In 1993, Janet Russek began a series of still lifes of ripe squashes, peaches and pears whose rounded forms echoed the plenitude of pregnancy. Using only natural light, she then started to photograph vegetables and roots whose tendrils, reaching for the sun, expressed all of life's striving and aspiration, and finally, the maturing plant, evoking the inevitable downward spiral into decay. In subsequent years, Russek has expanded the project to include pregnant women photographed at close range so that bellies and breasts become almost abstract. Her haunting portraits of dolls explore the darker, more psychologically complex side of childhood and parenting, while the "Memory" series includes photos of significant personal objects that harken to the past, and take this volume full circle. "The Tenuous Stem" also includes an essay, written by art scholar and critic MaLin Wilson-Powell, addressing Russek's creative process.

For thirty years, Sarah Bienvenu's experiences painting and exploring New Mexico's mountains, canyons, and deserts have given her a unique ability to disentangle and interpret these past layers of change. She finds beauty in nature's ability to reveal accidental compositions through patterns and asymmetry: "I look to the land to tell me how best to paint it, using the natural abstract shapes I see." Being attuned to such abstractions--the undulations of a dry riverbed, the jaggedness of rock against sky--is where abstraction becomes detail: detail of texture, detail of shape, detail of light and color and composition. Watercolors provide the perfect medium for matching the immense variation and subtlety of Bienvenu's Subject. A closer look reveals that each individual element, as in nature, harmonizes with the collective whole. Realism is discovered in consonance: from a cast of light to a balance of colors.