Northeast Minneapolis printmaker, Emily Gray Koehler, is celebrating her new representation at Ripple River Gallery with a solo exhibition. She will be presenting a series of colorful reduction woodcuts and collagraphs exploring the ecological cycles, systems and processes at play in our forests while paying special attention to both the seen and the unseen.
Exhibition Dates: June 9 – July 4, 2021
Artist Talk: Saturday, June 12, 2pm
Artist’s Statement:
Far above, leaves chatter in the breeze; their susurrations punctuated by an intermittent cacophony of birdsong. The trees reach forth ever eager for the nourishment of the sky. Light and air transmogrifies into such strong stuff when translated through the cellular mechanisms within a lowly leaf. It is no wonder transcendence is sought under these canopies, at the feet of these monolithic organisms.
What sunlight manages to escape photosynthesis, casts dapples of gold on the mossy forest floor. Nearby, a gray squirrel digs frenetically, scattering a confetti of leaf litter around each dig site. His hopes dashed, he moves on in search of the next promising find. The air is lush with the heady, humid smell of leafy decay and recent rain. Even in the cold loam below the energetic heat of life roils forth. Tiny mycelial tendrils mine the dark for mineral currency, trading their treasure and chemical whispers for sunlight made sugar. When serendipity strikes, mushrooms burst into the light. A showy if fleeting spectacle of color, form and spores.
This forest harbors the magic of life, death and rebirth. A language spoken in insect buzzes and bird chirps, wisps of pollen and chemical exchanges, the scarcity of drought and the bounty of a summer storm. This forest is a microcosm; an analogy for existence from which we have many lessons to learn if only we could see the forest for the trees.
