Nature Calls
By D. Dominick Lombardi

Recent overwhelming tragedies such as the earthquake in Haiti, the maddening mistake in judgment and procedure that caused the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico; or the power of the volcanic eruptions in Iceland to change our very way of life remind us everyday that no matter how hard we try, we can never quell the powers and forces of nature.

Let's try this: Think of the earth as our ultimate God – how it sustains us – and how we are at its mercy. But we poison and pollute it every day, therefore, we are sinners - blasphemes I say! Now, before I get way off track here, I will try to make my basic point. As objective humans, we try to mold the earth, our living God, and customize it to our desires regardless of its immediate and long-term effects. As aggressive, and often insatiable animals, we take what we need and more from the earth to sustain our ever-increasing levels of comfort.

On the other hand, there are artists who look to nature as a way of achieving change in thinking on preconceived notions about the world around us. In addition, art like nature, feeds the soul, enriches the spirit, and yes, upsets the apple cart. That process begins most profoundly in the studio, where the artist is totally absorbed with conceptualizing and fabricating. And this fact, this “getting lost in ones work,” is what I find to be the common link between each of the artists in Nature Calls .

Some artists work with few elements to construct their art. Joanne Howard prints a continuous stream of tree sections over vintage wallpaper samples. When installed vertically, and end to end, a majestic form takes shape that is arresting and beautiful – an icon that elicits the great strengths of nature, while her process adds a tinge of narrative. John Mendelsohn breaks things down to the basics as well, but his art is more about light and movement ignited by color. The result: a mixture of serenity and excitement – it's like looking through all three sides of a prism at one time, at a very colorful sunrise as it spreads across a wind-blown lake .

Dale Leifeste and Rieko Fujinami keep it simple too, however, with these two the mystery is in the details. Leifeste photographs natural and unnatural surfaces which, when placed side by side, question our ability to distinguish between the two. This forces us to look carefully, or at least think more deeply about the world we live in while the esthetic he purveys is rich and poignant. Fujinami too, presents us with a mysterious form that is quite elegant and focused – a subject that brings order and randomness to the fore in a way that is not unlike what we observe when spying the meticulous nature of insects or small animals.

Bob Marty and Patrick Winfield's worlds are fragmented yet focused. They play with the familiar to form their fantasies. Marty's narratives get at the heart of nature – geography and such. He also plays with human instincts and urges to make his point. His art says we live in a time of over stimulation with little or no reward or satisfaction - it's the journey, the anticipation that counts. Winfield filters his fantasies through numerous funnels that all somehow end up in the same place and time. His art is slick, sinister, yet it maintains a certain allure that is oddly sensual and often times fantastical.

Ryan Cronin, Helen Klisser During, Kevin Mutch and Rachel Philips inject much needed humor into the mix. Cronin brings in the sunny side of life, even when things go wrong. His simple palette and eye for design bring us back to a time when we observed nature through much less prejudice, and when a prick was something you got from a sticker bush, and not someone you met at work or play. During photographs animals, people, nature all on level ground. Her keen eye, and her feel for being in the right place at the best time makes her a unique and gifted chronicler of our era, while her insights into the emotional aspects of this existence of ours, as it relates to our environment, forms her substantive message that everything is connected. Mutch builds his art by employing various computer software. His creations as digital prints move nature through technology like meat through a grinder. Instead of mixing it all up into newly formed mystery meat, Mutch mixes kitsch with heated political points like gun control or evolution vs. the bible to present us with powerful vignettes. Philips gets at the core of what we a love about cuddly mongrels that let it all hang out. Her watercolors bring out the beauty in the beast, the pride, the playfulness, and the passion. Her style is rough, even primitive, but there is a sophistication there that is profound, and a touch that is delicate and mesmerizing.

The work of Anita Arliss will immediately remind you of the times when you observed the world around you half asleep as it flies by through the window of a car or train. Fleeting vistas that unnaturally bend and turn – blazing sun as it feeds splotchy color through squinting eyes – or freshness, a pureness where nature comes to greet you at every turn. Antonio Petracca takes us through nature via manmade vessels as well, but his journey is sequenced in such a way as to reintroduce us to a world that has passed us by. There is a bittersweet narrative he presents, an unbalanced relationship where we take more than we give back. But there is hope here that our final destination will bring us a sense of peace, of being at home again in a place dominated by a natural environment.

Mary Hrbacek sees the import of harmony with nature as well, as her trees are oddly personified. Trees, that she so lovingly and carefully represents, are as lively and emotional as any living thing - yet there is regalness, a knowingness, a humility in her forms. Philip Heilman goes for a different effect. His scenes hold some sort of an intrusion by an object or thing whether it is a heavy toxic smoke, or a suspicious brick wall. His paintings achieve a depth that pulls you into a flatness that is both ironic and playful.

Susan Hoeltzel's subjects and references come directly from her immediate environment. Using leaves, buds, flowers, stems and roots, Hoetzel cooks up a continuous narrative that is not unlike a diary of wonder, while her designs and compositions can be either comforting or unsettling, depending on your, or her, mood. Susan Breen, like Hoetzel, uses the elements of nature to compose her art, only Breen places beauty and purity at the top. There is a light, and energy in most of what she does that brings the spiritual world into the picture.

On the other side of the spectrum is Pam Marchin, Melanie Vote, and Michael Zansky. It is too simple to say there is a lack of optimism in much of what these artists depict – it's more like the temporary misplacement of the soul that is closer to the point. Marchin creates these little figures that hover somewhere between the plant and the animal world. Her art reminds me of the work of the Dutch artist Pieter Ouborg, only Ouborg's work very often had an intense sense of dread. Marchin's figures have no idea anything is wrong.

Vote takes us through a world not unlike Gulliver's Travels, only, instead of the giant Englishman who is victim to a shipwreck, we have cute plastic toys - toys that are sometimes inhabited by little people, or maybe even fairies, who adapt the toy fragments as their home. Other times, the toys come to life with unbridled joy, as they take in the world around them in these wonderfully painted works. Either way, there is something very creepy about the work of Vote – Planet of the Apes creepy, as we wait for the other shoe to drop.

When it comes to the art of Michael Zansky, creepy just isn't a strong enough word. But it's not just about the uneasiness one feels when glimpsing into the world that Zansky presents us with in his intensely painted surfaces. It's more about the realignment of the stars, the changes in day and night, or awake and asleep. We never know if what we are looking at will come to pass, or if it ever has. What is most important, if you happen to see anything like it in real life, run away.

While Zansky brings us the apocalypse, Bendel Hydes shows us forces of nature that bend, but do not break us. There is turbulence, trouble, tumultuous seas and stormy skies, but somewhere along the line we know this is only natural and that somewhere else there is peace and serenity. Junji Yamada shows us a little of that peaceful acceptance of nature from his home in Japan with etchings on photographs. Trees stand tall, seas ebb and flow, and patterns emerge that gives the viewer a sense of wholeness, strength and oneness.

KJ Tidemand goes for the strength and unity as well, but his painted constructions recreate nature in all its diversity and textures. To simply say he recreates what he sees is not half the story. Its more about how everything fits together, how organically formed everything is – and how fragile it can be. There is also a foreboding in the forms, a challenge in a way, that creation happens everywhere, and at all times.

This brings me to our last artist, someone who I've decided to keep unnamed (Anonymous), not solely due to the fact that he is a death row inmate, and that someone might know him or his victim(s). It is more about his realization in 2005, after spending the previous 15 years of his life waiting to be executed, that his one true desire was to be on his boat, fishing one last time. I followed his art for a few years and it's always the same. The challenge - alone, in a boat, man against fish – a metaphor for man in his nature-less world, the jail cell. But in the end, his incredibly detailed and meticulously made ink drawings are always about the one that got away – and we can all lose it – the earth and all its beauty and ferocity.