Essay from the Faulconer Gallery exhibition catalog,
Keith Achepohl: Gardens of Earth and Water, 2004

Introduction: The Still Life
By Lesley Wright, Director, Faulconer Gallery, Grinnell College

When Keith Achepohl creates an image of a plant or shell, he is not interested in nature mort (dead nature) as the French call still life, but in the stillness of the life that remains. Dried foliage and empty seashells evoke the plants and the animals that inhabited these husks, and from them, come new life. Even if no hermit crab claims the shell as home, it lives on as flotsam on a beach, ground eventually to sand and minerals reused by the sea and its creatures. Every stem, flower, leaf, and root supports the formation of seed and decays into humus, nourishing new plants in a never-ending cycle.

For the gardener, the beachcomber, and the artist--and Achepohl is all three--the cycles of plant and sea life offer endless possibilities for philosophical and creative thought. Every trip to the garden is a new discovery. Time, weather, and season all work their influence which the gardener sees, responds to, and interacts with. Unlike feral nature, the garden is a dialogue between human intervention and nature's serendipity. The beach, too, is a conversation between human agency and the chance offerings of the sea. Until a toe kicks a shell, an eye appraises it, and a hand collects it, a shell is simply one of billions of moments on the ever changing shore. But once selected, a shell becomes so much more: a meditation on life, an object of beauty, a decorative curiosity, a memory.

Because shells and plants suggest regeneration, Achepohl has used them as subjects for drawings, paintings and prints for many years. In the past decade they have been his primary focus. They are a philosophical touchstone, reminding him that life continues even with death ever present. They are a link to his art historical forbearers. And they suggest a range of infinite artistic possibilities. While he draws and paints plants and shells frequently (see Anthony Damasio's essay in this catalogue for a discussion of his paintings), in printmaking he is able to meld process and subject more deeply.

Achepohl sees a direct link between what he does in the printmaking studio, and his activity as a gardener, or his daily walks along The Lido when he is in Venice. Chance, the mood of the moment, the structure of the day, and the accumulated experience from every other trip to the studio contributes to the day's creative activity. He sees the work he is doing with shells and plants as a continuum, not as the creation of discrete, discontinuous works of art. Just as a gardener constantly tends, refines, adjusts, adds to, and edits a garden, Achepohl develops his series of prints. One thing suggests another. Each experiment potentially leads in a new direction. But knowledge gained in the process of making prints, tending plants, collecting shells links the work in an evolving serial process.

One can argue that printmakers frequently work in series, developing an idea over several printed images. The process itself, in which multiple plates may be used to make a single image lends itself to repetition, theme, and variation. But typically, the series is finite: four, eight, 24 images that define an idea. These images are then editioned into a limited number of technically controlled prints that come as close to replicating one another as possible.

At this point in his career, Achepohl isn't interested in editioning prints. He pursues, instead, an open-ended exploration of his imagery. Every work, and every piece of every work, in this exhibition is a unique print--a monoprint--although each print is tied to all that came before it and will contribute to all that come after. He still works in series, but more as a scientist than as a technician. To date he has created hundreds, thousands of variations. Like Neptune or Demeter, he orders the seashore and garden to his liking, though with every printing and changing installation he amends, improves, and expands his vision.

In creating images of earth and water, Achepohl is drawn to printmaking because of the possibilities for layering color, image, mood, and line; however, he refuses to be tied to a single process or to be dogmatic about technique. He will reach into his bank of 50 years' experience and draw out whatever he needs to realize the image of the moment. He may start with a carefully etched plate evoking water or foliage. He may combine the etching with rubber stamps if it achieves a desired image. The next time he uses the etching plate, he may change to irregularly shaped paper, add smaller prints to the plate, and chine collé them to the image, alter the ink color, watercolor the surface. Or he may do an offset lithograph on clear acetate and transfer it onto shaped paper, and then run it through the press. While his choices and a lifetime of knowledge allow him to control the results, he has learned to celebrate the unexpected.

He even pushes beyond the confines of the frame, or even the wall, with these images. Gardeners are rarely content with a single, specimen plant. Those who collect shells prefer the infinite variety. For this exhibition, he developed three installations in which dozens, even hundreds of prints together make up the final image on a wall, or arrayed across a floor. Each print is a piece of a larger work. At times, one or two prints stand alone, a synecdoche for hundreds of other pieces, like a single shell on a dresser. But Achepohl revels in the complexity of a larger group as well as in the fascination of the single object. We are invited into his cabinet of curiosities to marvel at a rare specimen and take in the effect of a piece that is a sum of its parts. The printing plate and the printed images are his seeds and shells. Out of them spring his own gardens and beaches, his meditations on mortality and regeneration.

In this he is very like his Renaissance progenitors in Holland and Italy. Exotic seashells, gorgeous flowers, fresh fruits and vegetables crowd Renaissance still life paintings and prints. To these artists, shells and plants were not only rare, sensuous, and infinitely variable, but they also spoke of deeper concerns. Without refrigeration, the artist's bouquet or fruit bowl drooped and decayed long before the artist was finished with the painting. Mortality was ever present and these paintings were intended as a comment on the transience of life. But they also carried the possibility, even the mythology of rebirth: Venus born on a half-shell, the infinite spiral of a snail, the seeds of the fruit and flower, the sustenance of food and beauty. This legacy has continued through 500 years of art.

Achepohl feels closely tied to this legacy as an artist and as a man confronting his own mortality. The deaths of a few friends, his own quiet battles with illness, the end of a distinguished teaching career have all prompted thoughts about endings and new beginnings. Shells and plants have provided a point of focus and of reassurance. They have certainly inspired an explosion of creativity over the past ten years that shows no signs of abating. In fact, with teaching duties completed, he predicts that he will become even more productive. Achepohl's delight in the process of making these images and finding new ways to combine and recombine them is infectious. They are themselves regenerative both for the artist and the viewer.

Like nature, Achepohl's prints are about discovery, creation, and reuse. Every walk along the shore is different. Every trip to the garden yields new delights. Every session in the studio produces combinations not seen before. And each experience contains the germ of the next as the artist collects a shell, plants a seed, pulls a print.