Painting scenes of regeneration |
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Reimagining Housing in the Santa Cruz Mountains
Dotted throughout a valley in the wild-urban interface of the Santa Cruz Mountains, are pods of high-rise buildings, blending homes, businesses, and community spaces. Tile mosaic murals lend the buildings extra protection against stray embers from regular prescribed burns on the forest floor. Between the structures, rows of hydroponic crops hang, while pumpkin vines climb sculptural trellises. Wildlife moves freely among the human infrastructure. Led by the reclamation of native food ways by indigenous people, the community manages and harvests the forest’s mushrooms, deer, salmon and herbs. Accessible walking paths meander through the valley, supplemented by a gondola system for transporting goods and passengers between pods. Select redwoods have been nurtured back to an old growth state, sequestering carbon and fostering a cool, wet micro-climate. The community’s decision to structure their forest home vertically mirrors the epiphyte ecosystem on the redwood canopy.
Veggielution
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I joined the 4th Saturday Farm Party at Veggielution to paint this image of their beloved farm stand. Veggielution is a 6 acre community farm in the heart of San Jose. At the farm stand they supply their community with affordable, healthy produce grown on their farm and other local women and BIPOC owned farms. The farm was so lush on this spring day that it reflected green onto the underside of the overpass.
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Reimagining Hwy 1 Optimized for Public Transit
On the left is a plein air painting of evening traffic as viewed from the Morrissey Blvd overpass. On the right is a speculative repaint of our future society. Shown is the Hwy 1 High Speed Rail at the center divider beside a transfer station to the prolific local bus line. A line of native trees divides the road from the rail. Through trial and error the community has settled on a permit system allowing only occupational trucks to use the roads with the busses. Vehicles are adorned with murals by local artists instead of ads.
Local journalist Alix Soliman documented my process creating this piece. Watch her short video below and read her article about me in Lookout Santa Cruz here!
Local journalist Alix Soliman documented my process creating this piece. Watch her short video below and read her article about me in Lookout Santa Cruz here!
Santa Teresa Stewards
I joined community scientists and Santa Clara County Parks staff while they monitored tree growth and weeded around native shrubs at the Pueblo Day Use Area in the Santa Teresa County Park. To the right in the scene was the burn scar from a recent controlled burn. I then repainted the scene imagining the park in the future once the goals of the stewardship had come to fruition.
Artist in Residence with V-O-Cal at Memorial County Park
I had the pleasure of joining a V-O-Cal trailwork and stewardship weekend as their artist and residence. I painted folks working among the redwoods and also set up an art station for volunteers to get creative while they unwound after their day of work.
Artist for Climate Awareness Paint Out at the San Vicente Redwoods
I joined a paint out organized by Artists for Climate Awareness, the Santa Cruz Land Trust, and the Peninsula Open Space Trust.
In 2020 the CZU Lightning Complex fire swept through the San Vicente Redwoods Preserve. It managed to kill almost every non-redwood tree and many redwoods too. In the painting below the firs on the left were decimated by the fire, but the stand of trees on the right were spared. How did those trees escape the inferno? The trees had been the subject of an Amah Mutsun Land Trust cultural burn 6 months previous. The AMLT's controlled low-intensity burn had safely removed the highly flammable dead wood in the understory.
In 2020 the CZU Lightning Complex fire swept through the San Vicente Redwoods Preserve. It managed to kill almost every non-redwood tree and many redwoods too. In the painting below the firs on the left were decimated by the fire, but the stand of trees on the right were spared. How did those trees escape the inferno? The trees had been the subject of an Amah Mutsun Land Trust cultural burn 6 months previous. The AMLT's controlled low-intensity burn had safely removed the highly flammable dead wood in the understory.
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At the event Patricia Lorenas taught us how to make charcoal paint from the remnants of burnt trees.
The dead trees on the left in the painting above were painted from charcoal paint made from those very trees. |
Protect Juristac
Juristac is the most sacred land for the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band and a crucial wildlife habitat. It's currently threatened by mining interests. Watch my video in collaboration with Protect Juristac to learn more and go to protectjuristac.org to support.
Portrait of a Bug Hotel
Learn about the magic and wonder of bug hotels in my video essay collaboration with local gardener @willowofthewoods.
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Reimagining Rio Del Mar after the 2023 winter storms.
A video essay about the history of what we now call Rio Del Mar in Aptos, CA, tracing the transformation from wetland to subdivision. I then paint a hopeful vision for a stewarded return to wetland.
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Reimagining the upper parking lot at Seacliff Beach as a community garden
Inspired by Starhawk's reimagining of San Francisco in The Fifth Sacred Thing, I decided to start reimagining my own town as a solar punk utopia.
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