For three decades, artist Ann Zahn has been telling stories with her prolific production of etchings, lithographs and relief prints. Her works deal with the day-to-day scenes of her home and garden, portraits of friends, observations of animals - mixed in with explorations of dream-like situations and psychologically-charged encounters.

The movement and emotion of these works is all the more immediate because Zahn draws images from nature directly on the plate, stone or block without preliminary sketches. In this large-scale retrospective exhibition, related works from all of her series of the last 30 years are presented, including the spectacular 11-foot-tall, multi-part Garden Journal XII: Earth, Air, Fire, Water.

As a founding member of the Washington Printmakers Gallery and of Creative Partners Gallery in Bethesda, Zahn has long been a key member of the D.C.-area arts community. For a number of years, she has opened her Bethesda studio to fellow printmakers to develop and share their work, arranging for periodic group shows of their efforts. Zahn has exhibited widely in this area and in other parts of the country and overseas. In one Washington Post review, her pieces are described as "very full, lovely prints, at once dense and delicate in light and tone whether printed in colors or in black and white." Zahn's work is represented in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the National Museum of American Art and the National Museum of Women in the Arts, among other institutions.