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Drawn, scribbled, snapped, or just noticed on Tumamoc Hill, Tucson's sacred mountain.

 

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Knee Flowers

Knee Flowers

These win­ter annu­als are by far the most como­nand suc­cess­ful plants on Tumamoc, yet they are the least appreciated.

Gila Monster!

Gila Monster!

There had been some claimed sight­ings before, but this was the first Gila Mon­ster cap­tured for sci­ence on Tumamoc.

Curating the Cosmos

Curating the Cosmos

One of the ses­sions, Curat­ing the Cos­mos, fea­tures a small online gallery of sev­eral invited artists, includ­ing Tumamoc Sketchbook.

Festival of Books

Festival of Books

On the invi­ta­tion of the UA Insti­tute for the Envi­ron­ment, we held some pub­lic plant sketch­ing ses­sions at their booth at the Book Fair.

Sunday Afternoon

Sunday Afternoon

Mered­ith went to draw at Spald­ing Plot num­ber 8. I was still recov­er­ing from a flu so I sat in a chair on the Desert Lab entrance and worked on a draw­ing I had started ear­lier in my sketchbook.

Exploring Unknown Tumamoc

Exploring Unknown Tumamoc

Not unknown to Ray Turner. On Two Sun­day after­noons in late Jan­u­ary and early Feb­ru­ary, Ray led a group of artists and poets on a search for the his­toric Spald­ing Plots 7 and 8.

Chasing Rainbows

Chasing Rainbows

The pur­suit of beauty, like drink­ing sea­wa­ter, cre­ates an unquench­able thirst. We suf­fer from beauty and plea­sure as much as from pain.

Rainbows

Rainbows

I hap­pened to glance out my north­ern win­dow and saw the most amaz­ing rain­bow as sun­light broke through a hole in the clouds behind the Hill.

Enchanted by the Sun

Enchanted by the Sun

Answer­ing ques­tions you never thought to ask, ecol­o­gist Peter War­shall gave a pre­sen­ta­tion on his work about color in nature last Novermber 28, 02012 (that’s not a typo – it’s the Long Now Foun­da­tion writes dates).

Freeze Burn

Freeze Burn

Last year about this time, I went for a walk with Ray Turner up the road from the Desert Lab. We were look­ing for poten­tial spots to place small inter­pre­tive signs point­ing out some­thing to notice in the land­scape nearby.

Contemplative Biology

Contemplative Biology

Some­times I am nei­ther lis­ten­ing nor see­ing any­thing as I walk. I get back to where I started with­out remem­ber­ing how I got there.

Number Nine

Number Nine

Last Sat­ur­day morn­ing a few artists went explor­ing off-​road into unknown Tumamoc ter­ri­tory. With Desert Lab sci­en­tist Ray Turner, we were look­ing for Spald­ing Plot Num­ber Nine.

POG Talk: Part 2

<span class="caps">POG</span> Talk: Part 2

As I was describ­ing in the first part of this talk, a train of thought from Kant, Goethe, and Hum­boldt, and other roman­tic Ger­mans from the past leads to a remark­able idea…

POG Talk: Part1

<span class="caps">POG</span> Talk: Part1

I’m going to talk about the idea of cre­at­ing a rich, mul­ti­di­men­sional por­trait of a place, as a painter would would for a person…

Proximities

Prox­im­i­ties, a new blog by Eric Magrane at the UA Insti­tute for the Envi­ron­ment asks the ques­tion, “What kind of pos­si­bil­i­ties open up when we imag­ine and explore the var­i­ous prox­im­i­ties between art and sci­ence and art and environment?”