Citizen Science

This is a first entry for my art website, but for this post I thought I would begin by discussing science.

I will not pretend to be skilled in this area or to have much knowledge, but I like science... and I like what it does, or can do.  Recently I've started volunteering at the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, where I'll help track data of how trees respond to climate changes over time. 

It is a fun project for me because it is helping me learn a little bit more about tree species identification and gives me an excuse to go to the park... I like that it is making me look more closely at this plot and appreciate its details.  Which also happens to be something that I love about observational drawing...

One of the things I happened to notice today was this bird's nest, a vero's I think.
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With art I've moved lately from working from imagination to doing more observational drawing.  The biggest motivator is that I love this process... the way that inevitably during the course of drawing one starts to see their surroundings differently, in greater detail and definition, as if for the first time.

It felt as though this idea came full circle for me today during the process of recording phenology data about trees, when as I marked things about leaves and seeds, it was as if I was only comprehending for the first time something I had seen and walked beneath for my entire life.