by Patricia Albers

The world that Mayme Kratz’s mixed media works conjure in “To Know the Dark” is both luminous and nocturnal. She bejewels it with dried brush, bones, seed husks, and other desert debris. The cross-sectioned poppy pods in “Glimmer” (all works 2026) glow like gemstones. The butterfly wings in “Dark Garden 20” are lustrous as if in day’s fading light. “To know the dark, go dark,” writes Wendell Berry in his poem “To Know the Dark”: “Go without sight, / and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings, / and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.”

Mayme Kratz, “Circle Dream 100,” 2026, resin, Mexican buckeye seeds and fish vertebrae on panel, 40 x 40”. All images courtesy of Dolby Chadwick Gallery.

A resident of Phoenix, Arizona, Kratz forages natural materials for her art on hikes in the surrounding desert and other rugged regions of the Southwest. Besides poppy pods, she collects globe chamomile, Texas laurel, rabbit brush, and dozens of other plants. Hesperaloe seed pods and the shells deposited by ancient seas show up in her work. So do the remains of insects and bones of animals, ranging from fish to bobcats and deer. Back in her studio, Kratz disassembles and dries the fibrous shrubs, sections the pods, crushes the shells, and whitens the bones with hydrogen peroxide. After arranging her materials on a painted panel, she pours tinted resin, typically five or six layers, onto the result. She then sands the work to achieve an ultrasmooth surface and sometimes reveal the objects’ interior structures. Thus, the pods’ hollow chambers and the underlayers of matted clumps of shrubs appear to rest on the surface, and yet, because of the resin, they do not.

Mayme Kratz, “Dark Garden 21,” 2026, resin, rabbit brush, poppy seeds, fig beetle elytra on panel, 40 x 52”.

The contrast between the works’ smooth surfaces and their close-to-the-surface three-dimensionality contributes to the vibrant presence of the “Summer Bloom Studies.” Kratz conceives her art in ongoing series, each rooted in different life experiences and ranges of materials. For example, she explains that a blood test that yielded unwanted results gave rise to the “Summer Blooms.” Each features an allover pattern made by sections of seeds and pods  placed edge-to-edge on a dark ground. The irregular starburst shapes of poppy pods dominate. Our eyes roam over their subtle variations in size, shape, and structure even as we are dazzled by the colors refracted by the tinted resin. “Summer Bloom Study 13” is garnet-hued, “Summer Bloom Study 12” is sea glass green, and “Summer Bloom Study 10,” gamboge. All feel kaleidoscopic. They bring focus to what we mostly dismiss in the natural world, even as they invite receptivity to microcosmic and macrocosmic realms.

Mayme Kratz, “Vanishing Light 58,” 2026, resin, San Felipe dyssodia and gecko on panel, 55 x 55”.

The “Vanishing Light” series emerged from images the artist sees in her mind’s eye during the transitional state between wakefulness and sleep. She builds each piece around a ring of botanical material, like purslane in “Vanishing Light 57” and, in “Vanishing Light 58,” the bristly shrub San Felipe dyssodia. Viewed against a dark ground and through the matte translucence of resin, these rough plant remains resemble a delicate filigree aglow in day’s last rays of light. Step closer to search out a tiny gecko skeleton or the shell of a June bug. Step further back and we become fully aware of Kratz’s use of negative space as an active and meaningful element: the gap around which the gnarly dried stalks converge is a pulsating presence.

One Kratz’s strengths is her refusal to fully subdue the plant life that she uses. In the “Dark Garden” series clusters of rabbit brush straggle upward with fluffy flowers that escape into the sky. Their landscape format sets these works apart from the square works that predominate. The stunning “Dark Garden 22” visualizes the sensory pleasures of a patch of wild nature on what could be a summer evening. Among its mysteries are insect wings, snake ribs and shell dust that transmutes into a sprinkling of stars in a darkening sky.

Mayme Kratz, “Dark Garden 22,” 2026, resin, weeds, snake ribs, insect wing and shell dust on panel, 40 x 80”.

We tend to ignore wild and inelegant plants like purslane and rabbit brush unless they get in the way of our plans. Kratz not only makes them the center of attention but imbues them with beauty and meaning. Their material reality converges with our subjective experience.

Kratz’s work grapples with mortality yet, by virtue of art’s transformative power, the death of these neglected scraps of nature generates new life. It’s a feat akin to what poet Berry called “a resurrection of the wild.”