Regular readers of this blog are familiar with the art and photography tour to Costa Rica led by Mindy Lighthipe and Nancy Richmond.
Recently Mindy and Nancy announced a new tour for 2016. The new tour is a trip to Honduras (May 21-30, 2016)! This adventure includes relaxing accommodations at one of the top 50 eco-lodges in the world, a rating assigned by National Geographic.
Sketching, hiking, rafting, snorkeling, mangrove forests, butterflies and waterfalls are a part of this new experience.
Posted in Education |
When living in an urban environment it is easy to ignore nature, even when we do encounter it within our city limits.
A flattened opossum on the road isn’t nature. It’s roadkill.
That Venus flytrap at the cash register isn’t a plant. It’s a novelty item that will be dead in two weeks.
And that coyote dodging traffic? Well, he is just crazy!
Is there enough “nature” in the urban landscape to warrant spending a lot of time on environmental education?
Dr. Katie Lynn Crosley says there most definitely is, however, to be successful, environmental educators need to address certain issues. Crosley discusses these issues and presents a solution in Advancing the Boundaries of Urban Environmental Education through the Food Justice Movement.
For environmental educators to be successful in the urban landscape, Crosley (2013) says they need to acknowledge their field’s history and how it tends to work. She says educators need to recognize the following:
Crosley (2013) explains that urban learners often view science as “irrelevant to their lives or identities.” This is a problem for environmental education (EE). Crowley (2013) suggests that environmental education needs to stop being a sub-component of the field of science. She goes on to say that other avenues need to be explored because staying within a field with rigid “scientific ways of knowing” (Crosley, 2013) limits the field’s ability to address social and cultural issues not usually addressed in traditional science education. To make the field more culturally responsive, Crosley (2013) proposes integrating environmental education with the food justice movement. Crosley (2013) proposes integrating EE with food justice because doing so shifts the focus from non-urban wilderness and science education to food, a subject more meaningful to urban audiences. Food is a part of everyone’s identity and is “applicable to human-dominated landscapes” (Crosley, 2013). Wilderness is not.
In a global economy that supports over 6 billion humans, the entire concept of nature or ‘wilderness’ as a pristine exterior is a romantic and potentially dangerous fiction that denies reality.
— Moffatt and Kohler (2008), excerpt from a quote cited in Crosley (2013)
Food Justice and Botany Education
What does food justice have to do with ArtPlantae’s mission of encouraging an interest in plants?
Food security is one of the fields discussed in the Botanical Capacity Project as being at risk in light of fewer colleges offering coursework and degrees in botany and in light of fewer people expressing interest in the plant sciences. If you recall from my previous article about this project, the Chicago Botanic Garden, the U.S. Office of Botanic Gardens Conservation International and several partners conducted a one-year project to assess the weaknesses of plant science education, research, and habitat management in the United States. These organizations identified gaps in society’s ability to manage issues in which plants play a role. Issues such as climate change, biodiversity, biofuel production and food security. I think Crosley’s proposal is relevant to this conversation and this is why I have chosen it to launch the Plants Everyday column. Unlike the art-specific and location-specific columns I write, this column will feature the casual ways plants weave in and out of our lives, whether we think about plants everyday or not.
To learn more about Dr. Crosley’s proposal and to learn more about the history of environmental education and the food justice movement, download her article.
Literature Cited
Moffatt, S. & Kohler, N. (2008). Conceptualizing the built environment as a social-ecological system. Building Research & Information, 36(3):248-268.
Posted in Plants Everyday, Plants Life Riverside |
Wendy Hollender will show you how.
She will also spend the next year supporting you on your journey.
Wendy Hollender is a botanical artist, illustrator, author and instructor. She is the author of Botanical Drawing in Color: A Basic Guide to Mastering Realistic Form and Naturalistic Color and Botanical Drawing: A Beginner’s Guide. She is the co-owner of Botanical Arts Press, LLC and the co-creator of a wildly successful crowdfunding campaign. Wendy has years of experience introducing botanical illustration to new audiences. Now she is ready to help you make nature drawing a habit.
The meditative and relaxing effects of observing and drawing nature have long been known. Making it a part of your life practice, however, has always been a challenge and it seems to get worse with every technological advancement and with every holiday release of a new gadget.
So how can you slow things down a bit?
Consider Wendy’s new subscription program A Year of Botanical Drawing. Announced only two days ago, Wendy’s one-year program provides students with the structure and support to learn botanical illustration, to develop their new skills and to make drawing a life-fulfilling habit. Enrollment is now open. The program begins in January 2016.
When registering for this program, students can choose between two options. For Option One, students receive a printed hard copy lesson with an easel-style binder in the mail each month. This easel-style binder keeps the current lesson propped up while working. For Option Two, students receive their monthly lesson as a PDF document. The only difference between the two options has to do with the format in which students receive their lessons. Other than this, both options include the following:
Give the gift of inner peace and stress relief this holiday season.
Learn more about this exciting new program at Drawing in Color.
Related
This new program has been added to the resource page Classes Near You > Online. Visit this page to view distance learning options in natural science illustration and botanical art.
Posted in distance learning, Education, Learning Opportunities, Teaching & Learning |
Gretchen Kai Halpert
www.gretchenhalpert.com
Gretchen Kai Halpert is the founder and instructor of a new online program in scientific illustration. A graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, Gretchen has many years of experience working as a scientific illustrator and teaching programs about natural science illustration.
Learn more about the distance learning program in scientific illustration at http://www.gretchenhalpert-distanceprogram.com.
Scientific Illustration, Session II, Pen and Ink
January 18-March 28, 2015 (no class Feb 16)
Session II focuses on composition, technical accuracy, how to conduct research, and producing portfolio pieces. In this class, we become adept with crow quill and ink on paper and scratchboard.
Go to www.gretchenhalpert-distanceprogram.com to view application on home page.
This information has been added to Classes Near You > Online Classes.
Posted in distance learning, Education, Learning Opportunities, scientific illustration |
Wild in the City: Fauna and Flora of Colorado Urban Spaces
Heidi Snyder & Dorothy DePaulo
Big Earth Publishing
November 2015
Wild in the City is a new book by
Heidi Snyder and Dorothy DePaulo. It is an urban field guide to the sights and sounds of Colorado’s Front Range. For those of us who do not live in Colorado, it is a fine example of what an urban field guide can be.
What makes this book special are the everyday discoveries and surprises the authors share with readers. Without their personal comments, the 91 species descriptions would be similar to the kind of information we’re accustomed to seeing in field guides. Because Heidi and Dorothy share their experiences as city-dwelling naturalists, Wild in the City is more than a regional resource, it is an invitation to explore the suburbs.
Complementing the inviting text are the authors’ true-to-life colored pencil paintings. Both authors are signature members of the Colored Pencil Society of America and have exhibited their work in many international exhibitions. Their colored pencil paintings are so engaging, you feel as if you could fall into them. Wild in the City is not packaged with sound, but if it were, we would hear waves lapping at the edge of a stream, hear the splashing sound water makes when ducks swim and hear the rustling of wind through cattails. On page 103, we would definitely hear the song of the Black-capped Chickadee. It would sound something like this (click “Typical voice”).
Here is a small sample of the flora and fauna featured in Wild in the City, plus a small tantalizing fact about each plant and animal:
Cottonwood Tree
The “cotton” seed production of this species may become a new source of biofuel.
Ring-billed Gull
The plumage of this species was once used to make ladies’ hats.
Northern Leopard Frog & Water Lilies
This species of frog was once collected by the food industry (frog legs).
Northern Leopard Frog and Water Lilies, ©2015 Dorothy DePaulo, all rights reserved
Quaking Aspen
The wood from this tree has been used to make chopsticks.
American Avocet
Day-old avocets can walk, swim and dive.
White Ash
A favorite wood to use for baseball bats.
Want to learn more?
You might also like:
The origin of botanical field guides
Note
In 2014 Dorothy DePaulo and Heidi Snyder were awarded the Julius I. Brown Grant by the American Society of Botanical Artists. Wild in the City: Fauna & Flora of Colorado Urban Spaces was made possible in part by a grant from the American Society of Botanical Artists. (More about ASBA grants)
Posted in book review, Teaching & Learning |
International Orders & PayPal too!
Dear All,
This past week I created a new website for the store. If you helped test the website, allow me to once again thank you for your help. This week has been a “soft” opening. Some of you have already seen and used the new store. This tells me links outside of this website are working.
This change means the store has some new capabilities. Here is a summary:
The store’s new Web address is https://artplantae.ecwid.com.
Please update your bookmarks and websites.
Thank you!
Posted in Blog News, Special Announcements |
This Weekend
Past Events
Photo credit: Robin Stewart, La Quinta Museum
Visit the La Quinta Museum and learn about pollinators, seeds and fungi. The following exhibitions are on view in the museum’s gallery through December 13, 2015:
Posted in Learning Opportunities |
Botanists and illustrators strive to document conifers around the world.
ArtPlantae Today 