The frog was the first to catch my eye.

A rather charming frog as frogs go, seated on a lily pad. I followed his gaze upward to a small blue butterfly on the leaf of a plant.

The leaves of the plant composed of a delightful floral pattern, then my eyes moved beyond this plant to others behind it on a silk screened background!

Layered textures and the variations in color within this collage bade me linger.

And I did.

An iris appeared to be “popped up,” reminding me of the pop up books, which I still find delight in. I examined the flower from the side and moved along the collage to lily pads and back to my friend the frog.

“Rana” is the name of this collage, created in 2014 by artist Rebecca Goodale, composed of hand cut block, silkscreen and gelatin prints with ink on paper.

Bringing nature into focus. This is what Goodale does so well through her collages and artist books.

“It's what happens when you go outside and hold still,” Goodale said. “All of a sudden you see a frog; you may have been sitting there for 10 minutes not knowing you were sitting with a frog. Then you look over and see an ant over there, you see a bud on a plant.

“If you take the time to keep still you find that phantasmagorical, over-the-top experience of being with other living things.”

Her current exhibition at Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens is filled with collages such as “Rana,” and artists books that invite the viewer in to the wondrous abundance of nature and its diversity in Maine.

Goodale blends her background in printmaking, silkscreen printing and textile design with three-dimensional cutting and folding and collage. And the effect is compelling and captivating.

Goodale has been making artists books for over 30 years, and for just over half those years, her focus has been on Maine's endangered flora and fauna.

In August 1999, on her way to buy a newspaper, Goodale found herself near an injured kingfisher outside the Goodwill building in Portland. Everyone gathered there that morning wanted to help, but were helpless. Fortunately someone who could help arrived to take the bird to the wildlife rehab in York.

Driving away, Goodale decided the best way she might be able to help was to artistically place those species in the public eye.

In 2000, she contacted Maine nature locations and the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife and gathered endangered species lists. After learning there were already 190 rare plants listed for Maine, excluding those on the federally protected list, Goodale was convinced this was a path she would take.

Goodale's intention is to inspire sensitivity for these rare flora and fauna by using her background in book arts and textile design to interpret color, pattern, rhythm and transition. She estimated this would be a 7 to 10 year project.

Now, 16 years later, Goodale has crafted 80-plus titles/artists books. Goodale's series of artist books addresses 200 plants and approximately 50 animals listed as threatened or endangered. These are created solo or in collaboration with a poet or writer.

There are two interlocking books at Boothbay’s Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens.

“Summer Grape” is a black and white hand colored silkscreen print interlocking accordion cloth bound book stretching across the top of a bookcase in the Resource Room. The other, “Smooth Winterberry — Male and Female,” created in 2103, is of handcut silkscreen prints with hand sewing, also gracing the top of a bookcase.

The Winterberry project began as any other. Goodale checked her lists.

Winterberry was among the flora, and she had the shrub, related to holly, in her backyard.

Goodale said she knew from the start that this project would be an interlocking book; it grows like a hedge, after all.

“I begin by drawing it. I get to know it so well, looking at it with my eyes as a person would, not like a botanical illustrator,” Goodale said. “I learn the habits of the plant, how it looks in the landscape. Like holly, winterberry has male and female plants. I wanted to have clusters of berries, then areas without berries repeated throughout.”

Goodale invests a great deal of time researching the subject of every book she has created. The amount of what she learns that’s incorporated into the resulting book varies, as does the number of editions she makes of each title.

Typically, Goodale creates 5 to 10 editions, enabling the books to appear in a more than one venue, such as libraries, universities and museums — or botanical gardens.

Goodale says she wants her books to be “experiential as you turn the pages.” Some of her page-turners pack a subtle punch, and others a powerful one.

“The Rotating Ring,” created in 2003, is an example of the latter. Created through a diversity of mediums, Goodale makes a strong statement on the fragile status of some creatures and plants in nature. Although this piece is not included in the CMBG exhibit, it can be viewed on YouTube.

The set of three rotating rings/flexigon are 10.5 by 9 by 4.25" that are hand colored silkscreen prints with collage, the affect of which is greatly enhanced by sound, heard when a ring is twisted.

The endangered ring is the loudest of the three filled with plastic beads creating a tambourine-like sound. It depicts a black racer, ringed boghaunter, roseate, least and black terns and tall white violet.

The extirpated ring sound is fainter — filled with paper confetti — and represents walrus, grey wolf, wolverine and caribou.

The extinct ring is eerily, alarmingly silent for the pigeon, great auk, sea mink and Labrador duck.

Goodale is currently working on a new process: acetate lithography, and a book on the unicorn root. A collage on the root, not indigenous to Maine, is part of the CMBG show.

Goodale has just finished making the plates for the lithograph and had begun the printing process.

“The piece has an actual unicorn dragging the unicorn root along,” Goodale said. “The root is filled with blue butterflies — once believe to be extirpated from Maine, but which are now reappearing. Because the unicorn root is considered to be extirpated, having the butterflies coming along between the unicorn and the plant, I thought might be a poetic way of saying it, too, might come back.”

Her work is imaginative, unique, inventive. It's no wonder Goodale's artist books are part of the permanent collections in places like Bowdoin College and Harvard University, the Fogg Museum of Art and Portland Museum of Art, the Library of Congress and the Maine Women Writers Collection.

Goodale's limited exhibition of collage and artists books are at CMBG through July 31 and at The Turtle Gallery in Portland through Aug. 8. Selected works are for sale.