A Completely Different Look and Update for Virginia’s Website

December 16, 2015 Brush Man

Riverton-Camp-1929 at age 18 teaching at summer nature camp. She never finished high school, but went on to win national book awards.

Virginia Eifert’s new website is up now.

Many of you know that I was led into my life of nature and art by my parents, but especially my mom, Illinois author of 20 books and editor of a magazine that’s still going after more than 75 years.

Collecting mushrooms for dinner. While she wrote a book on mushrooms, she almost poisoned the entire family with a wrong identification.

I still get fan mail for her, one just a few weeks ago, but I never seem to have enough time to add more of her massive collection of work on her website. Recently however, I toggled my painting of that big mural with updating her web ‘look’ and added some new albums- and it just went live at Virginia Eifert.com

I hope the look and feel of it is now better suited for use as a reference site, showing her life in some of the thousands of photos I still have here. Much of her work, is, as it should be, stored at Western Illinois University and the Illinois State Museum, but I have lots of it to share, more personal exploits of her adventures instead of the professional stuff.

Viriginia’s books are also being recreated for Kindle and Nook, and the next should be ready for her 105th birthday this coming January, “Land of the Snowshoe Hare” which is one of her best. I am also a product of Virginia in mind, body and soul. If I’ve been an artist for over 40 years, it’s because of Virginia, who fed me a complete diet of nature, art and science for the brief time she was here.

Publicity shot for the Illinois State Museum, who hired her at age 28 to create the museum magazine and series of books still in print today. She wrote 326 issues of the Living Museum until her death.

This from the website front page:

VIRGINIA EIFERT

AMERICAN AUTHOR AND ARTIST, PHOTOGRAPHER AND NATURALIST
1911 – 1966

A GIFTED NATURALIST WHO LEFT BEHIND A GREAT LEGACY OF WORK – VIRGINIA TOUCHED MANY LIVES IN MANY WAYS.

MEMORIAL COLLECTIONS OF HER WORK ARE IN WESTERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY AND THE ILLINOIS STATE MUSEUM.

THE PURPOSE OF THIS WEBSITE IS NOT TO SHOWCASE VIRGINIA’S KNOWN WORKS, HER MANY BOOKS AND THE FAME THAT STILL GARNERS FAN MAIL 50 YEARS AFTER HER DEATH, BUT TO SHOW HER PERSONAL LIFE, HER ROOTS OF HOW SHE ACHIEVED WHAT SHE DID.