Opening Reception: Renata Lucia: Can’t See the Forest

Renata Lucia: Can’t See the Forest
opening reception: Friday, February 23, 6-8 pm
on view: February 23–April 20, 2024

Can’t See the Forest is an exhibition by Renata Lucia of ecological drawings, printing plates, and collagraphs that are equal parts warning, love letter, and documentation delivered in trees. The title is borrowed from the phrase “can’t see the forest for the trees,” to highlight how focusing on the wrong details can lead to failure to notice what’s important as an ecological whole. Lucia strives to shift aesthetics to a wilder landscape, inspire wonder, and encourage local ecosystem conservation. As an artist, naturalist, and environmental advocate, her practice is rooted in regular engagement with her environment through plein air studies, volunteer work for local nonprofit organizations, naturalist excursions, and ecological study.

Lucia’s Wildwoods series features tree portraits from those interactions in Houston neighborhoods, Texas State Parks (including the now-lost Fairfield Lake State Park), and the Russell Farm Art Center in North Texas. The images emphasize an ecologically important but overlooked microhabitat within the trees – tree holes and hollows.

Lucia’s Sylvan Transformations collagraph series forefronts disturbance, featuring trees transformed to ubiquitous packaging materials, to collagraph printing plates, and then framed images on paper. The prints are created by carving tree imagery into flattened packaging (such as unfolded printer cartridge or pasta boxes) to create printing plates that are intaglio printed or viscosity printed (multi-color printing that incorporates relief and intaglio techniques).