Memory Blocks—Autumn Gathering

See Mayme Kratz’s work in WTP Vol. V #7

dried corn, cicada exoskeletons,
eucalyptus seed pods
2” x 2”
Image courtesy of the artist and Littlejohn Contemporary

With great reverence for the natural world, Kratz creates cast-resin pieces of fragile beauty locked in fluid, translucent resin. The artist embeds her found objects, sometimes spliced or broken apart and arranged in precise patterns, in luminous, cast-resin wall panels and vessels. Kratz sands and grinds the surface of her panels until the interior structure of her gathered materials gradually emerges as abstract lines, circles, and spirals that reveal a kinship to the vastness of the ocean or night sky. Often cyclical in composition, her hauntingly beautiful sculptural and two-dimensional resin works reflect themes of beauty, memory, and longing.

I live in the center of a city, in the middle of a desert surrounded on all sides by the enormity of the horizon. The environment is harsh. Everything is exposed. Nothing is hidden. I walk and forage in the dusty, hot landscape, collecting seeds, bones and other odd bits that most might overlook. My walks reveal fragile ecosystems, strange beauty—insights in detritus. What I see in these intimate viewings finds its way into my dreams. Dreams lead to poems. Poems lead me to what I create. I hope to bring a focus, a new way of seeing, a new life to the objects I find. My collected specimens— ephemera preserved, protected—celebrate the endless cycles of change and rebirth in nature.” —Mayme Kratz