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Without exception # each time I visit our own manicured
and beatific State Botanical Garden on South Mi Hedge, I
ask myself why is it exactly that I don't conduct more of my
daily life there. Why don't I come here in the mornings to
read the paper? Why don't I exclusively jog on these trails?
Can I think of a solid reason not to start eating three meals
a day at Donderos' Kitchen, tucked snugly inside a two-story
greenhouse just off the Visitor's Center? I'm a fan, if that's not
immediately obvious. And after my most recent trip out to the
Garden, to.see Hannah Skoonberg's generous exhibition of
prints currently on display, I'm now convinced that this may be
the most calming, gorgeous venue in which to display work of
this kind.
more recent pieces on display^ utilizes the time-honored appo
sition of organic against geometric, of nuanced detail against
rigid pattern, of unexpected points of view. In short this
piece does everything right. It also introduces other weapons
in Skoonberg's arsenal: her unflagging and often staggering
attention to miniscule details, and a near-spooky ability to
successfully articulate them every time, all of the time. Set
against a nondescript office building and parking garage,
an ecstatically executed tree blooms like a river breaking
into streams. The depiction of organic matter in art is often
an occasion for elaboration and/or outright invention, but
throughout the show, Skoonberg walks a straight line between
high realism and simplification—forming each tiny network
Hannah Skoonberg's artwork is on display at the State Botanical Garden through June 17.
Skoonberg's show is hung in a tucked-away comer of the
Visitor's Center and Conservatory, Tatty-comer to the cafe
and opposite a gigantic indoor palm tree (can't miss it!). The
work, all framed prints—mostly relief and on Japanese paper—
primarily concern themselves with landscape, although the N
range of techniques and compositional strategies at work here
separates the 20-something pieces on display into distinct
sub-sets, like paragraphs onto a page. The most distinctive of
these is Skoonberg's 10-part suite "My Mother's Garden," which
riffs on traditional botanical illustration and the practice of
pressing living specimens between paper as a means of preser
vation. In these, Skoonberg begins with a carved linoleum rep
resentation of plant life drawn directly from her own mother's
garden. Equal parts attentive and economical, Skoonberg's
skill as a printmaker is foregrounded by her consistently suc
cessful description of form through a sophisticated layering
of saturated color, much of the time (and mercifully) avoiding
black as a means of fixing the image too solidly onto the page. -
The results are delicately composed images, whose carefully
considered layers cling to one another with a slight tension, as
well as a vague undercurrent of ephemenlity (not unlike the
botanical subjects themselves). This may sound like a weak
spot in her practice, but Skoonberg's got the chops to build her
house on sand. Cut from the page and pressed under glass, the
seeming meekness of the work is preserved and highlighted for
a viewer, labeled with hand-typed print in the bottom comer. I
was, and remain, charmed.
As I made my way around the show, however, it became
clear that this was a warmrup act "City Trees," one of the \
of branches and limbs while (for the most part) omitting my
description of surface.
The results are complex, graphically striking silhouettes
that blend, fade and resist the various contexts Skoonberg
devises for them. "Blackwell" and the jaw-droppingly detailed
"Night Descends" (two of the largest piecesin the show) are
carved and printed on a scale directly related to thal of the
human body: the vertical orientation and relative width of the
pieces are roughly the size of torsos. At this size, the dense
optical networks created by the artist's considerable focus are
given qmple platform upon which to sing—and sing inexactly
what they do. Inside the edges, Skoonberg's skittering, manic
branches evoke lungs, nerves, blood vessels, streams and so
on, and so on, and so on....
As dizzying as this detail can be, several of Skoonberg's
pieces rely on a mood conjured by sophisticated color deci
sions, as well as sustained attention to the craft of printing
images by hand. "Stillness" and "Meditation* layer transpar
ent layers atop the warm ground of Japanese paper, depicting
Georgia landscapes with Eastern sensibilities, but with a voice
so specific and misty it feels like looking at your own dreams.
Hannah Skoonberg's exhibition is on display at the State
Botanical Garden of Georgia until June 17. Hung in the
Visitor's Center and Conservatory, hours are Tuesdays through
Saturday from 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m. (with late nights on Tuesdays
until 8:30), and Sundays from 11:30 a.m until4:30 p.m. The
Garden is closed on Mondays, presumably for watering.
Brian Hitselberger
nigans
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UPCOMING EVENTS
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527 clave Campbell. Kyshona armstreng
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15 djr wi&ams 530 John berry mike dekle rachel fatiey. truce burch
5 5? dad $ n.-ght out with attiens a-trala sand 7 5 itti annual classic city aroerican music festival
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6 20 !<ttle lybe? admit. powerkorapany tun white darnell boys, cordurgy roal seven
5 21 the bama gamblers handle.circus. high strung string band and mere!
5 22 lie pt&scers. fee seal-apt kx* ft? mbot 725 team clermpnt prom yacht rock revue
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