“I try to work at the point where two worlds touch; where there is a call, and a response,” says the artist Jody Guralnick, who moved to Aspen from New York in the mid–1980s. There her focus shifted from urban detritus such as cigarettes and scraps to the “different type of litter” found in the woods. A master naturalist with Aspen’s Forest Conservancy, Guralnick is fascinated by nature’s microscopic worlds. She sorts through and dissects insects, animals, plants, fungi, microbes, and human-made objects, and specializes in lichen. “As muses go,” she says, “yeast, mold, mushrooms, and lichen have a lot to offer.” Guralnick has recently painted the patterns that lichen forms on rocks, as well as the branching patterns of fungal growth. Fifteen of these works, made since 2022 and commenting on the transient and fragile nature of life, are on display at the Nancy Hoffman Gallery. —Jeanne Malle