Lisa Sette Gallery, Phoenix, Arizona
Continuing through February 22, 2025
February 8, 2025
I thought the earth
remembered me, she
took me back so tenderly, arranging
her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds. I slept
as never before….
So begins the Mary Oliver poem one sees when descending the stairs into this subterranean space surrounded by Palo Verde trees that beckon us towards Mayme Kratz’s bountiful body of work. Kratz creates tableaus of transformation that speak to change on both a cellular and cosmic level, nestling natural materials foraged in the desert landscape within resin forms that signal a poetic pause in time and space.
Titled after Oliver’s poem, the exhibition features over 30 works created during 2024, a year replete with revelations of climate change impact from wildfires to floods. Most striking is Kratz’s 60 by 108 inch “Everything That Rises After the Fire” diptych inspired by her memory of seeing fire burn across a landscape in her youth. Bright flames reach towards a dark sky, where she has placed a star-like form composed of delicate snake ribs. Three circles crafted with globe chamomile, an invasive species from South Africa that’s best weeded out before it takes hold, seem to rise within the fire. Resembling tumbleweeds, they suggest not only the miasma of materials and memories that circle within a fire, but also the arc of geological time bent towards the Anthropocene era. Kratz’s star recurs in other works, conveying connections between distant landscapes while serving as a beacon of hope.
Small points of light appear to explode across a vibrant blue expanse in “Long After the Echo 26,” a 52 by 40 inch piece steeped in subtleties by virtue of its exquisite materiality and Kratz’s thoughtful choices. Shells, bone, wood, and starfish allude to ocean and sky, prompting reflection on the vast expanse of stars that light up the night, and microscopic creatures that inhabit the deep seas. Considered from a linear view of time, the painting alludes to origin stories centered on an explosive cosmic event and visions for a future that’s moved past anthropocentrism. The gallery is filled with circular forms echoing the spinning orb that anchors human existence, enabling us to easily embrace the idea of a common humanity. Four 12 by 12 inch panels, each filled with cross-sections of poppy pods and hesperaloe seeds, reinforce a concept typically associated with snowflakes: no two beings are alike.
There’s a meditative, reflective quality to Kratz’s work, especially evident in “Eclipse 4,” a large circle of resin-encased bones, crab claws, galls, seedpods, bobcat claw, shells, and shell dust on a 24 by 24 inch panel. The dark interior circle formed by these objects connotes rest and healing, even as the exhibition as a whole serves as a call to action amid climate catastrophe. The interior circles are much smaller in three 36 by 36 inch works, created with botanicals, from her “Vanishing Light” series. Given their likeness to the pupil of a human eye, they speak to the importance of carefully observing the natural world. “Vanishing Light 44” is distinguished in part by Kratz’s decision to build up easily visible layers of snake weed that give the piece compelling depth and dimensionality.
This exhibition includes one particularly playful deviation from Kratz’s pristine circular perimeters. In the 55 by 55 inch “Hunter’s Moon,” the artist composes whimsical curved lines of bones, fur, and shell dust that loosely refer to similar forms in nature, from waves of water or wind-bent branches. “Within Without” provides an intriguing variation of form and materials. Made by encasing a wasp’s nest in resin, the image brings to mind the duality of values assigned to particular elements of the environment. In this case, one is reminded that a creature feared for its sting plays an essential role in keeping the ecosystem in balance.
The sculpture sits atop a plinth that takes on altar-like qualities within an intimate interior space, where Kratz also presents numerous small-scale works, including some of her 5 by 5 inch “Night Study” panels in which delicate objects that seem to float in space lend a feeling of freedom one imagines the artist might have experienced exploring the California forests of her youth. One “Night Study” grouping features cross-sections of artichokes, their remarkable variations speaking to the ways a multitude of worlds can exist in a single entity.
Echoes of the forest reach a crescendo with “Dark Garden 14,” a 40 by 80 inch piece made with Cassia, snake ribs, and butterfly wings. Botanicals line the bottom half of the work, but drips of resin form a ghostlike forest that seems to rise behind it. A vignette in one corner suggests a grouping of trees, but also ambiguity: Do they beckon us to escape into or away from their darkness?
Kratz’s exhibition brings both the plight of forests and the delight of spending time in the woods to life, especially as she plays with language, materiality, and form. As a final example, consider “Sleeping in the Forest,” where a circle that’s made with bones, seeds, roots, lichen, and galls on a 55 by 55 inch panel allows the woodgrain to show clearly through the resin, unlike much of her work in which layers of resin lead to opacity.
The images that comprise this exhibition couple with the language drawn from Oliver’s poem to pose a poignant query. Are we “sleeping in the forest” to find comfort, safety, and kinship within the natural sphere? Or are we slumbering our way through it, oblivious to the impacts of our actions — or our inaction?
Lynn Trimble is a Phoenix-based art writer whose work ranges from arts reporting to arts criticism. During a freelance writing career spanning more than two decades, over 1,000 of her articles exploring arts and culture have been published in magazine, newspaper and online formats. Follow her work on Twitter @ArtMuser or Instagram @artmusingsaz.
Comments