Printmaker Bethia Brehmer’s Wisconsin youth has stayed with her through her changes of venues from Sheboygan to Madison, to Amherst, Massachusetts and Cape Cod, where she’s lived for decades. Her vegetarian, pacifist parents took her on walks through the woods instilling in her a desire for peace, harmony and nature. She’s a world traveler who lived in Ghana, and has visited India, China, Bali and Europe. Her passion is to connect people to nature through art (she loves that “ART is in eARTh”). But her work is not just about the natural world. It also encompasses a mandala-like symbology, as well as quoting from other artists and cultures, to create a unique runic consciousness, (imbued with a wee tinge ofAubrey Beardsley). And it is not all peace and love; sometimes the political speaks, as in a piece she did of America as Shiva, or when she imprints clocks with messages about running out of time to save the planet.

Brehmer studied art as a kid, eventually getting her MFA at the University of Wisconsin where she was selected as the illustrator for the botany department, creating etchings for Dr. John Thompson’s definitive book, “Arctic Lichens.” Looking at them through a microscope taught her to perceive the circular which she says, “became symbolic to me of the roundness of Earth.”