 And I'm going to open the room and we'll be truly live welcome friends will get started in just a moment we'll let that zoom room fill up. And we want to welcome our friends on YouTube. And I'm going to start out with putting a link to tonight's event. This document contains library information and resources as well as links to our presenters tonight and if our presenters which I'm sure they will will have things come up books come up and I will try to capture that all in that one handy doc for you. And then you can also watch this again on YouTube. And welcome YouTube friends and I will put that link in very soon. And one more fun thing to do while we wait for the seven o'clock and folks to get in is, if you know what native land you're joining us from today, you could put that in the chat. And if you don't know, I just put a link to native land map, which is pretty amazing resource. All right, seven o'clock let's get that library info down. Welcome everybody. I'm guessing everyone can hear me and see me since I didn't ask that question. No one's like. So if you can't hear me or you can hear me let me know. Happy Earth Day. Yay. This is a, you know, obviously climate change is huge and life is so traumatic and we are, you know, there and traumatized greatly I know as a community, but Earth Day always seems so happy to me it reminds me of being a child and I'm just so happy to have Jane Kim and they are Walker of Inkedwell studio here tonight with us. We want to welcome you to the unceded land of the Eloni tribal people. And we want to acknowledge the many raw mutual Eloni tribal groups and families as rifle stewards in the lands of which we reside. SFPL is committed to uplifting the names of these lands and community members from these nations. Thank you to learn more about first person culture, land rights, and we host many events we have many events on our YouTube channel, check that out, and lots of educational resources, and I will. Those are in that document that I shared. I just want to know that the library is opening. Oh my gosh, May 3, the main will be opening first floor limited services so that's super exciting, but we do know we are still not safe and we are not all protected so please protect my library family and the main and all the locations as we have 16 locations, I think have pickup service so what mask up protect everybody's family and friends and people that are serving out there. It is climate action month, and we are partnering the SF environment on tomorrow at noon we will have healthy homes in Spanish at noon. And Friday, no, no, no, Saturday, 10am. We are going to be having an amazing panel I did a tech check with them this week and they are all just amazing humans talking about edible food recovery during coven. We have author essayist poet, honey after creep in conversation with our newest poet laureate Tom go eyes and Martin, the 28th discussing after creeps book a little devil in America, a partnership with Moad and heading into May we have so many events lined up. We represent the adult community in our library but youth and adult and all ages, many programs celebrating API, including Richie underberg who doesn't like him talking about Asian rock. I'm going through these ones, because and I'll stop at some key ones that I'm really excited about a partnership with current Street workshop author, Mario Lee want long will be talking about her new book, and we will have a group of poets reading. I'm excited about this one to trust a an amazing graphic novel and sort of the silver lining of pandemic world has been we get to bring people from all over the world author and artist joining us one from Holland and one from the Philippines. It's just been optioned by Netflix so you're going to hear about it if you haven't heard about it. Lots and lots of events. Lewis Dr Lewis Gordon freedom justice and decolonization coming up partner with the before Columbus Foundation, and total SF if you're not familiar with total SF it's a Heather night and Peter heart love the chronicle event, and they are joining us for quarterly book club bringing author our first one celebrating the levels and her book home baked my mom marijuana and the stony of San Francisco. This is a super fun book. And yes it's super fun because you know it's about marijuana but it's also just loaded with SF history. So it's really amazing. She uses the library a lot to do her research, and we're really excited about this book coming out and her home baked just came out on paperback on 420. May will be celebrating Vanessa and we have a on the same page it's called the bi-monthly read where we encourage all of San Francisco to read the same book. And we are reading a river of stars. I love this book it's having topics but what has like such amazing approachable sense and a little bit of humor. And again, it just hits in San Francisco. Chinatown pretty if you don't follow this Instagram, I encourage you to find this Instagram. Amazing Chinatown seniors, just the best socks ever and wisdom style from six different Chinatowns all over America. And all right, enough of me talking we're going to turn this over. In the generation of Earth Day, we have Jane Kim and Thayer Walker artist and writer and creators of ink dwell studios. Ink dwell explores the wonders of the natural world merging classical techniques of science illustration and modern fine art. They create public and private commissions illustrations exhibitions, and much more. Kim is a visual artist science illustrator and the founder of ink dwell. She received formal training from Rhode Island School of Design, and then Cal State Monterey Bay, where she received her master certificate in science illustration. With numerous large scale public works, and in addition to Cornell lab or anthology she has produced works for the National Aquarium, the D Young Museum, the nature conservatary conservatory, the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Facebook, Recology, I love Recology, and Yosemite National Park. She's the creator of migrating mural campaign. Thayer Walker is a correspondent for outside magazine covering science and venture exploration and the natural world. He's exploit the Cayman trench in a homemade submarine survived 20 days stranded on a desert island. Once escaped the jaws of an jaguar and discovered the 10th largest diamond ever found at Arkansas crater diamond State Park. Together, they are the co founders of ink dwell. Are you laughing at your own bio. I love it though it's it's adventurous. I was just telling Jane and Thayer that I moved recently to Bush Street so I get the honor of seeing the migrating mural every single day and it is. I love it is so powerful to see this beautiful mural, just hovering over the tenderloin. It's a joy. So without further ado, I would like to introduce Jane Kim and Thayer Walker. Hi, sorry, just a little slow on my technical ability there had to unmute and then start our screen share. Hello. Hello. I am Jane Kim. I'm Thayer Walker. And together we tell stories that explore the wonders of the natural world, whether it is through words or through visual art. And we're going to share a little bit about the work that we do. Happy Earth Day first and foremost we couldn't be happier to celebrate with you all. You know, we love the San Francisco Public Library and the last time that we gave a talk there we were actually working on the mural that Anissa was just talking about and here is a great drone shot of this project which I can't believe was already in October of 2019. So this feels like yesterday but it wasn't. And we are so thrilled to speak to the public library community again this evening. Big shout out to Pavel Federer for that awesome drone shot too. And this amazing picture. So it is now complete this is just a, you know, what direction is that north north from here from the public library. This is the north facing wall. Yes. It was just up the street on the high street north of the public library, just by a few blocks and we'll circle back around to this project. But again, happy Earth Day. We couldn't be more thrilled to also be giving a presentation at the San Francisco Public Library will not at but you know, you know what I mean. Yeah, with yes, because I'm sure many of you who are tuned in probably do know the history of Earth Day, but in case you didn't really it came to be because of a book written by Rachel Carson called Silent Spring. And it was through this book that issues of the environment were brought to a broad and public forum, and it inspired people to get together and Dennis Hayes organized the first Earth Day ever in 1970. And this is a picture of newspaper on the right hand side of the next day so you can see how many and this is of New York, how many people turned out in support of the planet and a better relationship with it and I just think that is remarkable. You know, it's, it's funny how, when you start to think about how something like this can be organized, you know, back in the day before the Internet, and really it's because of a mimeograph machine that predates the Xerox machine copier that they were able to create flyers, which brings me to a little bit of my own background and history. I'm here from the Rhode Island School of Design with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in printmaking. And, you know, one of the things that I love about printmaking is that with the invention of woodblock techniques and graving and of course movable type. You know, we were able to create books that could be mass produced and then shared broadly with the general public and so that allowed information to be disseminated on a scale that it could never have been done before. One of my favorite artists when I was a student at RISD was learning about Albrechtur and this is his infamous Rhino and if you didn't know the artist, I'm certain that you are probably familiar at least with this image. It to date remains one of the most important animal art renderings, I think, and that had the most influence and impact. This was the image that everybody believed Indian rhinoceros to be. So just below that is a picture of an actual Indian rhino. And he basically created this image from a description and a sketch. So I think that, you know, the role of art is pretty remarkable in how we communicate and connect. And that leads me to my other academic endeavor, which was in scientific illustration and that's through scientific illustration and how it was integral to the age of exploration. These are renderings from one of the first expeditions to Antarctica. So just, again, and I only share this because, you know, Inkedwell is a studio that shares stories, especially that are tied to science and history. And so all of these things are quite important to Thayer and I as an art studio. And then my aha moment came when I was down in Los Angeles visiting the La Brea Tarpits and the Page Museum and saw this exhibit and it's a permanent exhibit. So I believe it's still there. But these gorgeous bird renderings behind articulated bird skeletons were just jaw dropping. I couldn't peel myself away from these cases. And it was that moment that I thought, man, that's what I want to do. I wasn't quite sure how I wanted to move forward in my art career, but this really, you know, put that last nail in that coffin of doubt. And I decided to apply to the science illustration program at CSUNB. And lo and behold, after that Inkedwell was created. And I'm going to let Thayer tell you a little bit about himself. You know, I'm not so, not so handy with paintbrush, but I do okay with the pen and paper. I've been a correspondent for Outside Magazine for about 15 years and written for a slew of other publications and a couple of books. And yeah, I love to write about exploration in the natural world. So, you know, you know, Jane's, you know, Jane's visual art obviously dovetails pretty well with that. And just a few photos from some past assignments. This was actually on assignment with Biographic, which is a publication by our very own San Francisco's very own beloved California Academy of Sciences. This was a story actually, Jane did the illustrations for the story. This was in King's, King's in Sequoia National Park, King's Canyon Sequoia National Park. That is atop a very large, very large sequoia tree. Called Franklin. Yes, we're not supposed to say that. Oh, sorry. And this is all done under scientific permit. But people like to go and poach these things. So you, you know, try and keep that under wraps. But this was a project that was actually all about how climate change is impacting these grand old monarchs. And you can actually see in the background there you can see all the dentaries back there as a result of beetle invasion and drought. So that was a pretty spectacular view this one is next one was a, this is actually that's that's not me that's a guy named Mark Healy, who's a professional waterman surfer freediver but I'm about maybe 40 feet above him in that frame this photo was taken by a guy named Noah Zimmerman. And this is off the coast of Japan. And there is a population of scouts hammerhead sharks that that convenes their gathers there every, every summer hundreds thousands of them no one really knows where they're going or what they're doing. It's really hard to to study, because they don't like humans they are very sensitive you can't catch them on a on a line and tag them because they'll stress out and die so the only way to actually tag these hammerheads is if you know, I like Mark Healy is going to swim down, you know, 80 100 feet free diving and actually spear them with a with it with it with a satellite tag so that's what that's what he's doing there that's for an outside story. And but it's not always thought not always science sometimes you just do things for fun. This was in my younger days in in Idaho lower Mesa Falls. And that was really just for good fun. Which leads us into speaking of good fun, the wall of birds. Epic projects yeah. Yeah, I mean that's fair idea of fun. I don't match that I would be terrified to be in that kayak however I'm not terrified to be very high up on scaffolding or an equipment or operate equipment for that matter. So, this project called the wall of birds at the Cornell lab of ornithology in Africa, New York. It lives in the visitor center and celebrates the diversity and evolution of birds through 243 families and several other species that make up the evolution of birds on a 70 by 40 foot wall. I'm just going to switch over here to a different screen so that we can get intimate with the wall of birds and right up close right up close to it. It's a digital interactive so you can go ahead and Google wall of birds interactive and you should be able to find this pretty easily. I think you can see the URL. This was actually so so this this mural to Jane. It took about two and a half years to complete it was 1819 months on site in a year off site, but this actually this composite image was put together at 700 plus individual photographs that were stitched together by the Cornell lab team. And it's sort of like Google maps for the wall of birds it took him six months to put this thing together but it's been an incredible way for the project to live on both in a physical and here in a digital space. So what I'm doing is just moving through it like Google maps and you can you can see that I'm zooming in zooming out. Each bird is hyperlinked. And when you click on a bird you can of course learn about it specific species you can, you know, tell the world that you love this bird if they have a recording of its call, you can listen. So why so because this is the San Francisco public library. I think this actually this bird has a very, a very funny story so the yellow build magpie is is part of the Corbett family, which is an iconic family of birds you've you know probably there was in the Ravens all around San Francisco but it's got, you know, blue, it's got jays and magpies and so there was a lot of discussion about which representative from the Corbett family would make it onto the wall of birds. There was a very heated discussion and Jane finally she kind of stayed out of, you know, of the ornithological decisions but when it came to choosing the Corbett she said we need to get California's own yellow build magpie and put them put them right there so that's how we got that's how we got the magpie and okay so we won that one. Anyway, so you can learn about the families of the bird that it belongs to and also see the e bird data and this is a citizen science tool where you can record your sightings and observations and just an amazing application if you haven't heard of that. So let's switch back over to the presentation. Okay, I think we're back. Oh, there we go. And one, you know, it's not often that fair and I actually get to work together on something so this is actually quite special. I think for both of us and it is our book called the wall of birds and it tells the story. Of the project. That was the story of the project. And there's a lot of natural history in there Jane has a lot of her own sort of our art theory and philosophy in there there's, you know, some incredible color theory and behavior yeah it's just a really actually there was one review that actually said they weren't sure how to classify this book which we kind of took as a compliment so it's kind of got a bit of everything if you love, you know, if you love art if you love birds you know the natural world. So if you probably enjoy this you can check if you go to the wall birds.com you can find some links to to pick it up or if you go to the San Francisco public library I think they even have it there too. They do. They do. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you guys. Shout out. So our work focuses around a lot of different disciplines you know we don't just do one thing we do many things. But a lot of what we do is working with institutions and universities and museums to create interpretive backdrops and displays and illustrations so one of these such projects is at the National Aquarium in Baltimore, Maryland and this is this was created in 2015, and it's a permanent exhibit called Living Seashore, and it is a tactile experience so everything that we created that that mural in the background is done with a hand cut pieces of tissue paper that were then glued to the wall to add to the tactile nature of the exhibit. I'm just going to quickly go through these slides. One of the projects most recent projects that we finished is at Occidental College and this is a more lab of zoology and below is a Vantuna research group and the top level is the study of birds and the bottom level is the study of birds and so we wanted to connect these two spaces by through this mural by showcasing land and see and all of the species that were selected were of course relevant to the research that's happening in these respective institutions. This is at the Jones Beach Energy and Nature Center in Long Island, New York. And then here in San Francisco we have several interpretive signs that you can see through, thank you, thanks to Sutro Stewards, so Sutro Stewards not only manages the Mount Sutro and those trails but they also plant native gardens throughout the cityscape so right below on the streets of UCSF campus you might come across some of these signs and the respective gardens. We can create anything from children's workbooks, this was done for NOAA, a collection of atolls called Papa Hana Mokuakea, Papa Hana Mokuakea that is a mouthful. And then we were so thrilled to work with Nature in the City to produce this ecological map of San Francisco. And then one of my favorite projects that I look forward to every season is producing the seasonal almanac for Bay Nature magazine. I also create personal works, I'm represented by Andrew Norris Gallery in Burlingame and you know this allows me to maybe dive even further into some of the subjects that we work on, we work around and with and on, and create even more nuanced stories. This was when I was at the De Young Museum as an artisan residence. The show was called Non-Native, and it was exploring native non-native relationships not only in nature in Golden Gate Park but also using that as metaphor for, you know, the sociological and cultural non-native native battle that, you know, as we know happens here in San Francisco. We should tell, and this is actually too good. We're going to go back. You should tell the stories, especially Prime Real Estate here because this is a great story and I think a lot of San Franciscans will relate to. Okay, all right. Well, so the map that you see there is a historical map of land plots. This is the image on the right, the squirrel image. The squirrel, yeah, it's called Prime Real Estate and it shows the original, I guess, land division of home sites in San Francisco and, you know, Golden Gate Park is completely fabricated, it's absolutely man-made. And in the 1890s, you know, we used to not have any gray tree squirrels. And not, we have Western gray tree squirrels, but not the ones that we see in the park that like to, you know, be fed by humans. They literally shipped Eastern gray tree squirrels to the park and release them so that people had squirrels to feed because our ground squirrels, you know, of course, were considered pests and eradicated. We delivered in an Amazon prime box and the native ground squirrel is looking quite alarmed at this explosion of Eastern gray tree squirrels about to invade. This piece is called RG Bird and it's about the pigment blue and how it actually does not exist anywhere in the avian world, which is still, you know, I hear that and I am told this and I understand the science of it but it still doesn't stick as a possibility or a reality. But these are indigo buntings and what we see is only perceived because of the way that the light hits the feathers and its structural coloration and in different light it will appear different shades of blue. So I'm playing with that idea of perceived color. I forgot I included this slide I should have had this up while I was explaining my bed. And here I am working for a census scale. And this was when I was an artisan residence at the Leakey Woodson Art Museum in Wasaw, Wisconsin. I'm very excited to announce that I have a show opening next Friday at Palate SF Palate Gallery. It's Folsom and 4th Street. It's called poached pruned and peeled. And this show explores our relationship to food and our hopefully relationship to nature through food. So hope if you can please join us I'll show this slide again if you all want to write down the link to RSVP it's of course being COVID respectful and has limited capacity. And here's a couple of close up slides of this painting which is called engineered. So I think one of the main things that inked well does is create public art. And, you know, there's a lot of reasons for why we landed in that particular technique and medium. And one of them being, it's an ancient art form. You know, I think that there's something very human about wanting to adorn the walls that are important to us with imagery that's important to us. And so, you know, since modern man was walking the planets we have art on walls. And of course, you know, in buildings interiors, creating imagery in places that have relevance and special meaning, you know, that's of course of practice that we all can relate to. Here's an image of the Sistine Chapel. And then right here in San Francisco we have a number of WPA murals. It's quite tower. And I just think it's remarkable that that era, you know, one of the ways that they stimulated the economy was to hire artists to beautify spaces. If you haven't looked at the story of these specific WPA murals and quit tower I really recommend doing so because they were quite. controversial. In fact that they weren't even unveiled at the time that they were supposed to be because there was so much controversy around some of the depictions in the mural, especially around what seemed like pro communism slogans or imagery that just dovetailed the incident of Diego Rivera's mural at the Rockefeller Center and that being destroyed over, you know, the artists refusal to take some imagery out that the commission, the commissioned sponsor wanted removed. Yeah, I mean murals are a great way to communicate broadly. Things that are and right here and right now. This is by an artist named JR at the border wall. He's a French photographer. And we might get to this later but I think what you'll notice especially in those last three images of murals. These are public works, mostly depicting humans. And we're actually taking a very, very different, a different approach to that through our migrating murals. Yeah, so that one of the big ideas of the migrate rules and just dovetailing on that on that topic of subjects is, you know, we create a monument, we create all sorts of monuments as a society, we create monuments to two political leaders to social leaders, we create monuments to wars and war heroes to athletes. You know, we still have monuments to Confederate leaders that fought against the ideals of this country that are scattered throughout the country. And so in creating the migrating mural, you know, we really developed this because we believe that there's a necessity to create urban monuments that celebrate and focus on the wonders of the natural world and to really make these, you know, these topics, these ideas, these neighbors of ours that are easy to ignore, easy to overlook to make them impossible to to ignore. Thank you. Absolutely. So when we created the migrating mural we we always envisioned it being a serial work of art that could include a number of different species and a number of different places. And we had this vision of doing land sky and see. And so our very first series highlights the Sierra Nevada Bighorn sheep and our sky series highlights them on our butterfly so we're just going to share share some slides of these particular installations. So, if you've never been to the east side of California, and there is a highway, Highway 395 it connects the basically the whole Sierra range, you know, from Tahoe all the way south to Lone Pine California. And these are the entry points to Mammoth and Death Valley to Bristol Cone Pine National Forest. So when you exit the east gate of Yosemite National Park at Tuolumne Meadows, you are spit out onto what's called Tioga Pass. And if you take Tioga Pass down, you end up at Lee Vining. And that's where one of the murals can be seen so there's six unique murals along this highway stretch. It's 125 miles. And it is the length of the Sierra Nevada sheep bighorn bighorn sheep range. We actually have three different subspecies of bighorn here in the United States we have the Rocky Mountain bighorn, the desert bighorn and the Sierra bighorn. The Sierra bighorn has a pretty tumultuous story. In the 1990s, they were almost completely wiped out due to domestic sheep disease and their population dropped to just over 100 sheep or so and there have been a lot of efforts to recover this population and now they're at about 600. We're hoping that that continues to rise but it takes quite a bit of management and you know even people who live in this area are probably never going to see a bighorn sheep just on their own. So really we wanted to celebrate this animal and bring it to the street level and show that these mountains are filled with sheep that have been there for millennia. So I hope that's what that has done. Yeah I was just going to say as we talk about Earth Day and usually it's a time to obviously celebrate what we have but also to reconsider some of our choices and behaviors. One of the things that I love most about this bighorn story is that it really is a story of success. This is a distinct subspecies of bighorn. They're only found in the Sierra Nevada as like as Jane said their numbers were down to 100 or so just about 30 years ago and now they're back on the rise, they're on the path to being delisted and there's plenty of terrain for them, there's plenty of habitat for them. It's a great example of how if we just kind of can take a step back and give nature a chance to kind of breathe and recover. You know, she's very resilient. So, you know, it's incumbent on us to just kind of make the right decisions, not only for the natural world but ultimately for ourselves and these bighorn and the scientists that are working to help it recover are really a testament to that. Yeah, for sure. And that's really one of the things that we also love about what we do is working in collaboration with different organizations and for this project. Not only did we work with the Sierra Nevada Bighorn Sheet Foundation, but we were lucky enough to work with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Bighorn Sheet Recovery Program that they have there. This was our first mural and Independence California at the Mount Williamson Motel. And it was a great way to start the project as this particular herd unit, the Mount Williamson herd unit, was one of the original herd units that did survive the almost extinction of their species. This is at the Mono Basin Visitor Center. And mountain lion predation is actually a quite a problem when, you know, a population has as small a number as a bighorn sheep does a mountain lion kill is pretty detrimental. So that's one of the things that has to be managed in bighorn sheep conservation. And this little yearling is at the Lone Pine Regional Airport on a hangar that faces Highway 395. Sorry, I'm just so used to saying one. And then when we moved on to our second species, you know, we chose, we had a hard time picking who Sky was, obviously my relationship to birds, there's, I mean, yeah, thousands of species that we could have chosen, but ultimately be landed on the Monarch for a lot of reasons. But one, it's national, you know, it can be found in almost all the lower 48 plus Canada and Mexico so really it's a North American species. We love that the actionable the call to action for this particular species is quite easy. You know, planting native nectar producing flowers and milkweed is one of the best ways that anybody and everybody can get involved. So again, we really liked that aspect of the story. And then, you know, just culturally the significance of the Monarch butterfly is is profound and, you know, we wanted to honor that as well. So, um, do you want to talk a little bit about? Yeah, unfortunately, this is kind of an opposite story of the of the Sierra Bighorn. So, you know, butterflies by the billions roamed across North America flew across North America and this continent Mexico for ever. And their numbers have just dropped precipitously in the last, you know, 40 years or so in the West. There's two populations in the same species, but they're sort of distinct populations here in California and the West with the Western Monarch. And we've seen them drop from four and a half million back in the 80s to actually that even that 2018 number now. I'll show that later. This last count last year it was under 30,000. No, yeah, that was 2019. Oh, wow. 20, 20 pounds with 2000 2000. Yeah, so not not looking so good for our Western Monarchs. And you know, the Eastern Eastern Monarch population has always been bigger. And it fluctuates quite quite a bit. It's, you know, it's actually so sizable that they measure it by by the acreage that they cover down in the wintering sites in Mexico rather than by the numbers but but even that acreage number has fallen precipitously in the last 30 years or so. So, you know, pesticide uses pesticide use land management are two major, major components to that so you know when you and you know when you when you, you know, are working in your garden or thinking about what's a plant. You know, always thinking, thinking native plants are always best in part because they're resilient and don't necessarily need the types of pesticides or chemical treatments that invasive or non native plants would need so you think about it when you go to the store when you go to your your gardening centers, you know, you know, if people stop buying the stuff and they'll stop making it. So keep an eye out for that and plant native when when and wherever you can. Yeah. So we're just going to quickly show the series of monarch migrating murals our first one was in springdale Arkansas in 2017 this piece is called kaleidoscope. That's actually what a group of butterflies is called is called a kaleidoscope I thought that was so beautiful. And then our next one. This is called milkweed galaxy. It's at full sale university in winter park Florida and once again, you know, the these projects aren't done in isolation it takes a lot of collaboration and individual effort and commitment. And we were really grateful to work with nature conservancy and the Florida chapter of nature conservancy to bring these murals to not only winter park Florida. Oh, I just want to note that in these collaborations to we really can make an immediate difference and full sale decided to relandscape the whole front of that building and plant milkweed and weeks later, monarch butterflies were showing up and caterpillars were munching on all these milkweed if you plant it they will come. Yeah, for real. And then in Orlando, Florida. We created this piece called midnight dream. And I'm just going to give a little another scale picture because it was hard to tell how big some of these pieces are. We did a wonderful little mini mini mural with some students of SF day school. This piece is called inching forward. And we provided the caterpillar template but they learned all about the native milkweed here in San Francisco and Bay Area, and by looking at references they each uniquely created milkweed for the mural. And this piece is called life cycle it's at the Ogden Nature Center and Ogden Utah. So often was really a cool and unique city to work with, and that there are three unique installations to support not only the natural history of monarch butterflies but also support Ogden's efforts to bring art to their city through something called the nine rails creative district so we partnered with Weber State University's art department and Ogden 01 arts to bring these three and then Ogden Nature Center to bring these three installations together. So as such, ink dwellers also very much focused on, you know, real time site specific stories. And so because we had this opportunity to also tell a story of art. I decided to highlight a couple of different art movements that I, you know, have a particularly strong relationship to and, as you might notice this feels very much like the arts and crafts movement and it was inspired by William Morris, and the wonderful way that he brought nature into And then this is called Monarch and Moda, and it was inspired by the 1960s up arts movement. And I was looking at the spots of the monarch butterfly and it's beautifully graphic nature and using that as a device to create movement in this dot pattern. This is, are you going to the next. Oh yeah, so another picture for scale. This is I this is I love, I love this, this partnership here so this is a great example you can obviously obviously see we really just put the artwork on a shoe. And lemon do or is is the brand that we partnered with here, they make incredible shoes, and there's another photo of them in there. Yeah, so. And I think one of the reasons why I think both of us really like this project is because, you know, this concept of, you know, embracing nature and telling telling nature stories, you know, for some reason or another it's, you know, I think for a long time at least and maybe still sort of been attached this kind of like crunchy hippie sort of almost kind of dismissed as like a sort of a dismissed vertical amongst, you know, I think maybe mainstream culture, or, you know, even even more, you know, academic or fine art culture. And I think in, in doing, you know, in the shoe and the work that we do and bringing this type of work into other mediums I think what we're really trying to show is that, you know, you know, nature is the best artist that we've ever seen it's edgy, it's, it's cool it's innovative it really pushes the boundaries in terms of, you know, what we would even think as possible and really defines, you know, our own, you know, our own aesthetics. And so, you know, in doing things like this and we're going to be doing more of these types of things like this to come, you know, we're really trying to highlight, you know, not just how important the natural world is for, you know, our general existence, but also to really celebrate, you know, just an absolutely incredible design design aesthetic. Absolutely. And that it's in everything. I mean, you can give me any topic and I can trace it back to its origins to nature. And here's the piece at Weber State University and of course as a scientific illustrator, you know, the style of pen and ink drawing. I had to, I had to acknowledge. So here's the other side. And these are some wildflowers of the Wasatch range. Oh, yes. And another cool thing, Weber State also not only created a garden in their sculpture, but they planted two acres of milkweed on their campus, which is just awesome. And on that note, for those city dwellers who are watching this and also, you know, non-city dwellers. But, you know, as Jane mentioned, this is one of the reasons why we chose the monarch. And the monarch represents kind of all of the pollinators. The monarch itself is not the best pollinator, but they certainly do it. But they're a great ambassador for all the pollinators. And if you, you know, if you want to help and be a part of it, it really is as simple as, you know, putting a planter box of native wildflowers, nectar-producing wildflowers outside of your window or on your roof. You know, if you have, you know, five square feet of space, you know, outside, you can create an ecosystem and a habitat that will draw in, you know, animals like this. Absolutely. And to that point, some of my most recent migrating murals for the monarch butterfly are right here in San Francisco. So this is at 943 Howard Street. It's between 5th and 6th and Soma. And this being home, of course, I expanded the story to also include the different families of butterflies that you can find here and specifically in San Francisco. So we have the skippers and whites and brush-footed butterflies and gossamer winged butterflies and swallowtails represented here in facility leaves. And then back to this piece. Le Papillon is what we call 455 Hyde Street now, but each mural has its own title. This side is called One Monarch. And it wraps around to the front. It's not a bad city, is it? No, I mean, and this is really one of those. It's a good-looking spot. It's a good-looking spot. And one of the things that I think for me is quite emotional is that, you know, Farrah mentioned the idea of creating monuments to wildlife. And, you know, when we were doing this project or began this project and we understood that the numbers were dropping quite rapidly in San Francisco or in the West for the Western population. You know, one of the things I kind of hoped it never would be is an actual monument to a species gone. And we're coming dangerously close to that. And it's heartwarming to at least know that this piece is here and it has, in fact, changed the skyline of San Francisco. And that collectively what monuments also say is that we residents of San Francisco care about this particular topic and this thing that's being memorialized. So we're not saying this animal that's being memorialized. And then on the opposite side is a piece called Butterflies and Poppies. And this title was inspired by a painting by the same name that Vincent Van Gogh did. And then the front, I'm going to show you a very special gift that the residents get to see and unfortunately this part isn't quite public, but you can see aspects of it is a hand painted wall covering that actually shows all the 34 species of butterflies that have most recently been observed and I use iNaturalist and the help of experts and friends. Liam O'Brien is definitely one of those folks who has devoted his life to observing butterflies of the Bay Area. And we took that same design and digitized it and created a vinyl wall covering for the garage door of 455 Hyde Street. And here's a few details. That's the tortoise shell, a California sister with the Matilla and Field Crescent below it, and a fiery skipper. So that slide that was already very discouraging of that Western Monarch population dropping to 30,000, you know, in the 19 in 2019 has dropped to 2000 in the 2020 count. You know, so on this Earth Day, I think one of the things that I'm really thinking about and will continue to think about is our relationship to this planet and how to improve it so that we might come to a place of equal reciprocity and that we give it something as much as it gives us which is tall order but I think can be done. Actually, if you want to just go back there for a second, you know, if you want to know how you can get involved and help pollinators and other invertebrates. Our conservation partner is an organization called Xerxes Xerxes Society, which is the largest and oldest conservation organization focused on invertebrates in the world. If you go to Xerxes.org they've got tons of materials in there, what you can do locally what you can do nationally become a member sign up join them show them some love. They're on the ground they're doing hard science they're doing, you know, communication. So that's a great organization look into if you're if you're passionate about life on earth. Speaking of life on earth, speaking of life on earth, you know, another reason why we do what we do and love the format of public art is that we do very much believe that it can help lift nature blindness. I don't know if you guys can spot the alligator in this photo, but man nature is really easy to overlook and ignore and I found myself guilty of it and I hate it when it happens but you know sit still next to a tree for, you know, five minutes and you'll hear birds calling in it and just listen for the sounds of life. And, you know, really one of the things that they're also mentioned earlier was to make these overlooked animals and make them hard to ignore through these big public art installations so we just recently turned from Houston, Texas, where we created a new mural, a public art mural for the Houston Parks Board. And it was a really wonderful again collaboration and a lot of different organizations that came together. But over the last five years or so Houston Parks Board, Parks Board has brought bike paths and walking paths along the city's buying system. So right at the center of downtown Houston is a confluence of something called Buffalo Bayou and White Oak Bayou. And not only is this a confluence of actual waterways, but this was where Houston began and it was the location where the port was so that shipping shipments would come through there and all the ships would come through this little port. And then behind that was the railway system. And so this is truly at the confluence of the creation of Houston as a city. But Houston is also one of the most diverse cities in the United States. And it also is the place for migratory birds. It has some of the most diverse populations of migratory birds that come in. And so as such this mural confluence highlights six migrating species. On the left hand side are there, they are male birds are represented in their breeding plumage and on the right hand side, the same birds and their non breeding plumage because these six in particular have a pretty significant contrast between the different seasons. And behind them is a map of Buffalo Bayou that creates the backdrop. And then on the left hand side, we have three representations of birds that migrate to Houston to breed and nest. And then on the right hand side, what are called winter species so we're telling the full seasonal story of migration on this wall called confluence. And as Jane mentioned, you know, it's what we're, you know, we're doing here the, the most obvious thing that we're doing here is we're telling a story of avian diversity and, and, you know, beautiful different colors and, and how important that is but I think as we, as we're looking, you know, it's a much bigger metaphor. You know, I mean diversity is the building block of, you know, a healthy ecosystem, healthy ecosystems are based on diversity and the more diverse those ecosystems are the more successful and productive they are. And I think through all the through line through all of this work is that that is not just related to, you know, the birds and the bees and the flowers and trees that's related to, to all of us as a society. And as we see this and we, you know, embrace this diversity. You know, we're challenging people also to kind of think a little bit broader than, than, you know, just beautiful birds on a wall. Yeah, for sure. Thank you. And here I am again for scale. I like showing these scale pieces because it's really hard to picture, you know, what size we're painting at Mississippi kite. And part two just that nature is this grand designer is just who would have thought to put a red eye on this bird, you know, I love I just love that the Mississippi guy has a red eye just kind of makes the whole makes the whole bird just looks so compelling. Yeah, it's really fun when someone says who I love the colors as well. I didn't pick them. That's just the way they look. You know, you love answering it and that way. So once again, I hope that you can attend my new opening at pallet gallery in on Friday, April 30 from five to 8pm poach pruned peeled. That concludes our presentation and we are very excited to answer any questions you all may have. So there is a question. It's a fun one to from. It's in the Q&A function. Do you want to see it or do you like me just read that out loud. Oh, let's see. Yes, here we go. Yeah, Michaela is that Michaela. Is that what we guess that's the one. Okay. Oh, cool. I'm going to go ahead and can everybody see these or should I should I know. Okay, I appreciate that. You know what, you can see the contact page there. Feel free to feel free to reach on reach on out to us and drop us a line with with any questions if you want to send a portfolio through. Go for it. Yeah, thanks. Thank you so much. Inspiring artists. Yeah. And amazing. Appreciate the hustle. Anyone has any questions you to now is your time and anyone in the audience. There's another one. Monarch and Moda. Monarch and Moda is in Ogden, Utah. And you know, if you go to, if you go to our website, go to eat 12.com. We just updated it. So it's just about, it's just about current. And so all of this tons of information on all the projects walk through just now and more. And then folks that the main link that I put in this doc tonight, the event links this has on like I thought they gave us lots of resources tonight so I tried to keep up and they're all there. And you'll get a reminder, and you can watch this again on YouTube. That's awesome. Lots of thank you. Any YouTube YouTube love. Last call for questions friends. Yeah. Thank you very much. San Francisco Public Library and Anisa and everyone for joining here. It's always a always a pleasure to share our work and it's always a pleasure to work with the public library where big fans and big, big, big and frequent users. Yeah. Yeah, I think I owe you guys a book actually. Yeah, you might owe you more than that. No, just one. We are fine free. Well, it was just absolutely thrilled to share our work with you tonight and thank you so much for tuning in. Yep. Thanks a lot. We want to thank the San Francisco Department of the Environment for co-sponsoring tonight's event. Thank you, Jane.