Art Entry 1: Nature Journaling

 I'm an environmental educator in my current job. A pedagogical tool I've learned to incorporate a lot in my curriculum when teaching students is nature journaling. Learning to make observations and record them in the field is an important STEM skill, and I'd argue an important skill for daily living as well. Journaling also helps to inspire us and support curiosity rather than trying to get to the answers right away. Nature journaling is something anyone can do, you don't have to be an artist to create a drawing that helps you communicate your findings to another person. 

As an artist, there's something about scientific field drawings where you do try to accurately depict an organism and have words for science communication that has always drawn me in. The combination of science and art at the intersection of communication has always interested me. In another life, I'd probably pursue a career in scientific illustration but currently I cannot afford to go back to school so environmental education it is. But in my personal art, I like to incorporate nature journaling as a source of inspiration. Art is a hobby for me, and it can be difficult to make myself find the time to focus on my art. Nature journaling is one way I use my experiences in nature to inspire me to create art. 

These are my first three nature journal entries that I have made in 2022 now that I live in northwestern Washington, across from Seattle, in the Puget Sound area. I've been learning a lot about marine life and other organisms that are endemic to the Pacific Northwest. 

Poetry Entry 3: Art is Magic

 

Photo by Jaime Parker Chase
Description: pens, brush, and pencil on top of a blank page with rocks/cyrstals in front of them

Art is Magic June 6, 2021

Art is alchemy.

Changing silver to gold.

The pen is my wand

Casting spells on a blank page.

Art is magic and creativity

Surrounding me like a witch’s hat.

Through the art of creation

I put my will into being.

Art incorporates the elements.

I mix water and earth materials,

Called paint instead of potion

Used to re-create what I see

With an athame called a brush

As the wind whispers in my ears.

Art is my heart revealed 

And made physical.

Changing the felt and unknown

To the experienced yet mysterious.

Art is alchemy.

Art is magic. 

Poetry Entry 2: Queer Phoenix

Photo source: https://mythology.net/mythical-creatures/phoenix/

 Queer Phoenix 

To be a Phoenix

One must burn

The norms places inside

By heteronormative society,

Abled power dynamics

Sexist hierarchies,

Colonialist paradigms

Transphobic roles

And racist violence.

Then we must continue to burn,

Letting our queerness envelop us

As a protective spell

Against further exclusion, othering, domination, erasure.

Rise up Queers. 

Poetry Entry 1: Outsider

Photo by Jaime Parker Chase, taken at Merry Lea Environmental Learning Center

Photo description: a forest edge and meadow, blue sky with wispy clouds

 

Outsider    7/11/2020

Standing still in a small grove,

Within a few leaping bounds of the forest edge

I am timid in my exploration.

I haven't braved the thicker underbrush

to move deeper within the forest.

A giant oak towers above me

branches grasping for the limited sky.

I too, am grasping.

Grasping to understand,

to read this forest's story.

Who is speaking in the canopy overhead?

The voices belong to birds,

neighbors who haven't yet introduced themselves,

other than through their foreign song.

Gnats buzz around my face with gossip

as the elder trees groan in the wind.

The sun hides behind passing clouds

causing me to move back onto the beaten path

to tread around the forest's edge.

I feel like an outsider

who may travel on the paths,

but whose destination has never been this land,

this stand of trees,

under this ash tree, 

beside this thicket. 

Until today.