Beginning in 1988, Zahn has worked on the "Garden Journal" series. They explore the outer world of landscape at first, but in the last five garden journals, the human figure and psyche has reasserted its primary importance.

She recently exhibited "Garden Journal VI, Station," "Garden Journal VIII, Hanging Gardens" and "Garden Journal IX, Portraits," at the Washington Printmakers Gallery and will exhibit "Garden Journals X, Paradise" from June 22 to July 31 at Creative Partners Gallery in Bethesda.

"Stations is a series of fourteen etchings, drypoints and white-line woodcuts presented as a book depicting nudes and trees. The figures are in various attitudes of supplication, resentment, resistance, acquiescence, vulnerability, despair, escape and grief. They are "taking up their cross."

"Garden Journal VIII, Hanging Gardens" are one inch by thirty-six inch white line woodcuts which I call "stick prints." The prints dangle from a circular woodcut of nudes and revolve in the breeze. They are carvings of nudes, very colorful and seem to be amusing.

"Portraits" is a series of black and white etchings of friends who are engaged in "cultivating their gardens," or interests and in doing it so intensely are "taking up their cross." They include an actor, farmer, chemist, writer, potter, sculptor, cook, riverman, manic-depressive and mother. One of them has died while following his favorite pursuit and others are expending enormous effort to maintain their pursuits. In doing this they will ultimately reveal their true selves.

In "Garden Journal X, Paradise," people seem to relax for a brief time and accept the vast expanse of nature as being hospitable and welcoming. They are embraced by the sun, sand, sea and sky. This journal utilizes the bright colors of white-line woodcut to express a sense of well-being and freedom from inhibitions that being at the beach seems to inspire.

Various techniques were used in making these prints. Dry-pointing various models on large copper plates allowed me to be both free and controlled. The etchings in the center of these seven plates are of figures drawn from the unconscious who tell a traumatic story of betrayal and death. The white-line woodcuts, utilizing bright colors for drama, bring each episode or station to fruition or close.

In the portraits, I tried every etching technique I could to make the images both powerful and subtle. Deep bite in the end provided solutions to several of the plates as I tend to load the images with as much weight as they can bear. I destroy parts of the plate in order to see them. Doing this yields a way to pull disparate parts together and often creates very textured blacks and whites.