forces the viewer into the reality of the bees’ situation while reminding them of the beauty they create.

The idea for the project was born from loss. After Rayne’s family beehives were killed last summer by pesticides used nearby, she started thinking about the human impact on bees. “I thought, what if the bees could make their revenge?”

Rayne allowed the question to develop into a project idea organically, and she surprised herself with the end result. “I never thought I’d be doing work that’s pretty abstract, and I never thought I’d find a way to blend my passion for bees and my passion for art the way that I have. It all just sort of happened by continuously working.”

Step one of the process was deciding which cities to cover in honeycomb. She picked each for its aesthetic appeal, and focused on a few roads or buildings to use as the base. Then she built up an intricate layering of hive and honeycomb overtop of the man-made shapes, adding a natural weight and surreal feel to the works.

The whole project only took her a week to complete - although that one week was a hectic, frenzied affair. In hindsight, she says, “I think I needed that pressure to go all in and go completely mad, and I still feel like I’m insane from that. I’m still drawing those dots.” She worked on all of the pieces simultaneously, and each took an average of twenty-four hours to finish.

The project wasn’t all stressful, despite the amount of effort involved. She explains, “when I got to the watercoloring, that was the biggest treat. That’s when it started to unfold. I would savor the watercolor.” To Rayne, savoring is working in the mornings, buying a fancy coffee, and listening to a podcast - she recommends Reveal and Serial.

Although the Honeycomb Cities project is finished for now, Rayne still has more to say about the honeybees’ plight. Her current project is a collaboration with local photographer Bow Smith, incorporating ghostly black and white images with the dead bees from her hives last summer (she saved them in her freezer and is very grateful to her roommates for their understanding). “Bow’s work has this otherworldly, eerie feel to it, which I absolutely love,” Rayne says. “That’s the feeling I was trying to emulate in my honeycomb series.”

She finds a similar ethereal feeling when she spends time with her bees. “There’s something so peaceful about [their humming], when you’re super close to them it’s all you can hear. They do something to you.” She explains that her hives are like pets, and they each have their own distinct personalities. They share with their caretaker an urge to create, to build, to leave a mark.

“That’s what’s really cool about art - you’re making a mark, a specific moment in time that’s recorded forever.”

Website: www.raynemacphee.com

Instagram: @power_rayne_ger

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