The upcoming Lisa Mackie exhibition at The Ink Shop in Ithaca is a meditation on the phrase “The Forest for the Trees.”  To not see the forest for the trees means to not appreciate a larger situation because one has focused on only a few individual details.  Mackie thinks that the individual details, in art and in every context, are critically important.  What is a forest without its individual trees?  What is a painting without its individual brushstrokes?  The individual words “the,” “forest,” “for the,” and “trees” are as much a subject matter to Mackie as the trees and animals found in forests.