Highland Park News
Donnelly Gallery, Lake Forest College
February 22, 1979

Technique translates nature into art
by Arlene Becker

There is a new artist exhibiting in the Donnelly Library Gallery at Lake Forrest College. She is Claire Krantz of Highland Park. She just received her BFA degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago as a result of combined studies here and at Stanford University on the West Coast. This is her second degree. Her original work was in occupational therapy, and she brings much of the understanding of perception she developed in this field to her present work.

The subject is an homage to nature as perceived by the wandering eye and imagination of this artist. There are two mediums used. One is "monoprinting," a printing technique that involves painting on a zinc plate and pressing the plate onto the paper. Rather than being a method of making multiple copies, only one print can be made from each plate, but a ghost of the image is left on the plate which can be added to and reused several times to make a series of variations on a theme. The other medium is the use of commercial copy machines combined with photography, painting and collage. It sounds complicated, but Krantz is developing her own special technique of combination.

The themes of nature take numerous forms. Many of these forms are a direct result of time spent by the artist on the West Coast. One frequently sees the pine cones of the California pine forests, rocks, succulents and cactus of the desert. These images alternate between being parts of a microcosm and a macrocosm. A pine cone may become a gigantic tree or remain a small pine cone. A mountain may stay a mountain or become a rock. Or a rock can grow to be a gigantic monolith. The images become fantastic landscapes, and, especially in the monoprints, have screaming undercurrents of the internal landscape of sexuality and confusion.

The monoprints are small, with a painterly feeling. Each one takes place at a moment in time and most are parts of series which indicate progression in time. Sometimes this happens through the opening of a flower, or the changing of an aperture, or just and evolution of color or changes of detail.

The machine print collages have a different feeling. Although the subject matter is the same, the imagery presentation is slick. A successful, long horizontal shape allows for time progression with in picture, read from left to right. These pictures are easy to enjoy - perhaps too easy.

Some of the colors become too obvious in their prettiness and brightness, but, where Krantz has formed a collage of layers of light over dark to create some of her more subtle hues, the living, breathing sense of colors in nature is beautifully transmitted. It would be nice to not have these overshadowed by obvious overbright purples and blues.
\Two things in particular stand out in the Krantz exhibit. One is the sense of energy and excitement of this artist - seeing her point out a hidden figure known only to her, or hearing her talk about following succulent growers around California is like being included in some super-special world. The other is her superior craftsmanship. If not told, one would never recognize a certain collage as a separate glued piece.

This is an artist who will be worth watching as her work coalesces and blossoms.

Claire Wolf Krantz is an artist, freelance critic, and guest curator.
As an artist she works in a combination of painting and photography as well as digitally created images.