Art of Paying Attention workshop June 4 with Nature's Notebook and Citizen Science in Tucson

Bet Surdut, Visual Storyteller in the Bisti badlands.

"Raven, Coyote and I walk here often, discussing who really created the Milky Way.

 Come. Breathe in the desert that sits in your mouth in the middle of the night, begging for water. Listen to that moment when the compass stays in your pocket and you are, like all else, a mote of dust sparkling in the sun." Beth Surdut, Visual Storyteller

Bisti sentinel by Beth Surdut

The desert has so many micro-climates. The one pictured above is the Bisti badlands in the Dinetah, Navajo land in the Four Corners area of New Mexico.
Join me, along with Phenology Education Director LoriAnne Barnett, for an introduction to Nature's Notebook, a citizen science project developed by the National  Phenology Network based at the University of  Arizona in Tucson.

Our classroom will be Agua Caliente Park, an oasis in the Sonoran desert.

Agua Caliente Park, Tucson photo by Beth  Surdut

 Learn about plant and animal life cycles and how they relate to changing environmental conditions.

Cooters and reflections at Agua Caliente Park photo by Beth Surdut

 We will provide an introduction to making observations in nature and demonstrate how to use Nature's Notebook for making and recording your observations.

Paying attention. Male mallard at Agua Caliente Park

 Learn how your data collection helps scientists answer local and national questions about species response to climate change.

Please pre-register here.

Beth Surdut, Visual Storyteller in Solitude Canyon, NM

Choose your audience carefully

The  Regal Horned Lizard, pointed and crenellated, stubby and shy, was so intent on watching a grasshopper on my front  stoop that  neither one moved when I appeared.
Patience, such patience, I thought as I stood next to the lizard, admiring him with my camera.
Grasshopper did not move.
My camera snapped at them.
Lizard glanced at me, then back to Grasshopper.
Snap, went the jaws my camera.
Lizard did not twitch. Grasshopper held his ground.
So smart, I thought. Grasshopper knows the speed of a lizard.
Playing it  safe, I thought.
Oh, the wisdom of the wild.

I shifted my stance and Lizard lost his focus,
scuttled into the blue agave whose
spines would protect him from me.
Grasshopper did not move.
Closer inspection allowed.
Surely, Grasshopper would leap now.
But it is hard to leave when one leg is stuck to the  pavement
Impossible to leave when
you are desiccated
preserved
perfect, but dead.

The Regal Horned Lizard (horned toad, Tumamoc in the language of Tohono Oodham)
and I, with more names than I shall list,
had patiently stalked a dead grasshopper.

One foot stuck in place can
impede your progress
You could stay there, looking perfect
until you die, an object of curiosity
and eventually
Someone might notice that
you haven't moved and
the living would move on.

There is a video crawling round the web
the courtship dance of a male
peacock spider, so named
for his brilliant display.
Such a dance he does!
Choreographed as if for Vegas
His legs, like arms, kicking
like a chorus girl
waggling her sequined behind
On and on he goes
Giving his all
"Look at me! Notice me! Pick me!"
But she is silent
unmoving
Dead, like the grasshopper.

Take notice who you dance for
Choose your audience carefully.

Speaking of audiences, get a front row seat @www.bethsurdut.com

The Nature of Being

Everyone Wants You When You're Beautiful by Beth Surdut
Enigmatic Paradise series  @http://www.bethsurdut.com/gallery-.html

Being in nature is a succession of moments that imprint all my senses. Every walk, every paddle, every buzz, rustle, call, chirp, and squeak informs my creativity as an artist and writer. Just as we take in and process information differently, so do my experiences translate differently even within my own brain and subsequent output.

The part of me that loves detail--knowing the exact conformation and coloration of feather and petal, genus and species--picks up pencils and pens to render what qualifies as scientific illustration. 

Another part of me reacts to color viscerally, judges art on its “edible” appeal, meaning that my first and strongest impression of colors is that they are so juicy I want to lick them no matter what they represent.

There are places—a moss-covered forest trail, a dappled stream, a shadowed slot canyon, an expansive night sky-- that invite me to walk in and lose my edges until they shimmer as I become part of them. There is art that does the same. 

The subtlety of gators--Dragon Scales and Hurricanes series by Beth Surdut @http://www.bethsurdut.com/gallery-.html

            What does this say about being outside in nature? My essence is re-colored by each experience. We are already truly integrated if we permit ourselves to pay attention and experience it. Sometimes that means putting down the canvas, the camera, the journal so we can just Be Here Now. I have read that some athletes who wear a tiny video camera are mortified when they forget to turn it on, that not having digital proof of the bighorn sheep negates the actual experience of having seen them.

 I am not only an observer, but also a kind of chemical experiment, a magnet or perhaps a portal that, when exposed to natural beings and surroundings, takes in elements that reorganize and morph into something both new and familiar in the forms I produce.

I contend that

• Art is not the “other”
• Outside is not the other
• We are not the other
• We are vital, integrated, shining particles of this world

Breathe in the breath of the world and then see what you breathe out.

I have the good luck to be able to express verbally and visually what swirls and glimmers in and out of me. I am there to see with my eyes, my mind, my memory, not somebody else’s. What comes of experiencing nature betters me more than any indoor classroom situation. I am embraced and expanded by the particulars. And as a wildlife illustrator, storyteller, painter, and maker of prayer shawls,  I get to share that with you. 

"Where shall wisdom be found, and where is the place of understanding?" Job 28:12

 painted silk tallit by Beth Surdut