ARTIST STATEMENTI am wanting to capture what it’s like when I watch, listen to and smell the natural world. If my eye follows a monarch butterfly it is soon distracted by the wailing of two hungry Red-tail Hawks clamoring in the treetops for their mother; I try to locate them but instead catch a sideways glimpse down low of a toad hopping to shady safety. Instantly I forget about all of them because I’m remembering the perfumed luxury of the swaying fringe tree I now pass; but then I stop because here comes the color orange, the Baltimore Oriole. I am an observer with ADHD and my world is in chaos. I catch glimpses. I steal willful glances. I take pictures. Then I collapse, compress and flatten a million tiny moments—all these surviving traces that mean something only to me— into imagined environments that beg to communicate how I experience this mysterious world I am passing through. I piece together remnants of memory: a lady slipper along the Ice Ace Trail in 2012, the gladioli I grew in 2023, a Sandhill Crane nest I watched the spring of 2024.The title “Remnants” has several meanings that are relevant to me. It could refer to leftover pieces of soft goods such as wallpaper and fabric. It could be used to describe an untouched ecological community containing native flora and fauna, e.g. a prairie remnant. It could reference a small remaining quantity of an endangered species.Many of the artworks depict Sandhill and Whooping Cranes. In 1941, the global population of Whooping Cranes dropped to 15. They are slowly coming back with an estimated population of more than 500 living in the wild today. The ones depicted in these artworks were observed at the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge in Texas.Sandhill Cranes, the oldest known bird species in the world, were almost hunted into extinction by the early 1900’s. Aldo Leopold worried that the last crane would soon “trumpet his farewell and spiral skyward.” Because of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 and conservation efforts, they slowly rebounded. Although there is a significant population today, their survival faces ongoing threats caused by climate change, habitat loss and degradation, nest predation and hunting.“The Epic Return of the Sandhill Crane” is a triptych where Sandhill Cranes are flying, honking, and nesting amidst a landscape also inhabited by overscale poppies, hummingbirds and butterflies. It vaguely imitates, then breaks free of a repeating Victorian wallpaper pattern in the background. Glimpses of the wallpaper’s printed peacocks and acanthus leaves (a remnant!) come to the surface, then fade as a very lively scene asserts itself. A repeating river bluff along the Mississippi provides the waterscape.Patterns fade in and out of most of the artworks. Pattern-making is comforting to me, perhaps because I spent the first part of my professional life painting and designing them. But I also use pattern to create a flatness to the artwork that transforms a realistic-seeming scene into a “tapestry.” Concerns over scale and perspective have been abandoned in favor of creating a richly detailed surface.All of the life depicted within the work gets flattened out. It becomes decorative. The subjects—those gorgeous, long-necked birds living amongst us—become the art of contemporary life. Their wildness loses potency. Their lives, their wetlands are linked here only to my reconstructed memories. These digital tapestries are sewn with slack-jawed wonder, with tenderness and worry and outrage for an uncertain future. These are remnants of 2025. BIOGRAPHYLisa A. Frank is a Sony Alpha+ photographer and a MacDowell Fellow in photography. She holds an MFA in Design Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she has taught textile design in the Design Studies Department and digital photography in the Art Department. Lisa also holds a BS in art education from theUW-Madison and a graduate certificate from the Yale School of Drama. Lisa has led nature photography workshops at Penland School of Crafts and the Aldo Leopold Nature Center on the subject of discovering the natural world using technology-based tools.Lisa’s meandering path to photography has connections to a childhood growing up in rural Illinois where she was able to freely explore the out-of-doors. Her father founded a summer stock theatre and as a teenager, she helped out—painting scenery, running a follow-spot, building props—loving it all. After completing an undergraduate degree, she moved to NYC for an internship at Juilliard to focus on set design and painting in its Stage Department. This was followed by 3 years at the Yale School of Drama and many years working as a union scenic artist at the Metropolitan Opera and in Broadway and film scene shops.As her interests changed, she began designing textiles, wall-coverings, and decorative surfaces for high-end interior projects.This decades long history of painting ornate, operatically-scaled back drops and designing wallpaper patterns continues to influence her photographic work (she painted the oversized floral pattern shown behind the elderly couples in “When Harry Met Sally”—in 1988!).Sometime along the way she bought her first digital camera and a clunky Macintosh II, took some photoshop courses at SVA and found that a new game was on.She moved back to Madison 16 years ago to be closer to family and subsequently went back to school to get an MFA. This gave her access to great equipment and opportunities to experiment with new technology.Always enthused by interdisciplinary projects, Lisa was chosen to be a Senior Research Fellow at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She was the first artist/collaborator to be given this distinction. With the Living Environments Lab at UW-Madison and the Visualization Lab at the U of I, Lisa was an early developer of virtual reality content that was created to be specifically experienced as an art exhibition. She has since developed nature themed VR apps used in hospitals as a pain reduction tool for children.Lisa’s growing body of work is exhibited in galleries and sold as limited edition fine art prints. Known for its engaging nature-themed content, her work is collected by major health centers and hospitals. She has also received many commissions to create work to be used in hospitality, corporate and education settings.All along the way, the acquisition of new skills has kept her creative process lively. She’s a life-long learner! Although this might seem like a complicated narrative, the through-line relates to having a committed creative life that evolves over decades.Lisa lives in rural Wisconsin with her partner and a menagerie of wild and domesticated animals.