How Does Life Work? Learn More at Morning Earth

Perhaps you are wondering. If you want to develop your eco-literacy, or explore the confluence of art and ecology, you might want to take a trip over to the Morning Earth site maintained by poet and educator John Caddy. It's a rich environment, with learning resources, a daily poem, and information about balance, the biosphere, natural cycles, energy, symbiosis, and transformation. (I'm adding a link at the left.)

One of my favorite sections includes artist/naturalist pages, where you can learn more about people like Andy Goldsworthy, Rachel Carson, Beatrix Potter, and other artists who are new to me, such as Perry Ingli, of Plum City, Wisconsin, some of whose gorgeous works are shown above. The vertical image is of Aquarius Bluff, Lake Pepin, on the Mississippi River. The next picture is of the Sawbill Mountains at the Temperance River, from Ingli's North Shore Lake Superior Series, 1994. (I like this a lot, as I've climbed the Sawbill Mountains.) The other image is a set of 3 panels showing the Bluffs at Lake Pepin, from the Mississippi River Series of 1994.

Ingli has this to say about the way he works:

I am what artists call a "plein air" artist. That means I work outside, directly from what I see, not from photographs. I have to be there. I like hilly steep countryside and river bluffs, so sometimes I have to tie myself to trees while I'm working. I work with pastels on large sheets of paper on folding tables.

I take my time. I engage the natural-world in the slow lane; not the split-second aperture of a camera's eye.

I allow myself extended encounters with our region's land, water, sky, wind, wolf, moose, eagle, bear, loon; where new experiences and age-old memories merge and interact in a sort of slowed-down time.

I especially like that part about slowed-down time: it's often one of the gifts of artistic expression. This link takes you directly to Perry Ingli's Studio page.