Click on the image and see it enlarged in your browser. Just too much going on in the drawing to miss out.
Glacier National Park concept 2 in design
Recently, a friend asked me if I still enjoyed making art. Strange question for me – it’s simply what I do. Glacier National Park: this project might appear daunting as hell, but, for me, it’s a real kick. So yes, I still enjoy making art – especially if it looks hopeless and then I save it from crashing. It’s just never ‘safe’.
This painting will eventually become the back of the new Glacier National Park map, the one you get at the gate along with the other 3.3 million visitors each year. It’s the 7th park I’ve painted these for and none have been easy and safe, not a single one. I know Glacier pretty well. I spent a summer there decades ago painting and hiking, but not well enough to just start drawing.
Glacier concept 1
Above is the original concept, with a view of the foreground showing an alpine ecosystem, bears, goats, sheep, marmots and pikas. Beyond that, the scene opens up in a giant oblique aerial view. Easy? Not so much!
And then this: we were supposed to meet there with park staff from Glacier and Harpers Ferry Center in West Virginia in August, but the Blackfeet Tribe closed all park entrances on the east side because of COVID. So, gone was any idea of actually getting first-hand knowledge. I did what I like to do, I just make this all up, just started drawing and out came a pretty acceptable painting design.
Here’s version 2, getting it defined.
Glacier National Park concept 2
Then a conference call with park staff happened and we decided to add a living glacier on the right, more glaciers in the middle mountain which is now much bigger and closer.
Glacier concept 3
And I think we’re closing in on how it will look. Using a bunch of web photos from the park’s Flicker account, and the park map (below), it’s feeling like it actually might work. Stay tuned for more as this project develops. I’m thrilled it actually might look like something.
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In the 1970’s, I hiked into Caribou Lakes Basin in Northern California’s Trinity Alps. It’s a place of great beauty, stark white Sierra granite and rare plants that mix Pacific Coastal and Cascade ecosystems together in a jumbled profusion – the most conifer species together in one place in North America. That evening, I camped near another hiker, an older gentleman who was comfortably stretched out on a flat shelf of granite above the lake. (I was about 28 years old and everyone with white hair looked old to me.) It was a bit of a shock to realize he was without a tent or stove – or even a sleeping bag. I remember actually being a little worried about him, then realized he was traveling as light as one could in those days. He knew exactly what he was doing, much more than I did. After more consideration, I realized he wouldn’t have been there in the first place had he been carrying the normal 40+ lbs. we all struggled with in those days. A big smile was on his face, I remember that, and he looked to have less than half of 40 lbs. spread around him. No wonder he was smiling!
His main equipment seemed to be just a big tarp, and after his cold dinner he simple rolled everything, including himself, inside the tarp and spent the night poking his head out to star-watch, decades before Dark Skies became a ‘thing’ in Parks. I remember thinking he was like a big burrito, rolled in that tarp, and wondered if the bears liked Mexican. The next day, he told me he was in his 70’s and was determined not to stop hiking, experiencing pristine and untrammeled nature and that it kept him healthy.
Today, I am that guy!
Larry Eifert 74th Birthday
The Addition of Art
Very early on I learned to carry paper and pencil, watercolors and brushes into the wild. Little paintings that became the result piled up at home – so I started selling them, and all these years later I can say I’ve actually made a good living painting nature. It takes thousands of paintings to become an artist, and, well, that’s just what I did, one little effort at a time. The ah-hah moment came in the 80’s when I realized I could make art in national parks, and park staff might find a place for them actually in the park.
Early morning pond ice at 6000 feet in August, Olympic National Park.
As the decades passed, the outdoor gear companies caught up with me, and my tent, bag, stove and all the rest now weighs about as much as the older gent’s tarp – yes, the tent, bag, pack and all the rest weigh in at about 25 lbs, including the painting materials. What that means is that besides me, many more women and older hikers are out there now, and with some physical luck, I’ll bet you I can continue to do this into my 80’s. These days I don’t go as far, or as high, but still I get to meaningful and stunningly-wild places all the same.
Six Moon Designs Lunar Solo, my 2-pound tent in action.
So why go to all this trouble with the art-thing? Why go to wild country and take paper and pencil, maybe some paints. Wouldn’t it be easier just to pull out my phone and take pictures like everyone else? See it, point and tap. My short answer is, yes, of course it’s easier to take a photo. I do this too. But this art-thing is vastly beyond the level of hastily recording your journey. It’s not just about holding up a plastic box in front of you, shielding your eyes from what you might actually be seeing and looking into a little TV. It’s about YOU actually seeing what you’re looking at and seeing it better. A lot better!
When I make a little sketch, it takes some studying.
You don’t just bang it out and run down the trail, and that’s why most of these are either early morning or late afternoon paintings made around camp. Those contemplative times mean I can stand there and ask myself just how does that mountain ridgeline go? How are the trees in front of it highlighting certain areas of the mountains behind them? What about the foreground where there’s a little path, maybe that might be moved over a bit to make a better composition. In fact, maybe I can move the mountains a bit left to highlight some details I like. Oh, you sure can’t do THAT with your phone camera, can you? It’s a clear day, totally blue skies? Maybe I could add some clouds to make it more complex and interesting, just a few flicks of the pencil and I have mountains tearing at passing clouds, making movement and drama. You see, it’s not just about making art from what you see, it’s about designing nature to look even better than it is – and these places are fairly wonderful already.
Meadows Camp
I usually start these little paintings by just taking a moment – and looking, really looking at what I got all enthrawled with in the first place. What did I think might make it a nice piece of art? I try not to design the entire thing in my mind, just get a sense of what’s out there. Maybe it’s some fish swimming below me in a clear pool, a bird going about it’s business, the way two ridgelines come together. The painting above shows some of this, the way the two mountains lean inwards toward the picture’s center. Then the trail angles away and upwards towards the same spot. It’s a way to bring the wondering eyeballs towards the tent, the center-of-interest where you want viewers to end up. I wanted them to imagine that THEY, the viewers are walking up the trail towards camp.
American Dipper
American Dippers are one of my favorite creatures to paint. These little gray birds make their lives along only the clearest and coldest mountains streams, and even nest behind waterfalls where the little growing family is constantly wet, or very nearly so. Given a sharp elbow bend in the stream, they will always fly over water the long way instead of short-cutting it through forest. But here’s the best part. They make their living by walking and flying underwater, looking for insects, small fish and caddisfly larva. For me, an artist-naturalist, they hold fascination because of their homes, maybe more than the bird itself. In this painting, I carefully left the area behind the dipper so the dull-gray bird would stand out better on it’s perch rock. In reality, a second after I drew it, the bird jumped into the pool and vanished as it made it’s way in search of dinner. Yes, they dip up and down when rock-sitting.
Royal Creek – Glacier Flour Blue
That evening, I watched the colors of the setting sun high overhead and beyond the mountains. I had lost the sun an hour earlier down in this canyon, but had already picked out a ‘sitting rock’ for morning coffee, a Starbucks instant backpackers seem to prefer – me too. As I looked at the sky overhead, I noticed the silhouetted trees arched over the top of me. Of course, in reality they were actually straight vertical, but I made this painting look like they were arched over me, closing me in like a shelter. For clarity and design, I left out about half of them and focused on just two for details. Did I get the point across?
Looking Up – It’s a Glorious Sunset
I should probably mention here that this year Six Moon Designs sponsor me by passing over some of their gear to try. I feel good that, at 74, I have such a company willing to help me continue my life of hiking, making it easier to get to these places. The painting below is their Lunar Solo, a beautiful little single-hiker tent that’s making these trips a joy. That’s a single pole holding it up. The entrance side can be opened wide for an 8-foot view, sort of like a picture window. I love to sit inside with both sides opened up. This evening I sat there and watched the sun set as I drew this painting almost to completion, adding my water jug, stove and coffee mug in the foreground to give it scale and a connection to me. Those things were placed there at the end once I sketched the rest of it. In front, the huge meadow allowed me to watch wildlife appear at the end of a hot day, but by the time the deer showed up, the painting was finished. Does it feel like you’re there ready to crawl into your sleeping bag? I hope so.
Sunset inside the tent
I truly believe that making simple expressions on paper can enhance a hike anywhere, and give you something solid to remember it with.
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This painting has been a work in progress for long enough, so I thought I should offer it here to end my fussing with it.
These little seasonal streams are everywhere in the Northwest, and you can’t hike too far without seeing a few. I like them, each one different, and American Dippers also like them possibly because they’re less dangerous than big and more powerful waterfalls that can crush little birds. I read that harlequin ducks who share these same habitats have been found to have many healed broken bones from crashing about underwater in these streams. It’s probably the same for smaller dippers.
I like the textures in this painting, so maybe that’s why I kept it around, making it more textural, then less, then – oh just sell it. Like the painting process, nature is messy, until you understand it, and in this case the way ferns and saxifrige leaves all jumble together, each staking claim on a momentary bit of sunlight streaming through the canopy. When the light finally does penetrate all the way to the forest floor, it’s like a brilliant spotlight is highlighting an actor in a play.
This painting is acrylic on board and is 11″ x 14″.
I have a scan that can make a high-quality print up to 32″ x 42″ on canvas.
And currently, it’s framed as you see it here under glass in a wood frame. Outside dimensions are 20″ x 24″. It’s acrylic on board, so it might not need the glass.
Dipper-Misty-Waterfal-framed
Price for this painting FRAMED as you see it is $295, about 40% less than gallery price. Shipping would add a bit more.
All these images should enlarge in our browser, so please click to see the details.
Making Art – Part of Salmon Restoration
While the words are only in placeholder form, I wanted to show off this new painting. It’s going to be installed as a public wayside exhibit at the Smith Island Restoration Project on the Snohomish River Estuary, north of Seattle. This project has been going of for years, heavy equipment removing old dikes, building others and generally restoring a vast area of junk yards and farmlands to wetlands so that it becomes salmon habitat. It cost over a billion dollars and I’m proud to have been involved in a tiny way with my painting.
Here’s how it started on this painting. I had photo references that showed me how it looks at low tide. They gave me much latitude on my design and how it looks and feels, so I made it more of a dramatic sunset image. Below is how a corner of the place actually looks, a brackish slough, perfect for young salmon. I made some basic sketches and just started painting. I imagined a mid-tide level so I could show the fish.
Smith Island Slough
You’ll notice the great-blue heron on the left suddenly got bigger as it gained a more important place in the story.
Closeup scans of the left and right sides show the level of detail.
Below, I’m closing in on the final painting before I added the insets and text blocks.
The final installation will be 48″ x 24″. I pleased that people will be looking at this for decades as the place grows into itself again. A few years ago it was a landscape that’s unrecognizable now. I remember part of it was a junkyard and tire dump that caught fire awhile ago, burning for weeks. I could see the smoke miles away. The absolutely lowest level of what we can do to wreck a natural place – it’s no wonder salmon are in trouble. Now, there are salmon and herons, kingfishers and Nootka roses in bloom (or soon will be).
Thanks for this commission go to Snohomish County, WA and Gretchen Glaub who worked with me to make it happen.
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Making art on the trail – it’s my way of taking home some souvenirs. The very act of making art means I have to slow down, stop forward motion and actually see nature around me. I often pass hikers so intent on the trail coming up before them they don’t even see me standing beside there, watching them and wondering if they’ll even notice me. Some don’t! I suspect it’s the same for the deer and bears they pass too. I imagine them saying “many people come here looking, but there are so few actually seeing”.
I’m an older hiker now in my mid-70’s, but I’m still passionate about continuing this odd sort of primitive act of strapping a bag on my back and walking up a mountain. I’ve done it for a very long time now, and I never feel so close to life as I do out when I’m out there. It seems important, and I want to continue to do this as long as I’m able. So, some changes had to be made a few years ago – lighter equipment, a lighter me, a healthier lifestyle, regular exercise and being more careful how I walk. I’m now much more aware of being safe, and I’m facing the fact that just one stupid stumble and it might be the last step of trail I ever do. So I’ve slowed my pace, shorten goals and buy new boots more often. This means there are some new perks, like going slow enough to inspect how nature works, see the vibrancy of nature and how it goes on in the wild without us messing with it.
My paint kit, paints, paper, pencil and sharpener weighs in at about 12 ounces.
This is a cheap way to have fun.
Slowing down means I can make art while I’m out there, although I’ve always done this in some form – even when I was running down the trails. There are lots of ways to do this, and I fool around with several processes. One is to draw out the sketches while on the trail, refine them at home and add color there. That way I don’t have to carry the paints and mess with water or the sun, and it takes less time. Other trips I take the entire kit of paints, pencil, paper and sharpener and a brush, sit down in a meadow in the morning or evening after hiking, and paint with it all on my lap. This way I can match the colors I see instead of translating information from memory or photos later at home – or just making it up. It’s a more authentic painting, I think, to do it all on the spot.
Equipment: I really like, am almost passionate about, Noir black wood HB#2 pencils from Ticonderoga, and I carry a tiny little pencil sharpener called a “Long Point”. This little thing keeps the pencil sharper far longer than normal sharpeners, important when I’m in the flow of seeing and drawing.
While there are far better papers, the 5.5″ x 8.5″ 400 Series Strathmore Watercolor blocks ($5 for 12 sheets) are cheap, hold up well with scrubbing out goofs and provide a way to store finished paintings on the trail. Keep the paper small and paintings go quicker. Prang double set of watercolors ($11.50) provide a closed kit for hiking and yet opens to a nice set of paints opposite lots of mixing trays. It comes with a nice brush, big enough for wash work, small enough for details – and it stores in the pallet.
You don’t need more. For under $20, the entire painting kit weighs about 12 ounces and can be tucked into my pack, just waiting, tantalizing me, offering to make my hike a far better memory. It’s saying, “take me out, open me up”. Want proof, you’re reading this, aren’t you?
This is how I work
On a lunch break, I was standing beside a back eddy on Heather Creek. The stream was high and quick, running fast with a warm day’s runoff from the melting snows upslope. Suddenly, I noticed a flash in the water, then movement, then more. Half a dozen brook trout were holding in the back eddy, facing downstream. Occasionally, a fish would break rank, dart out into the opposite-flowing current and snatch up an insect floating by.
These fish were perfectly color matched with their rocky surroundings, and the slight reddish pectoral fin was all that gave them away. That fin, just behind the eye, the one that often lays flat so it shows from above was what told me which trout species I was seeing. That slight bit of warm red was only occasionally visible, or I’d have missed seeing them altogether. So, now here’s the best part of this experience. I did this piece of art standing right in front of them, and now, as I write this, I realized those fish are most likely still there, still going about their business in that bit of stream. I may be gone from there, but this bit of nature is probably not. I have a good memory, but it will always maintained by this painting of them. This gives me great satisfaction, some small token of this trip that I can conger up later to remember what I thought was a superior moment.
I was waiting for dinner
Like many solo hikers, I use a JetBoil stove that gives me a liter of boiling water in 100 seconds. It’s light, stores all its parts inside the pot, and I can have morning Starbucks coffee in one minute flat. Think of that! I started camping in a time when a wood fire was all I had, all anyone had to get a hot cup of coffee or a warm meal. It was a true ordeal, scratching up raw dirt for a fire pit so I wouldn’t burn the place down, scrounging around under bigger trees for small dry twigs and then bigger branches, finding dry duff for tinder – then hoping the darned thing actually started. I still makes fires occasionally, but the urgency in the past is past. Instead, I can paint a little picture of what I saw, the kitchen – or the open meadows before me, clouds breaking off the peaks above Royal Basin to the west. I used the two ancient Douglas-firs snags for the center of interest and two matching little firs just starting life for the foreground.
It may not seem apparent from these little watercolor paintings, but I’m really not that abstract all the time. I paint bigger stuff, I mean BIGGER stuff, often for the National Park Service for parks around the country.
I recently used my knowledge of the Olympic Mountains to paint 500 sq feet of murals for the Hoh Rain Forest Visitor Center, and the process wasn’t really much different than hiking up a trail and learning what the place looks like. Yes, it’s the same guy doing both the trail paintings and these huge wall paintings. Me.
Also for Olympic National Park, I’ve painted several large wall murals of the Elwha Dam deconstruction, the largest dam removal in US history. The murals showed how the river would look after nature heals and was used for community outreach in libraries, visitor centers and schools. These were painted using day hikes to gain references, and again it was the process of studying nature and then just putting it down on a huge canvas. To tell you the truth, while I like doing these big paintings – standing by a river and drawing fish in the back country is much more fun.
Elwha River Estuary Olympic National Park
Finally, about the Tent
You can see my sketch pad in the foreground, in front of my camp, the tent set up for the evening. This is my routine, set it up, make water for the night with my filter down by the creek or lake, then settle in and make some art while there’s still light. Because I’m not carrying 40+ lbs any more, I can paint instead of licking my wounds. I feel good, and this tent is helping. It’s a Six Moon Designs Lunar Solo from a small company in the Portland, Oregon area. They sent me this to use, and my packed tent weight went from 6 lbs to 1 lb 10 ounces. It’s an amazing shelter, I think, that uses my single hiking stick as the pole. No tent poles means an even lighter tent.
This brings me back to how I started this story, about older people getting out, experiencing nature and bringing back memories. It’s a subtle hint that, if you like what I’m writing about here, you can do this too. Get some cheap or used gear to start, do some short hikes, sleep under the stars and find some real happiness in these strange times.
Go to the mountains, it will heal your soul.
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“Getting out there”, the mentally and physically healing immersion into wild nature is nothing new. Okay, I understand what it does for the soul, not to mention an aging body, but it cannot be understated. We’ve gotten to know the some quickie lowland Olympic hikes and this post is about an easy early-summer trail. A couple of years ago I painted this acrylic of the river beside that trail, its namesake. It shows the river crashing along during the early spring snowmelt. The photo below was taken close to the same place, a month and some years later, shot just a two days ago.
Some hikers passed us, going at a jog, all careful of the fact we were socially distancing. Everyone was passing like they should, like they were smart. All had snowshoes, gear for alpine efforts – that told me they were probably returning from Mt Constance a few miles west and vastly up. Decades ago, I, too, would have been running down the trail and aiming for a hamburger. Now? Not so much in a hurry. For our part, it’s not the act of getting there and back, although we did that, but rather appreciating nature on every step. We were already there, after all, every step of the way. Smelling for forest, feeling the rising humidity from the river, closely looking at details, hearing and feeling our surroundings is now what it’s all about.
In my later years, I’ve come to truly worship those details, the way a branch has become intertwined with moss, a columbine flower presenting itself to a pollinator. Taking an extra few minutes for some field sketching makes me intently focus even sharper, to see the mountain rising up ahead, how the glaciers carved this valley and where the trees seem to grow best – or the fire scars on hillsides where ancient burns came down the valley.
Nancy photographing some trail-side columbine.
On a sunny south-facing slope, I spotted some California hazel, a soft-leaved shrub I remember from my years of trails in the Trinity Alps and High Sierra. Hazel and cascara, another southern shrub were both here, remnants of warmer climates now past. It takes a lifetime of doing this stuff to quickly grasp these details, and it’s what I tend to focus on these days, the details. I’m not a botanist, I didn’t even take biology in school (how’d THAT happen?), but I love these mountains, any mountains, and want to understand how they work, who the characters are, why they’re here.
The physical world is still in charge, no matter what we think! I lost a good friend this past week, Ron Mastrogiuseppe, a former scientist and naturalist for the National Park Service. Ron was the first naturalist for Redwood National Park and over the years he taught me an appreciation for nature you don’t find in books. Sure, books are important to get you the basics, but in field observation you get the actually interaction of an ecosystem, right before your eyes. Ron was considered to be somewhat eccentric, but I’d call it more a heightened level of observation and deep believe in science. He is listed as discoverer of a tree species in the Sierra, along with his wife, Joy. Ron also found proof of the date Mount Mazama erupted, when Crater Lake was formed and reset our known history of that amazing lake. One doesn’t do that just reading books or watching TV, but actually going there in person. Ron founded Crater Lake Institute and commissioned many pieces of art from me. He helped me appreciate the details, and maybe more importantly, how the details really matter.
Science, it drives passion and love for things far beyond just walking past a shrub or two. Once I understood that, I was changed forever.
Upstream on the Dose – with the Olympics just beginning.
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Edging in towards final approval for this project has been going since my site visit last summer. This makes the third painting I’ve finished for National Park Service maps, and the list couldn’t be any different: Point Reyes California , El Malpais New Mexico, this one – and Glacier National Park in Montana is scheduled this summer.
This close-up section which should enlarge if you click on it. Here’s the brief back story: a highway now runs right through this scene, cutting the park in half. So, it was decided to make it look like it was 200 years ago – no highway, but all the same critters. Fort Matanzas is an old Spanish coastal fort, the reason for the park, but it’s also the LAST undredged river estuary on the entire east side of Florida – so they wanted a mural of nature instead of human history.
This will soon be the back of the park map, a publication that will be in the hands of about everyone who visits, then sticks it in the glove compartment of the rental car, takes it home.
And here’s the fort, cannons and all – including the barracks inside. The sketch below was drawn soon after I was there.
The site visit: Below is what happens when you take a camera from an air conditioned rental car into the 96% humidity of Florida in summer. Imagine a job that daily puts you out here with life jackets and bullet proof Kevlar vests – some of the rangers carried towels to constantly dry off with.
I learned a lot about this place. The sand here is a beautiful mix of shells and white powder. One of the ranger gave me an session in how it’s made. Coquina sand, the yellow s stuff is what becomes of these golden shells after they’re ground up in the surf, and of course that story had to be in the painting too. After 100 changes to the original art as we went along, I actually think it’s finished!
Thanks for reading this week. You can sign up for emails for these posts on my website at larryeifert.com, down the right side of the home page.
Down through the ’33’, a piece of forest that’s like a park. The name came from how much it cost.
Nancy and I are truly fortunate to have our own bit of nature here that’s big enough to actually camp in. Through the years, we’ve added to it, strategically bought chunks here and there, and now it’s a very tasty place to walk. So, since we’re supposed to stay home, how about a little backpack with Nancy as the supporting photographer and me as painter!
This patch of trilliums come up each spring, getting bigger each time and is at the start of a little loop that is really a complex bunch of deer trails. I have some new equipment, so, out we went with that new Six Moon Designs pack on to try out their new tent, a Lunar Duo. If I can’t do it up a mountain somewhere, I can try it out here.
Along the way, I tried to get a couple of small paintings going, just jestures of how it felt here on a warm spring day in a forest I know better than any. This huge big-leaf maple is a favorite of mine, a giant sprawling mass of life that changes each year as branches fall off in winter storms. A couple of years ago, a fawn was born here.
A little way down the deer trail this little scene unfolds. I made the trail a bit wider in the painting, hopefully the deer won’t notice.
My new Lunar Duo tent from 6 Moon Designs – a perfect tent for an old guy.
Here’s a little tent review for the Lunar Duo, a perfect ultralight two-person tent:
This tent is already a hit with me. Less than half the weight of my old standby, yet much bigger in size. For decades I’ve carried a free-standing tent, one with enough complicated poles that you wouldn’t want to put it together in the dark. The Lunar Duo comes in at 2.5lbs and uses one carbon fiber pole and my hiking stick, that’s it. (my old tent was about 6lbs. and had about 30 little poles all stuck together with bungies)
I’ve read this one takes some fiddling and adjusting to put it up, and requires ground soft enough for the titanium stakes, but that’s the same as the other one – I never camp on rocks and still had to connect it to the ground. With a floating floor, this was up in minutes and I was set for the night. The floating floor means it just floats around under you like a little water tight boat under a waterproof cover.
Thanks for reading this week. Stay well out there so you can join me in the next addition of this little journey. Art and nature, they go together well, even if you’re still at home.
All photos by Nancy Cherry Eifert using the old Nikon backpacking camera without post processing.
A couple of new watercolors to help me, and maybe you, too. Frustrating times, aren’t they, but the point here is that I’m doing some remembering that these beautiful places are still there, still lovely and only a few miles away. They’ll be there when we return to whatever is the new normal after this pandemic. In the meantime, I’m hunkered down, waiting for time to pass so Nancy and I can get out there and hike beaches that make me understand what’s really important. These places will be here, even if we’re not, and even long after I’m gone. For me, it’s a measure of comfort to remember this.
Shore Crab
As I get older, I seem to be regaining an understanding that this stuff really means a lot to me. Don’t get me wrong, it always has, it’s just that I realize I can still get out there and I damned well should. And making a little bit of art of my experiences makes me enjoy it twice. One experience when I was there, and a second time when I make a little painting about it. The painting can come from a location sketch, or a photo, but the main thing is that painting gets me to actually LOOK at the place, to see how the beach curves around the shore, how the colors reflect in the water, how the sunset brightens it all up to a warm orange instead of just blue and green.
Ruby Beach, extreme low tide
I also don’t think these need to be full-blown paintings you might frame and hang. Just putting it here on my website and blog means more eyeballs will see these than if they were framed and sold to a private buyer. It’s almost public art here – and I sure know a thing or two about that, don’t I, and here’s the difference: public art means committees – and these paintings were created by a committee of one. Me.
The Junior Ranger program is nationwide and in most National Parks. I’ve contributed to a few in the past, providing art for the activity books. If you don’t know, it works like this: your kiddo asks at the visitor center for the book, they fill out the fun pages of puzzles and questions, many requiring getting out in the park – then get the Junior Ranger badge when you turn it back in before you leave. It’s a big deal, with millions of kids involved. Now, a few of the bigger state parks are getting into the action, and I just finished some art for Deception Pass State Park here in Puget Sound. Here’s a link to the national program. https://www.nps.gov/kids/parks-with-junior-ranger-programs.htm
Deception Pass has many habitats, beach, dunes, old-growth forest, cliffs and freshwater lakes.
This page is about soil and the bacteria and fungi that live in it.
Cliffs near the bay have distinctive plants, like this gumweed.
Oystercatcher, orchre stars, clams and crabs are around the rocky tidepools.
Sandy dunes are shown here, with the San Juan Islands offshore.
This is the sixth project I’ve done for this park, a small place packed with beauty. It’s suffering from too many people and too much noise from Navy jets training right over the park, but I still like to make art about these places. It helps me connect to them. Good nature doesn’t always have to be wilderness.
