Inland Art | Wild Things: The art of Peggy West

ROBERT ROWE

Peggy West’s avowed mission is to raise awareness and appreciation for the “wild things that can be found in urban and suburban landscapes.” A printmaker, a master naturalist, and educator, West creates mixed media prints and collages that feature delicately rendered representations of common plant and animal species native to our region: the humble dandelion, ubiquitous milkweed, ever-present beetles, and regal monarch butterflies. Her attention to natural elements that often pass unnoticed arises from a deeply held commitment to responsible and sustainable stewardship of the environment and a belief that meaningful change can occur at a local or “grass-roots” level.

Calling the animal or plant by name is fundamental to West’s philosophy. Dragonflies, bloodroot, jack-in-the-pulpit and Dutchman’s breeches are but a few of the local flora and fauna that figure into her work. She asserts, “If you know it by name, you already have a relationship with it.”

Many of her prints employ dry point engraving combined with pages torn from dictionaries or field guides. The genus and species or the common name may be printed on the image. This combination of perceptual drawing paired with pages from scientific literature places her work at the nexus of art and science, evoking a rich tradition dating back to medieval books of herbs and the work of famous artist/naturalists, such as John James Audubon.

As a certified Master Naturalist, she is more than a casual observer. She holds a master’s degree in museum studies from Western Illinois University and a PhD in educational technology from Kansas State University. She studied for three years to earn a certificate in Botanical Art and Illustration from Chicago’s Morton Arboretum and remains active in the Guild of Nature Artists. She also studied Printmaking at Western Illinois University with Don Crouch and Bill Howard.

Peggy West, limited-edition handmade letterpress book of native plants and animals. (SUPPLIED IMAGE)

A pivotal point in the development of West’s style was a residency at the Prairie Center of the Arts in Peoria. The residency provided access to an array of presses and other printing equipment. Her explorations in letterpress began to involve whimsical arrangements of hand-set metal type printed with precise pressure and multi-color registration. Letterpress Printing also allows her to produce multiples in the form of cards, small prints, and other ephemera that she uses to reach out to a larger audience. These are available through her web site WildPeoria.com.

As a resident artist at the Peoria Art Guild in 2020, West helped the Guild raise funds to acquire all the necessary equipment to set up a complete letterpress shop from which she has been able to offer classes in printing and book arts. She is also an adjunct instructor at Bradley University, teaching book arts and drawing.

West has felt connected to nature her whole life, going back to childhood vacations in the Ozark region of Missouri. “My interest in the outdoors came from my father; he was an avid outdoorsman raising three daughters” she says. “As a kid, I was an outdoor person with an affinity for art.” In her most recent art pieces, which she calls “wall books,” she integrates childhood memories and associations with precise observation of natural forms. The “wall books” consist of print and collage on raised panels, roughly square, with a small handmade book attached to each panel via a flexible cord.

Using her artwork and her outreach through Wild Peoria and Wild Type Press, Peggy West advocates not only for nature in wild places, but the wild nature in the most mundane of places. Environmental stewardship is everyone’s responsibility. It can begin in your own back yard through cultivating native plants that support a host of native fauna. The Peoria area abounds with parks, prairies and woodlands where you can go and see native plants and animals making a comeback. As Henry David Thoreau, a proto-environmentalist author, wrote over 150 years ago, “All good things are wild and free.”