SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - Like a Victorian naturalist's rustic laboratory, Rae Braden's tidy art studio is stocked with fascinating curios.

Artist Rae Braden displays a copy of her limited edition print, Surfing the Updraft, alongside the wood block she carved to produce it on her flat bed etching press while her dog, Atlak, asks to be taken on a nature walk. Braden added water colour paint to the finished print, subtly individualizing each image. - Daron Letts/NNSL photo

Rolls of topographical maps, photographs of Arctic landscapes and sketch pads in progress make up her ephemeral archive.

Small mammal skulls and bird bones rest neatly in a shallow box on a desktop. Dried plants, pressed flowers, water-worn pebbles and abandoned feathers are tucked into thin drawers stacked below.

These small artifacts help Braden imagine the big wonders of nature that infuse her drawings, paintings and prints when she is not tramping in the bush or pursuing wildlife through a lens.

Last year the 26-year-old artist participated in the Parks Canada artist in the park program, absorbing inspiration for a week on the remote banks of the Firth River in Ivavvik National Park in the Northern Yukon. She has also journeyed to Alert and the Kendall Island migratory bird sanctuary on the Northern tip of the Mackenzie River Delta to conduct surveys of shore birds for the Canadian Wildlife Service.

Back in her studio, she expresses her observations of Northern flora and fauna through the multimedia images she creates on her flat bed etching press, a huge chunk of machinery based on printing technology that has not changed much in 500 years.

"It takes practise, but it's a lot of fun," she said. "It's a really physical process."

Braden carves images on blocks of wood or rubber, applies ink, then rolls them through a pair of metal cylinders. Ink on the raised surface of the carving is transfered onto cotton paper or other absorbent canvases. To create more complicated reliefs, she returns to the inked block to carve new lines and shapes, allowing her to add more colours as she runs the blocks and paper back through the machine again and again.

Her largest print, titled Freeze Up, depicts stylized strata beneath the land based on a freehand sketch of the Earth's interior. The three-foot-tall artwork features seven colours produced through seven press runs.

Braden also creates monotypes, a style of printmaking in which individual works are produced by drawing on top of a Plexiglas plate. She challenges the traditional limits of the medium by transposing digital art onto her canvas, such as faded photographs of birds or fish, or by hand painting the print with water colours or drawing in charcoal. Sometimes she dribbles water onto soluble ink or seals leaves into a work to add random patterns to an otherwise ordered image.

The resulting collage of texture and technologies draws viewers into a unique visual experience in which natural realism mingles with abstract expressionism to convey a shared emotion.

She captures the beauty of the Arctic from offbeat perspectives – a baby bird on the ground, an aerial view of a kayak in icy rapids or the gentle contours of discarded vertebrae. The exceptional detail communicates a deep respect for the land and life.

"I'm totally inspired by where I live," she said.

Braden graduated in 2006 from the fine arts program at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, where she concentrated on printmaking and drawing. She began producing art full time last spring under the Strata Studios label.

She will exhibit her year's work this weekend with My Big Back Yard, a two-day art sale in the upper level of the Centre Square Mall.

"It's been so much fun working toward this and seeing a style develop," she said. "I just want to run with it and see where it goes."

The show opens Friday from 5 until 9 p.m. and continues on Saturday from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m.