Earth-tone shadows of leaves and French blue streams make up some of the subjects in Scott Stephens' prints. But he's not so interested in the great outdoors as he is in deconstructing and rebuilding it.

"As an artist, you know you're dealing with the re-representation of the natural world, so it becomes artificial," Stephens said.

Focusing on natural elements such as the way light falls on a cinder block wall, for example, is one way Stephens turns details into the big picture.

"One of the strategies for (re-representing nature) is to take close-ups, so that the object becomes even kind of hard to figure out what it is," he said. "I can then play with sort of the composition and try to get visual dynamism out of the composition."

Stephens' collograph, photo-etching, photo intaglio and cyanoprint works from the past 10 years will be on display at the Kennedy-Douglass Center for the Arts in Florence through Wednesday, April 30.

His work is part of collections at the Birmingham, Huntsville and Mobile museums of arts and museums across the country.

Shoals art fans have seen Stephens' work before: at a University of North Alabama show in the 1970s and at the Tennessee Valley Art Center in Tuscumbia in 2003.

"It's been a good while since we've had a print-

making exhibit," said Mary Nicely Kennedy-Douglass program coordinator. "We like to bring different kinds of art here."

"Untitled 002" takes on the hue of its subject, water rushing over rocks; it looks almost like a print of blue toile.

The piece is atypical of his work Stephens said; he describes it as "a theme, a situation you could almost walk into."

"Untitled 651," a photo etching of thin, willowy branches spilling from the top of the black-and-white picture is perhaps more representative of the other works in the exhibit. "They're aesthetically beautiful," Nicely said about Stephens' art.

His decision to label his art by numbers instead of titles reflects his almost detached conception of a piece.

"Having work untitled often makes people mad," Stephens said, but "I've never had an emotional beginning to a piece."

The Maralyn Wilson Gallery in Birmingham represents Stephens and sells his work.

"He is hugely popular," said Christy Daniel, manager of the gallery, who is looking into taking one of Stephens' printmaking classes. "We can't hardly keep his work it's selling so fast."

Stephens' prints stand out because of their large size. While most prints are viewed in books, most of Stephens' canvases are bigger than any page, some with widths of 42 inches.

At that point, they start to mimic other mediums, Stephens said.

"When you do large-scale prints, they're much more like paintings," he said. And in printmaking, the larger the canvas, more typically people work on them.

"Printmaking causes people to collaborate," said Stephens, who organized Alabama

Big Prints in 2002, a traveling exhibit featuring work of 12 artists.

Now an art professor at the University of Montevallo, Stephens, who's a Kansas native has taught in Belgium, Canada and France throughout his teaching career.

That influence is evident in his work.

A photo intaglio print of an ornate mailbox with an upside-down bicycle hanging on stand is from a photograph taken in Paris.

The South's winding roads and plump produce, however, made a lasting impression on Stephens'.

"It's a lot more lush," Stephens said of his art since he's moved to Alabama. "I think a lot of my abstractions that used to deal with just flat grids, really were part of the Midwest because the Midwest is so flat, and it's very linear when they build a road," he said.

"In Alabama, everything's curved."

Jennifer Crossley can be reached at 740-5743 or jennifer.crossley@timesdaily.com.