Mayme Kratz
Mayme Kratz creates art from the natural life of the desert that surrounds her Phoenix home and studio. Viewing collecting as a way of archiving memory, she assembles a variety of natural forms—tangled birds’ nests, feathers, bones, seeds, snakes, and cicada wings—and captures them submerged in resin to create rhythmic, abstract sculptures and reliefs. “My collected specimens celebrate the endless cycles of change and rebirth in nature,” Kratz has said. In addition to these hanging and freestanding works she has also created a variety of videos and installations, including an interactive outdoor sculpture made of found tumbleweeds meant to disintegrate over time.