Turning New Leaves

Printmakers Jowita Wyszormirska, Samantha Lee Shelton, Susan Wooddell Campbell, and Eric Bushee construct microcosms, whether natural or conjectural

Jowita Wyszomirska, “Leaf by Leaf Alchemy 1” (detail) (Gallery Neptune & Brown)

PLANTS ARE BOTH THE SUBJECT AND THE RAW MATERIAL of the print-drawings in Jowita Wyszormirska's Gallery Neptune & Brown show, "Echoes of the Understory." The local artist collects leaves, fronds, and stalks, which she later arranges as if they were scattered on a forest floor. (The show's title refers to the vegetation that grows beneath a tree canopy.) She uses high-temperature steam to transfer shapes and color to paper. These prints are then collaged and finally embellished with ink and pencil markings, which generally outline the nature-derived contours.

Wyszormirska's "eco-printing" technique yields images that are mostly soft and smudgy, but punctuated by the sharply defined structures of stems and leaf veins. The resulting colors, often unexpected, range from earthy to metallic; the artist sometimes accentuates areas of the latter in shimmery gold ink. The most surprising hues are bluish greens, more aqueous than leaf-like, and lush enough for the walls of Whistler's Peacock Room.

One of the most striking pictures is titled, fittingly, "Abundance of the Cosmos 1." These artworks are indeed abundant, in color, texture, and line. They're also rich in implications, suggesting nature's simultaneous delicacy and indomitability. Wyszormirska raids the woods, taking what she wants to make her abstracted hymns to the understory. Yet the realm she then leaves behind remains fundamentally unchanged.

Samantha Lee Shelton, “Fresia #1”

SAMANTHA LEE SHELTON ALSO PRINTS DIRECTLY FROM PLANT MATTER, but with a different intent. The prints in "Luminated," the artist's show at the Arts Club of Washington, depict flowers or thorns in small clusters, plucked from their environment. Inspired in part by growing up in the U.S. Rust Belt, Shelton investigates "how native plants react and adapt to human encroachment," according to her statement.

Shelton represents the industrial sector by printing on brushed aluminum panels, whose cold shimmer contrasts the soft, pliable quality of the plants the printmaker collects in her D.C. neighborhood. This flora is initially printed via the lumen process, a sort of photogram made by placing objects on photo paper and exposing them to the sun. Most of these pictures were made by combining lumen printing with cyanotype, the technique traditionally used to make blueprints. The resulting indigo may dominate the color scheme or just gently tinge it.

While small aspects of the flowers and stalks are reproduced with scientific precision, the overall image is soft and blurred. This suggests the mutability of organic material, but also the continuing threat to the natural world. The plant snippets in Shelton's prints can be seen as surviving under duress, or as in the midst of being obliterated.

Susan Wooddell Campbell, “Flip Sides” (Washington Printmakers Gallery)

"MIXED TAKES," THE TITLE OF SUSAN WOODDELL CAMPBELL'S Washington Printmakers Gallery show, refers to the variety of formats and methods. But it's also a play on the word "mistakes." As the D.C. artist's statement asks, "Is there really any such thing as a mistake when it comes to the happy accidents that are part of the creative process?"

The selection includes prints, paintings, and collages, all of which are primarily abstract. There are also two iPad drawings, softly realistic renderings of domestic scenes. One shows plants both inside and outside a window, the most direct depiction of flora in a show that also includes the luminous "Bamboo Sun," in which yellow glows through a row of light green uprights. The piece is one of several examples of viscosity monotypes, in which several different colors of ink are printed simultaneously but don't muddle because they're of different consistencies.

The procedure suits Campbell's style, which emphasizes colors and forms that are tiered and sometimes partly submerged. The layering can continue in such collages as "Flip Sides," in which the artist combines shards of her own monotypes into a jostling, vibrant whole. While such works could potentially benefit from "happy accidents," they also demonstrate the artist's control. The way the pieces fit together may be random, but ultimately becomes definitive. Campbell's artworks convey light and motion, ephemeral yet fixed in a perpetual moment.

Eric Bushee, “Devachan” (courtesy of the artist)

ERIC BUSHEE'S PRINTS ARE AS TIGHTLY CONSTRUCTED AS WALLS made of large stone blocks. Yet there's lots of white space in the woodcuts in Homme Gallery's "A World of Spirit" -- and not just in the gutters that separate the forms. The individual components are printed so the ink doesn't fully cover the area, leaving nicks and cracks in the color. The effect is to give a sense of fragility to the otherwise burly squares, rectangles, and L- and ]-shapes.

Inspired in part by Frank Stella, yet avoiding that artist's curves and hard borders, Bushee makes symmetrical constructions that usually array rough-edged shapes in close hues, although some color contrasts are dramatic. Most of the tones are subdued, and a few of the prints are executed just in black and gray. In his statement, the local printmaker says he intends to offer "a sense of harmony" and "a profound sense of unity."

That's one way of seeing these compositions. Certainly the pieces fit together neatly in a manner that suggests cathedrals -- an effect underscored by the cross-like central white space in a few compositions -- and castles. But Bushee's style of printing yields colors that seem frayed and forms that appear battered. Perhaps they're liminal, partway into the passage into a world of spirit.

Jowita Wyszormirska: Echoes of the Understory

Through April 19 at Gallery Neptune & Brown, 1530 14th St. NW. galleryneptunebrown.com. 202-986-1200.

Samantha Lee Shelton: Luminated

Through March 28 at the Arts Club of Washington, 2017 I St. NW. artsclubofwashington.org. 202-331-7282.

Susan Wooddell Campbell: Mixed Takes

Through March 30 at Washington Printmakers Gallery, 1675 Wisconsin Ave NW. washingtonprintmakers.com. 202-669-1497.

Eric Bushee: A World of Spirit

Through March 22 at Homme, 2000 L St. NW. hommedcgallery.com.