Present Sense: Monique Wales, is a solo exhibition of extraordinarily detailed reduction relief prints by California artist Monique Wales. The works are rooted in direct and sustained experience of place. Wales draws upon her training as a naturalist to inform her art process, spending long periods outdoors, being attentive and present to seasonal shifts, early growth, and small interruptions.  Wales’s images shift between close engagement and a bird’s eye view, sometimes placing the viewer within dense growth, other times opening outward to an endless vista. Regardless of imagery, the process of reduction relief printmaking requires careful reverse planning, deep understanding of color, and zero opportunity for error. Using one single block to produce all color layers in an edition, with each color pass on the printing press, material is carved away, permanently limiting what can follow. When printing is complete, the block itself is mostly gone, leaving the finished prints as the only record of the process, which can never be remade.