The North Pacific Gyre

My latest series of large environmental  drawings are all about water - particularly the Oceans. News reports about the North Pacific Gyre (also known as the Great Garbage Patch)  get me very upset but also inspired to make images and get them out to the public. Whatever we can visualize, we can understand and we can change. I'm playing with ideas for a radical nomadic exhibit that could be easily set up in different locations. Please send me your ideas!

Eve Breaks in to the LA River

In April I went to visit my daughter, Eve, in LA. Sharing my interest in the environment, she suggests a field trip to "find" the LA River. She preps me with a great essay by nature writer, Jenny Price. Now we are all psyched up but finding the river is not easy! We drive around while checking over maps. Finally find a place to park. Getting to the actual water requires urban hiking of the roughest kind.

The River in a Concrete Straightjacket

The LA river is many things: an example of bad urban planning, an outsize concrete sewer 51 miles long, a movie set (Terminator 2) and a surface for graffiti and murals. Although efforts are being made to revive it, "it's a miserable spot now, a trash-strewn wasteland of empty lots, steel fences and railroad tracks beneath a tangle of freeway overpasses."  Most inhabitants of LA don't realize that it exists.

Where the River meets the Ocean

Looks quite pretty at this point. We tour the beautiful Aquarium of the Pacific located in Long Beach, California right where the LA River flows out into the Ocean

Watershed exhibit at Long Beach Aquarium

This exhibit shows how the LA River runs from the mountains down through the city and out to the Pacific. The Aquarium is right where the river meets the Ocean.

Foggy beach on Cape Cod

After LA, it's on to the East Coast. I bring my 91-year-old parents from their Florida home up to their summer home on the Cape. After a successful journey, I meet up with my husband, Hal. Here he is walking along the beach at South Yarmouth. The atmosphere is foggy, cool and beautiful. 

The ever present plastic

As we walk the beach, we notice, even in this beautiful setting, the remains of balloons mixing with the seaweed