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Wild alabama's mission is to inspire people to enjoy, value, and protect the wild places of Alabama. They strive to engage people in a variety of ways, year-round and in all kinds of environments from virtual to the deep wilderness. Learn more about Wild AL on their website: www.wildal.org
First Friday Reception
June 7TH, 2024
Exhibit Gallery
Artist Statement
This exhibit is rooted in each artist’s and poet’s intimate relationship with the eastern hemlock forests of northwest Alabama where the hemlock trees are among the few populations currently unaffected by the Hemlock Woolly Adelgid, a non-native invasive insect that has decimated the hemlocks up the Appalachian chain from east Alabama into Canada. Eastern hemlock (tsuga Canadensis) is an evergreen tree that is a foundational species in its ecosystem, a relic from before the last Ice Age that profoundly influences terrestrial and aquatic life.
Born of Wild Alabama’s community science program Save Alabama’s Hemlocks, the aim of this exhibitis to educate about the beauty and importance of Alabama’s hemlock forests, and the deadly threat of the Hemlock Woolly Adelgid.
The exhibit is an art show of paintings, photographs, handmade paper, book art, glass and poetry by Alabama artists that explores the power and beauty of the Eastern Hemlock ecosystem under threat. There will be workshops, a poetry reading and artist talks during the run of the exhibit.
"What we love, we protect. Wild Alabama’s hope is that viewers of this exhibit come to love these forests as we do, and in the process, join us as forest protectors in the ways that make sense for them. The time is always now." (Janice Barrett)
Wild Alabama is a 501-c3 non-profit forest protection organization working primarily on the Bankhead and Talladega National Forests, Sipsey Wilderness, Cheaha Wilderness and Dugger Mountain Wilderness.
Wild Alabama’s mission is to inspire people to enjoy, value and
protect the wild places of Alabama.
PARTICIPATING Artists & Poets
Learn more about the 19 Artists and Poets featured in Wild Alabama's "Conservation Through Art: Saving Alabama's Hemlocks" Exhibition.
Gary Anderson
BIO
Gary Anderson is from Limestone County, Alabama. He obtained a B.A. in art from Athens State University. Gary has worked in Huntsville, Alabama as a technical illustrator, publications manager, animator, and web designer. Painting is his avocation. He uses traditional oil painting techniques to create realistic images. Inspiration comes from photos he collects of family, friends, and outdoor activities. Gary’s goal is to enjoy describing the beauty of the Tennessee Valley with paint and brushes.
STATEMENT
Painting is my therapy. It focuses my mind and gives me a sense of accomplishment. Painting also provides an opportunity to say what is important to me. I describe people I know and experiences with nature.
Anne Markham
BIO
Anne Markham Bailey is a poet, author, book artist, awareness educator, and Forest Bathing Guide. She lives in Irondale, Alabama.
STATEMENT
My work as a poet and writer rises from relational awareness as a living being in deep connection with existence. I attend experience and engage language as a matrix for communication as listener/translator, immersed in the complexities of language to offer a meaningful experience to the reader/listener. The work of poet/communicator shares roots with my role as a Forest Bathing guide, creative awareness and arts educator.
Janice Barrett
BIO
Janice Barrett is a lifelong artist and lover of forests. Growing up in rural Lawrence County, Alabama in the 1950s and 60s, going to the “mountains” is what Janice’s family did for outings. These mountains were the foothills of the southern Appalachians— the Warrior Mountains of Bankhead National Forest—and what was to become the Sipsey Wilderness. Following creek beds through hemlock-shrouded sandstone canyons with her parents and sisters, the sweet, pure air they were breathing set a love for the forest into Janice’s blood and nourished a strong tendency toward nature-inspired art. Janice paints primarily in oils and watercolor. As Education and Outreach Coordinator for Wild Alabama, she leads interpretive hikes, stewardship projects and forest bathing walks in Bankhead National Forest and Sipsey Wilderness. Janice weaves art into her non-profit work as a vessel for education, and continually deepening her relationship with forests and all of wild nature. Through art and guiding, Janice works to sprout a new generation of forest lovers and protectors, taking children and adults to the “mountains” to walk the creeks and breathe that sweet forest air.
STATEMENT
My paintings are love letters to the living forest. I reveal them to the world to spark curiosity about the forests' beauty and profound importance to all life that depends upon them. I paint with oils and watercolors in the Eastern hemlock forests of northwest Alabama. I have loved the dark mystery of these forests all my life. For me, painting is the pathway to a deeper understanding of wild nature, a mode of exploration. I paint outdoors, en plein air, to be in direct contact with a wild place, to breathe its air, to see and capture the changes in its light, to feel its spirit. It is an intimate, immersive experience that deepens my relationship with and understanding of the forest ecosystem.
Elaine Booth
BIO
Elaine Booth uses hyper detail in her watercolor and multimedia pieces to examine the relationship between macro and micro within contemporary landscape. She uses story, composition, and vibrant color to create vast and alive images that bring the viewer closer to wild places and themselves. Elaine graduated from the University of Kansas in May 2018 with a degree in Illustration and concentrations in art history and cultural anthropology. She is an avid rock climber, kayaker, backpacker, and lover of wild places; and uses those experiences to inform and inspire her work.
STATEMENT
I am a rock climber. I am continually in awe of and deeply aware of the space that I occupy on a rock, whether that be the micro changes of the rock face I cling to by my fingertips, one small half centimeter of difference in depth means I fall or stay on, or the macro, tens, hundreds, even thousands of feet below and all around me that consume and hide me in plain sight to onlookers below. The great designer Isamu Noguchi speaks about play as a purposeful approach to understanding the way we occupy space. As an outdoorswoman the space that I occupy, play in, and ultimately use as inspiration is outside; how I use that space, helps me better understand my place within it. In the same way that I pay close attention to scale as I play, I observe and use scale in my work. When I observe land, ecosystem, and habitat I cannot ignore the macro and micro details of how those systems interact with one another. The caterpillar, while micro makes such a difference on the zoomed-out large-scale macro landscape that it occupies. What I find so delightful and insightful about creating landscape is it relates to the way systems work in scale. My work is detailed, precise, and intricate close-up; it is vast, magnificent, and full-bodied when viewed far away. What I hope to convey in my work is a system that works so intricately together that from far away it thrives just as perfectly as it does close up. I want the viewer to understand the importance of scale and detail when it comes to ecosystems, land, and wild places as well as their relationships, the spaces they occupy, and ultimately themselves. The macro is just as vital as the micro.
Sam Calhoun
BIO
Sam Calhoun is a writer and photographer living in Elkmont, AL. The author of two chapbooks, “Apogee” (Origami Poetry Project), “Follow This Creek” (Foothills Publishing), and a collaborative work “The Hemlock Poems” (Present Tense Media), part of the Conservation Through Art: Saving Alabama's Hemlock program and exhibit. His poems have appeared in Pregnant Moon Review, Westward Quarterly, Eratos, Boats Against the Current, and numerous other journals. Follow him on Instagram @weatherman_sam, or his website, www.weathermansam.com.
STATEMENT
I view language and words as I do nature, places to play in, places to explore. The way words roll across a page or off a tongue is as important as water moving over rock. I have a great connection to the natural world, as writer and photographer. The immediate experiences of my travels and minutiae of encounters inform my writing, being both recorder and storyteller. I do not believe in the concept of the mundane, the ordinary. Everything has it's own spark of magic. As a poet I work to sculpt awareness of this magic around me in ink, to inflect sound to the soundless, to ask questions, and answer them, if possible. I believe the poem is the pathway to the center of the self, to that which we hold most authentic, rooted, and close. That which we wish to share, inspire, and invite others in to explore and play.
Paulette Daniel
BIO
Paulette Daniel has been a mosaic artist since 2010. She lives in Pell City, Alabama, and is self-taught. Her love for mosaics came when she smashed a plate for her first mosaic flower pot and discovered piece by piece the freedom that mosaics allows where you don’t have to stay within the lines. She works with stained glass, pebbles, mosaic tile, broken plates, shells, beach glass, and beads. Her favorite mosaics are the pieces that are for the garden - bird baths, totem poles, flower pots, 3-D shapes and stepping stones. She loves to teach mosaics, helping others to see that everyone has a creative streak within just waiting to be released.
STATEMENT
My love of the outdoors and hiking introduced me to the hemlock. I was inspired by the tiny cones and needles. I enjoyed the challenge that it offered in attempt to make it come alive through using stained glass to create this mosaic.
Jim Felder
BIO
An early interest in painting and drawing meshed easily with what Jim Felder learned about the natural realms of north Alabama he explored as a child. From this beginning and throughout his life as an artist and designer, his work has adopted an intent that it did not previously possess: the preservation in images and impressions of the remnants of an outdoors that never left him and that he never left. Jim’s original attraction to its wonder and beauty has been steadily replaced by his desire for its immortality.
STATEMENT
I grew up in the landscape of North Alabama. I did not admire it from afar. I have lived in it, finding it outside my back door growing up and under my feet where I traveled. Now I am further pushed to record it for generations who may never experience it firsthand. My wife and I discovered the Bankhead National Forest fifty years ago. I wrote a book about it. The scene depicted in this painting is a sensory vortex: To arrive here is to descend Trail 209 from the south into an exciting disorder. As you drop down the long, piddling waterfall that steps to the river, the water turns from a broken, slight necklace into an unearthly sash of blue-green. To see it come to you is mesmerizing. The stone blade of the Eye of The Needle rises above you. The forest around is a thousand shades of dark green, gathering its secrets together toward the canyon bottom, to be unleashed upon your arrival. The hemlocks are tall and black in the want of sunlight on their lower storeys. Their roots are confused and exposed and grasp the rocks beneath them like eagle's claws, desperately hoping to retain the privilege of another year in this place. The river slaps confidently through its rocky bed, barely inconvenienced in its aggressive enthusiasm, like a dog at play. The air is a mouthful of cake. The roar of the water is deafening. All your senses are illuminated. To hint at that is the purpose of this painting.
Leisha Hultgren
BIO
Leisha Hultgren holds a B. A. in English and philosophy from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, an M. A. in English from National University, and a PhD in Education, specializing in professional studies, from Capella University. Hultgren has served as editor of AURA Literary Arts Review and was a founding editor of NELLE (formerly Astarte Literary Arts Journal). Her poetry has been published in Negative Capability, Elk River Review, Fester, and the Willow Street Anthology. She served as a professor of English for twenty years, teaching English composition and American literature. With a passion for social and ecological justice, Hulgren currently serves as director of diversity and inclusion programs for the University of Alabama at Birmingham in Heersink School of Medicine.
Timothy Michael Joe
BIO
Timothy Michael Joe is an American self-taught, representational artist from Greensboro, Alabama. Timothy creates art based on themes associated with loving God’s creation, conservation of nature, and history. His main paint mediums are gouache, oil paints, soft pastels, and watercolor. He enjoys using his artistic gift to educate, uplift, and encourage. He travels, teaching in person or online.
STATEMENT
I am a third-generation black Angus farmer, birdwatcher, and hiker so the love for the outdoors comes natural to me. My art style concentrates on the light effect on my subject matter and contrast between light and shadow. There is so much beauty and craftsmanship in God’s creation that I must document it on canvas or panel. My art serves to educate the importance of nature conservation, to be mindful of how we use natural resources and care for other living creatures we share this planet with. I may not be able to convince someone to read a book about preserving delicate habitats, but I sure can paint them for many to see.
Maggie Johnston
BIO
Maggie Johnston is the Executive Director of Wild Alabama. She grew up in Winona, Mississippi. She taught at the Alabama School for the Deaf for many years and then led the Camp McDowell Environmental Center for 17 years. Her passion is finding creative ways to connect people to the natural environment and then helping to guide them to an understanding of why we need to protect it. She has been a “closet artist” since Mrs. Young’s art class in junior high school.
STATEMENT
I have been creating art all of my life in one medium or another. I came down with Covid and was isolating myself in a small guest house to keep my family safe. After a few days, I couldn’t stand being inside anymore and had to go outside to enjoy fresh air, breathe in that air and connect with the Natural world a bit. Lying down on the carpet of moss and grass to look up through the trees into the canopy of big leaf magnolias and hemlocks gave me the inspiration to produce this work and the poem that accompanies it.
Bryce Lafferty
BIO
The artwork of award-winning artist Bryce Lafferty has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in museums and galleries in the United States and in Japan. In Alabama his work has been featured in the Huntsville Museum of Art; the Wiregrass Museum of Art in Dothan; the Heritage Hall Museum in Talladega, the Gadsden Museum of Art; and the Comer Museum, in Sylacauga. His extensive list of exhibitions also includes the Momentum Gallery in Asheville, NC, Site: Brooklyn Gallery in New York City; the S. Tucker Cooke Gallery, University of North Carolina Asheville; the Artwell Gallery in Torrington, CT; the Slocumb Gallery, East Tennessee University in Johnson City; the Nahcotta Gallery in Portsmouth, NH; the Craighead Green Gallery and the Latino Cultural Center in Dallas; and the Japan International Watercolor Exhibition, in Niigata, Japan.
STATEMENT
My watercolor drawings emerge as poetic expressions of my wonderment for the natural world. They provide a surreal, emotional, and ineffable response to overwhelming beauty. The works are almost always based on actual places that I’ve visited and are the result of an internal process that involves meshing together memories with textbook knowledge such as science, philosophy, or history. I often use recurring motifs, such as cross sections and concentric patterning with natural elements. Cutaways provide a way to open up the landscapes and tell the story of their inner workings.
Allison McElroy
BIO
​Allison McElroy is a dedicated professor of Painting at Jacksonville State University. Her artistic journey began with traditional painting techniques, but she has since embraced the beauty of nature as her medium. Through hikes in the Sipsey Wilderness admiring hemlocks, she collected soils and transformed them into oil paint. Allison’s art seeks to blend the Earth’s essence with creativity, bridging the gap between nature and human expression.
STATEMENT
In 2011 Allison was awarded a faculty research grant to collect soil from each state in the United States. She brought her research of soil into the classroom and taught her students how to make paint, watercolor, and inks out of dirt. Allison’s research of natural materials and scientific observations has taken her to several international residencies. The most prestigious being an immersion in the Amazon Rain Forest for ten days, in 2018, where she studied with renowned scientist and environmentalist. Allison was one of 18 candidates from several countries chosen to be a resident. Her work was published in an international catalogue “Labverde 2018 Immersion Program in the Amazon,” which also is on Labverde’s website for posterity.
In 2023 she was accepted to Baroque Blue artist residency in Santa Caterina, Puglia, Italy. While in attendance she created an earthwork painted with the soil collected at the Bauxite Mine she visited while in residence. The work is published in an online catalogue and will be a print catalog by the end of 2024. The love of soil was deeply ingrained in Allison’s DNA. even as a child making mud pies with mud from the creek and insisting her younger sister Amy take a bite of the pie. Years later in graduate school, she used Alabama red dirt as part of her thesis body of work. However it was not 2011 when the true research began. Allison was awarded the faculty research grant from JSU listed above. The work on exhibit is created from soil collected from Hemlock forest. The Hemlock wooly adelgid has destroyed many Hemlock forests up North and is moving south. Allison is passionate about conservation through art to save the Hemlocks and share knowledge to others of how they might help.
Erin Morris
BIO
Erin Morris specializes in still life, landscape, and portrait paintings in watercolor and oil. Originally from Haleyville, Alabama, she has spent the majority of her life creating. She is a graduate of Jacksonville State University with a bachelor’s in studio art and a minor in biology. Her work has been shown in the university’s COVID Creations Show, 50th Annual Juried Student Show, and well as the university president’s house. In 2023, Morris’s BioArt Club was invited to present their nature project at the Biodesign Challenge in New York City. Morris enjoys incorporating new methods and materials into her work. She aims to showcase the beauty of nature and encourage its conservation through her art. She can be found under “Erin Morris” on social media as well as through her website www.erinmorris.work.
STATEMENT
I am a mixed-media artist that is inspired by natural and synthetic materials. I consider my work to be an observation as well as a commentary on industrialism and commercialism’s effect on the environment, namely forests and waterways. My work incorporates several materials, such as plastic bags, recycled plastic, gum wrappers, acrylic and oil paint. I also utilize my own paint, using forest soil samples mixed with linseed and walnut oil. These materials create an intriguing mixture of both texture and color that tells a visual and emotional story from the left side of the canvas to the right and helps create a sense of “realness” in the work. I enjoy the challenge and experimental process of combining different mediums as well as taking things that have outlived their original purpose and molding them into something new. My inspiration and creative process for art, as well as science, come from my childhood home near the Bankhead Forest in the northwest corner of Alabama. I spent many hours in my youth drawing and painting outside with the sounds of nature surrounding me as I worked. My work’s goal is to inspire others to appreciate the natural world around us and to raise awareness about humanity’s impact on the environment.
Linda Munoz
BIO
Working as a Registered Nurse in a psychiatric hospital on the night shift, Linda Munoz watched her staff nursing assistants as they pieced quilts to pass the hours between patient checks. She found the process irresistible. Soon, with the help of the staff, she pieced her own “Lone Star '' quilt. When Linda took an intensive class in stained glass in 1980 with master mosaic artist Isaiah Zagar in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, she found the two art mediums to be very similar in design and began making stained glass mosaic panels, benches and large community art installations. One of the larger projects can be seen at the DeSoto Falls steps, where she and Brittney Hughes collaborated. Over one thousand volunteers placed pieces of glass on the mosaics going down to the falls. Little River Arts Council helped fund the materials. Several mosaic benches were created by children under the guidance of Munoz in Mentone, Valley Head and Menlo, Georgia, with funding from Little River Arts Council in 2008 and 2009. Heather Nicely of Mentone helped with design and teaching of the workshops.
Munoz has taught stained glass mosaic art and kiln fused glass to children and adults for over 25 years. The training she received through the Alabama Institute for Education in the Arts prepared her to integrate arts education into the classroom curriculum. As a result, she developed a unit of study called “Patchwork History Project” in which students study the quilters of Gees Bend and then construct a stained glass mosaic quilt for a wall installation in their schools. She has completed over 30 of these projects throughout the Black Belt of Alabama and in Mississippi and Georgia.
Linda recently completed a series of large mosaic panels for the town of Collinsville, Alabama. Panels represent the town in different ways. Two panels were made by school children; one representing the Hispanic community, another the Turkey Trot Festival. Community members helped with design and making the mosaic panels. They will be displayed on Main Street this spring.
Linda serves on the Board of Directors of Alabama Folklife Association and Black Belt Treasures Cultural Arts Center. Her work can be seen at www.littleriverart.com
and at her studio in Cuba, Alabama.
STATEMENT
Vibrant patterns, textures and colors are vital elements in my glass artwork. Coming from a family in which quilting was a much loved and practiced art form, I enjoy creating mosaic and fused glass art pieces inspired by the lines, shapes and colors of the quilts I grew up with as a child. Working with community arts groups is one of my greatest pleasures. Another glass artist, Jo Taylor, and I will soon be teaching the victims of the Selma tornado various mosaic techniques and mosaic panels will be fashioned from the glass, pottery and broken china left in the path of the storm. It is my hope that beauty and healing can come from destruction.
Yuri Ozaki
BIO
Yuri Ozaki grew up in Mie Prefecture, Japan. The area is known for its unique wet climate and mystical history. The beauty of her home region would later influence Ozaki’s work.
STATEMENT
The Tennessee Valley enjoys proximity and ubiquitous public access to a rich and biodiverse natural environment. I have been enjoying outdoor activities throughout my life and am fascinated by trees so painting them naturally occurred as part of my repertoire. My paintings focus on trees of advanced age or in states of decay. Aspects of decay draw the eyes – ancient trunks overrun by moss and lichen, entwining vines, gnarly roots no longer sustaining life. These details create dynamic shadows and vivid contrasting colors and textures. Examining details of the decaying aspect then focuses the observer on the reality that decay is the foundation of renewal – mushrooms growing, nutrients for the next generation, tiny new shoots sprouting from the forest floor. Reflecting for a moment on the continuous cycle of aging, decay, and the hopeful emergence of new life is cathartic and calming for me. I wish to create spaces where viewers of my work can share that peace.
Charles Seifried
BIO
Charles Seifried has been doing photography for over 37 years and commercial photography for close to 30 years. His work has been seen in Cooking LIght, The Economist, Business Week, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Home and Garden, Outside, Backpacker, SeaKayaker, The Bankhead Monitor, Wild Alabama, Wild South and many more publications. He has worked for years in Tourism and Travel for both Alabama and the state of Tennessee. He also has several books that have been published on the state of Alabama...six in total....Alabama Simply Beautiful, Alabama Canyons The Bankhead Forest, Alabama Outdoors, Garden Views of Decatur and Morgan County, Through the Garden Gate (a book on the gardens in Huntsville). The book “Live Oaks and Gentle Folks” has many of his photos are portrayed amongst some great recipes. He worked on the opening of the Alabama Scenic River Trail with a core group of dedicated Alabamians that loved the water in the state as much as he did. An avid kayaker, he has done many miles in the center of a small boat. Charles has been around the world, the love of travel has taken him to far flung areas of the globe. His favorite countries include Scotland, Ireland and New Zealand. In the commercial, corporate and advertising fields, he did work for BellSouth, Drummond Coal, CCA, Boy Scouts of America, J Walter Thompson, Aviagen, Space and Rocket Center, Rockport, Nautica, and many others. His collaboration with Dye Van Mol and Lawrence in Nashville, Tennessee helped him win the London International First Place. He has also won many Addy awards on the local, and district level. He is retired and still shoots nature photography and lives with his wife Brenda in Decatur.
STATEMENT
My photography has taken me into many different avenues. Commercial/Corporate/Advertising was how I made my living over the last 42 years, but my true love was doing nature/landscape photography. This took me into doing trips to the Bankhead National Forest, which led me into doing the book, "Alabama Canyons, The Bankhead National Forest". Statewide, I did the book "Alabama Outdoors". This involved kayaking on many of Alabama's rivers and hiking, all over the state. "Alabama Simply Beautiful" was a compilation of photos of nature, people, cities etc. Now, I am doing mostly all nature photos. It is very satisfying coming back with photos of the day, working on them and posting them. I have two other books. "Through the Garden Gate", a book on Huntsville Gardens. "Garden Views of Decatur and Morgan County" was on the local gardens here in Decatur. My work has been published in NY Times, Wall Street Journal, Cooking Lite, Better Homes, Seakayker, Outside, Backpacker, Business Week, The Economist and many more magazines. My photo assignments have taken me to Peru, Columbia, all over the US.
Jillian Sico
BIO
Jillian Sico Artist Bio
Jillian Sico (she/her) is a papermaker, printmaker, and bookbinder who makes artist’s books under the imprint Frogsong Press. Her work is inspired by the slow, quiet reality encountered in wild places and natural processes. Her book work has been exhibited nationally and is held in 18 special and private collections. After living in the South for the past 12 years, she is now based in Colorado Springs where she manages The Press at Colorado College, a letterpress and book arts studio. www.frogsongpress.com @jillianmarys
STATEMENT
My work is inspired by the slow, quiet reality that I encounter in wild places and natural processes. Slowing down, engaging fully with my materials, and spending time outdoors allows me to think deeply about how we, as humans, connect with nature. I use a variety of texts, on-site research, and interviews to explore the visible and invisible layers of meaning embedded in natural systems and the human activities that relate to them. My process is informed and expanded through collaboration, research on culture and ecology, and paper making traditions in other parts of the world.
Beth Stewart
BIO
Beth Stewart has had a long career as an advocate of environmental protection and urban planning. She dove into poetry 10 years ago to remember and process her life experiences, especially among the enduring and evolving cultures and landscapes of grief and joy in her native Alabama. She has been Executive Director of the nonprofit Cahaba River Society for 28 years, restoring and safeguarding one of the most biodiverse rivers in North America that is also the Birmingham region’s drinking water. Beth has a Master’s Degree in Landscape Architecture with a focus in environmental and urban planning from UC Berkeley. While her BFA in art from the U. of Georgia convinced her that this was not the career for her, the visual arts continue to enrich her life, especially the meditative experiences of time, current, life and light that illuminate her photography; you can often find her wading in creeks and rivers, camera in hand.
Starr Weems
BIO
Starr Weems enjoys designing paintings and illustrations with watercolor. When she isn’t painting, she is out hiking or working with teens at Ardmore High School, where she has taught for twenty-three years.
STATEMENT
The magic of nature isn't always found in sweeping mountaintop vistas. Sometimes the magic is smaller than that. It happens when you watch a heavy raindrop splash on a rock. Maybe you stop to imagine what it might be like if you could freeze that splash in place and examine the small, crownlike shape. When I paint nature, it is about bringing small, enchanting moments into focus. Whether I am exploring the way the sunlight passes through an abandoned cicada husk or the motion of a maple seed as it helicopters its way from the tree to the earth, my art is a showcase of the details that make nature feel magical to me.