Free Public Library Returns To Nature

There’s evidence of a wasp infestation at the Ives branch of the New Haven Free Public Library. Evidence that sea levels have risen, and that blue crabs, mussels and whelks have moved into the basement. Evidence that birds have taken roost in the stacks.

Well, not quite. But an art exhibit in the gallery on the lower level of the library — ​“The Nature of New Haven,” featuring ink renderings by Jeanette Compton of natural objects found in and around New Haven, on view until March 30 — revels in the artistry and architecture of natural forms and can stir thoughts about the blurry line between civilization and wilderness.

Compton’s work first catches the eye through its technical quality. The inkwork appears nearly photographic in its accuracy, but also conveys a sense of the depth and texture of the objects rendered more than a photograph might. This is most obvious in the nests Compton collected, usually in the towns around New Haven. The pictures are detailed enough that it seems possible to touch each twig that makes up the nest, or to reach in and explore its depths.

Compton also turned her eye and pen to the things that sea life left behind in the natural course of its life cycle. A chain of whelk egg cases found in New Haven’s harbor curls like a necklace. In depicting a whelk shell itself, Compton captures both the elegant math that dictates its spiral shape and the way that life, in the form of barnacles and decay, complicates the equation. She also captures the rough surface of a crab’s shell, and the awkward pose that the entire form can be left in when the crab molts. When we find one, we might think we’ve found a dead animal, when the truth is that the animal has moved on.

That is, when we notice it at all. By including the places where she found the objects — at the harbor, along the Farmington Canal Trail — Compton draws attention to the nature that is always all around us, but we don’t tend to notice because we think of ourselves as being in a city, a manmade place. Shells that we might collect with fascination on a beach vacation, we can find at Lighthouse Point Park, or along Long Wharf. Nests we would take pictures of if we found them in a national park, we can find (and hopefully not disturb) in the trees lining our streets.

There is a strain of thought in environmental writing that the distinction between wilderness and civilization is false, and there are a lot of heavy questions that result from that. Some of the places with no people around that white settlers encountered in the American West were actually depopulated after the ravages of smallpox. What does it mean when those settlers thought of that landscape as pristine wilderness? How did we go from being terrified of dark, deep woods to thinking of them as places that could inspire Thoreau-like ecstasy?

In this line of thinking lies the interesting idea that the plants and animals that live in or near cities aren’t ​“urban” animals. Birds of prey and coyotes do what they do, whether they’re in a state forest or in Morris Cove. They step right over the lines of civilization that we draw. Compton’s own drawn lines remind us of that. If we go to Criscuolo Park in Fair Haven and head to the water, we can see fish and crabs there, feasting under the shadow of the English Station power plant as they might anywhere along the coast, as they did before we arrived, and may still do after we’re gone.