For artist Abbie Birmingham, a love of plants, place, and the natural world comes together through paper and printmaking. A printmaker and book artist, Abbie discovered her artistic practice later in life, after raising two children and working as a real estate and construction lawyer in the Seattle area.
She began taking printmaking classes at Pratt Fine Arts Center in Seattle several years ago and quickly became captivated by the process. “I became completely entranced and obsessed with the variety of printmaking processes and the element of surprise and serendipity in the work,” she says.
Abbie’s hand-pulled prints often combine multiple printmaking techniques, and her work is deeply connected to place. Much of her imagery explores the character of her hometown of Seattle and the natural world of the Pacific Northwest. Her work has been featured in numerous group and solo exhibitions, and her prints and artist books are held in public and private collections.
Before discovering printmaking, Abbie’s creative outlet was her garden. She spent years working with her hands in the dirt, learning which native and non-native plants were best suited to her garden habitat. That love of plant forms, patterns, and colors continues to influence her artwork today. She sometimes uses actual plants to create her prints, as she did in Abundance, one of the works featured in Bloedel’s Community Creatives exhibition.
A dedicated birder, Abbie also frequently incorporates birds into her work. Her Community Creatives project at Bloedel has focused on the birds that inhabit the Reserve, particularly around the Buxton Bird Marsh and Pollinator Meadow, along with the plants that support them. Her work also incorporates papers dyed with botanical pigments made from plants grown at Bloedel.
For Abbie, participating in the Bloedel Reserve Community Creatives program has been an opportunity to slow down and develop a deeper relationship with the landscape. Over the course of a full year, she has returned to the same trails again and again, observing the changes of the seasons and discovering new details along the way.
“Regularly walking the same trails and observing seasonal changes over time has created a deep connection to Bloedel and the inspiration to express that connection through my art,” she says.
Her work offers a reminder that returning to a familiar place can reveal something new each time—and that paying close attention to the natural world can become an art form in itself.
You can find Abbie’s work on her website, abirminghamprints.com, or on Instagram @abbie.paper.
