An inspiring and stimulating evening at the Art Science Salon “Dual Natures: Illuminating the Illustrator’s Mind” at the Kittredge Gallery, Puget Sound University. Invited by Angela Mele, fellow scientific illustrator and education & outreach specialist at the Slater Museum of Natural History, at this collaboration between the museum and the gallery, science illustrators discussed their passion for illustration,  professional path, and what inspires their creations. 

In the intimate space of the gallery, a full room of art and science students, faculty, and community members joined Barbara Ierulli, Liz Clayton Fuller, and myself for short presentations, and extended discussions around some of our artworks. The audience was also invited to express their own artistic talent with a game of “Exquisite Corpse” using museum specimens as inspiration.
 
“Exquisite Corpse” or “Cadavre Exquis” is a game invented in 1925 Paris in a house inhabited by the surrealist poets and authors M. Duhamel, J. Prévert and Y. Tanguy. A group collaboration, and chance-based game played by 3 to 6 participants - each player jots down a word, folds the paper to hide that word, and pass it to the next writer to compose a surprising sentence consisting of a noun, adjective, verb, direct object and adjective. “Le cadavre – exquis – boira – le vin – nouveau” was the fist sentence produced hence the name of the game.
​
Popular at gatherings of surrealist artists, the game morphed into an entertaining, collaborative, creative experience,   quickly adopted by writers, poets, and visual artists.  

Members of the Northwest chapter of the Guild of Natural Science Illustrators    are showing their artwork at the exhibit  Nature's Call: Natural History of the West, at the  Clymer Museum  in Ellensburg, Washington. Two of my works "Feline Power" and "Deep Sea Tubeworms" are part of this attractive show.

The show provides a unique chance for familiar inhabitants of the Northwest (North American bobcat or grunt sculpin) and unusual forms of life found in the great depths of the  Pacific Ocean (Deep sea tubeworms) to coexist at the museum for a while. The show runs from May 6 through June 25.
Music, food, and wine at the  opening - Friday, May 6 from 5-7 pm.

Artists in this show are  Jennifer Bates,  Sharon Birzer,  Krister Eide,  Emily Eng,  Justin Gibbens, Michael Felber,  Jessica Heide,  Jan Hurd,  Barbara Ierulli,  Susan Jones,  Dan McConnell,  Terri Nelson,  Michelle Poston,  Sylvia Portillo,  Véronique Robigou,  Elizabeth Smith,  Cyndi Tamayao,  Margaret Trent    and  Rachael Whitehead.      

What a treat to spend a day with the class of 2017 graduate students!
 
The students that live year-round at the North Cascades Environmental Learning Center, a field campus tucked in the alpine North Cascades National Park, prepare for a Master in Environmental Education. The program focuses on place-based learning and includes field science, cultural studies, teaching, and nonprofit administration. Passionate about the outdoors and the wilderness that they are immersed in, some graduates will move on to lives in outdoor education. Others will take leadership in conservation and nature programs nurturing the next generation of environmental stewards.

I had a great opportunity to spend time with these students during my creative residency at the center. We had in depth conservations about their studies, their fieldwork, and career aspirations on a daily basis. We also spent a day discussing how field studies, scientific inquiry, and artistic talent can be woven together to explore, quantify, and better understand our natural environment. The group eagerly headed out to the wooded lakeshore to collect data, despite the downpour on a cold, soggy day. And they collaborated to produce artful maps based on their field observations.
 
Animated team discussions, colored pencils, and watercolors turned a gloomy day into “Liquid Sunshine”, a fun, learning time illustrating unique maps. Grounded in field observations each map reflects the curiosity, knowledge, creativity, and sense of humor of the students.

​I am excited to spend time in the Cascades at the North Cascades Environmental Learning Center.
​
​I am immersing myself in snowy landscapes for a winter, creative residency.  The center is located on Diablo Lake, the reservoir created behind Diablo Dam on the upper Skagit River.