A Symposium/Benefit for Brushwood Center at Ryerson Woods

Fall at Ryerson Woods, © Brushwood Center
Fall at Ryerson Woods, Riverside, IL © Brushwood Center

Lake County Forest Preserves’ Ryerson Woods is home to Brushwood Center, an environmental education and arts center, “a center for discourse about nature and culture.” Brushwood features an ongoing variety of programs bringing nature lovers together to paint, watch birds, practice yoga, or simply enjoy a concert against a backdrop of wood, field, and farm.

On May 14th, Brushwood Center will host the Smith Nature Symposium, a benefit dinner with a keynote by Clemson University’s Dr. J. Drew Lanham, a self-described “a man of color in love with the natural world.” Dr. Lanham is a nationally-respected voice on the deep connection between ethnicity, land, and conservation and he will be addressing the link between minority communities and critical bird habitat. Click here to register for the benefit dinner.

Sketching outside Brushwood Center, © Brushwood Center
Sketching outside Brushwood Center, © Brushwood Center

Ryerson Woods is an amazing place with its pre-settlement flora and fauna, a place, thankfully, where we can enjoy the beauties of spring unencumbered by garlic mustard…

Continue reading A Symposium/Benefit for Brushwood Center at Ryerson Woods

Wild Beauty in Winter Dark

Prairie Dock, Silphium terebinthinaceum (detail), © Heeyoung Kim
Prairie Dock, Silphium terebinthinaceum (detail), © Heeyoung Kim

I used to be a happy camper when I was painting a Shooting Star in spring, but soon I realized that I could paint only one plant during that time, missing all others, because I only had limited time. After agonizing over the issue, I came up with a solution: just drawing and keeping color notes in blooming seasons, and finishing up the paintings in winter. How perfect with Chicago’s long winter!  At this point, more than 70 finished and unfinished drawings are waiting for their turn. New ones are added whenever opportunities arise. Even exotic plants like Ginseng and Titan Arum have found their place in my flat file. Of course, I should paint Ginseng, an Asian cure-all, to honor my father who was an herbal medicine practitioner.

image of sketches

Often people ask me what I do in winter.  Continue reading Wild Beauty in Winter Dark