While many artists portray an expansive view of nature’s grandeur, Do Mi Stauber looks down and in. She sees the smallest details, the texture that she calls “the tender surface of the world.” Perhaps this close-up fascination comes from her early nearsightedness, and the magic of individual leaves appearing on the trees when she put on her first pair of glasses. It’s no surprise that her colored-pencil “intimate landscapes” approach abstraction as they explore the eye of an elephant, the bark edges around a knothole, a tiny rock crevice.

Even though she began working colored pencil only eight years ago, Do Mi has already won awards in local and national shows, including cash awards from the Colored Pencil Society of America and the Audubon Artists’ Annual Exhibition at the historic Salmagundi Club in New York City. In addition to local newspaper reviews, Do Mi received national media attention this winter: American Artist magazine published a feature article on her unique work in the February 2006 issue.