SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- Dolby Chadwick Gallery is presenting To Know the Dark, an exhibition of recent work by Mayme Kratz.
For more than three decades, Kratz has transformed overlooked remnants of the natural world into luminous meditations on beauty, time, and renewal. Seedpods, branches, animal bones, and other organic materials—gathered in and around her home in Phoenix, Arizona, and during countless wanderings through the desert—are carefully arranged and suspended within layers of colored resin. Kratz does not collect indiscriminately. Certain discoveries, she explains, possess a kind of vibration, awakening memory or longing before finding their place in the studio. Sanded to a smooth, matte finish, these works invite slow, attentive looking. Familiar botanical forms dissolve into glimmering galaxies, nocturnal gardens, and otherworldly landscapes, while fragments of once-living things are not simply preserved but transfigured, their fragility acquiring new resonance.
The exhibition takes its title from Wendell Berry’s poem “To Know the Dark,” which explores darkness not merely as the absence of light but as a condition through which new ways of seeing become possible. Kratz has been drawn to the mysteries of darkness since childhood. She recalls lying quietly in shelters she built among pine needles, watching dusk settle over the landscape as insects emerged and the scent of the grasses and earth gradually changed. Those memories linger throughout the exhibition, particularly in the Dark Garden series, whose compositions evoke the mysterious sensory richness of nighttime, with its fluctuating light and subtle fragrances and sounds.
Several works were created during a period of profound personal change. Following emergency surgery and a long recovery, Kratz found herself thinking differently about both light and mortality. She recalls a powerful experience of light while in the operating room that has since found its way into the work. If light has always been present in her art, here it assumes a new prominence, reflecting her enduring belief that one of the reasons she makes art is to “bring more light to our world.”
The evolving Vanishing Light series highlights this shift. Originally inspired by the luminous forms that Kratz perceived after closing her eyes each night, this series continues to explore those interior visions while also responding to a changing landscape. Dried botanical materials are arranged with their stems converging near the composition’s center and their flowering tips radiating outward. Their rough textures create a quiet tension with the smooth resin, while their warm tones glow against deep bluish grounds. As the desert Kratz has explored for decades continues to be altered by climate change, many of the natural materials she once expected to find have become increasingly scarce. In response, she has come to embrace a greater degree of wildness in these works, favoring freer, less symmetrical forms. In Vanishing Light #56, for example, globe chamomile is arranged in a starburst-like shape that sits slightly off-center. Rather than resolving into perfect symmetry, the composition seems to unfold according to its own internal logic—so much so that, in Kratz’s words, the work itself “was in charge.”
A similar evolution can be seen in Glimmer, which marks a subtle new direction within her practice. Poppy pods have appeared in her artwork for many years, originally serving as part of a personal meditation on healing. Returning to the studio after recovering from her unexpected surgery, Kratz found herself drawn to them once again. Unable to lift heavy materials or stand for long periods, she devoted herself to this series, patiently fitting each pod into place like pieces of a puzzle. As she explains, these pieces are also “a mirror,” revealing the unpredictable rhythms of the creative process itself.
Although Kratz’s practice is rooted in careful observation, it also depends upon surrender. An openness—to intuition, material, and the unexpected—animates every work in To Know the Dark. Here, even the humblest fragments of the natural world become radiant reminders that light is often discovered not beyond darkness but within it.
Mayme Kratz was born in 1958 in San Diego County. Her work has been exhibited at the San Jose Museum of Art, the Phoenix Art Museum, the Tucson Museum of Art, the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, among many other institutions. She has received numerous recognitions for her practice, including a Contemporary Forum mid-career award and exhibition at the Phoenix Art Museum and residencies with the Art in Embassies Program, the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, and Pilchuck Glass School. Her work is represented in public and private collections throughout the United States.
