Art of Nature/Nature of Art with Jane Kim

Note: This episode was transcribed by AI and has not been thoroughly checked by a human. Please forgive any mistakes or wonkiness, including the fact that the AI couldn't tell my voice apart from Jane's. 

Jane Kim  0:00  
You can call it whatever you want. You want to call it art call it art, you want to call it science illustration call science illustration you want to call it none of the above cool by me. But is it doing the thing that I set out to do, which is more about engagement and learning and curiosity and wonder? 

Michelle Fullner  0:15  
Hello, and welcome to Golden State naturalist, a podcast for anyone who's ever looked at a piece of art and then never seen the world in quite the same way again, I'm Michelle Fullner. And today we're talking with Jane Kim, who's voice you just heard about what it means to make art or scientific illustrations of the natural world in the impact those images can have on our way of seeing. In this episode, we discuss nature blindness, the importance of place based art, Western Monarch butterflies, endangered frogs, the purpose of murals, intergenerational relationships with the earth, and how both viewing and creating art can change the way we look at the world and the choices we make going forward. Before we get to that, I want to celebrate a few things. One, this is the first episode of season three of Golden State naturalist, thank you to everyone who has been waiting so patiently for this episode to finally arrive. I've spent the season break coordinating with experts and traveling all over the state to record interviews on topics like tide pools, native bees, California condors, and so many more, including the next episode after this one which will be on coast redwood trees with one of my all time favorite naturalists, grift Griffith, so make sure you're subscribed to the podcast wherever you listen, so you don't miss that or any of season three. And you probably already noticed the next thing I want to celebrate. As soon as you open your podcast app, which is the absolutely gorgeous new art by danza Davis. You may remember the similar layout of the bear and poppies in the original design, which I created when I started the show a little over a year and a half ago. Now. I'm still super proud of that bear because I put a lot of time and effort into making it but I wanted to give it a little glow up. In Jean Kim, the guest in this episode actually connected me with a wonderful artists from her studio inked well to create the new logo. So a big thank you to both danza and Jane for making the new logo possible. And especially thank you to danza for working so hard to capture the spirit of the original bear. And to breathe new life into it. If you want to see more of dances beautiful work, or tell her how much you love what she did with the GSN bear, make sure to go give her a follow at danza Davis on Instagram that's at Danz A D A V I S. And if you're loving this new design as much as I am, you may want to picture on a mug or a t shirt or a tote or a sweatshirt. And these are all things that now exist in the world. Just head to my website, which is Golden State naturalist.com and click on the word store at the top and you'll see everything you can put a bear on right there. And if you want any merch with the old design, make sure to grab that before it goes away soon. I also want to give a big thank you to everyone supporting the show on Patreon. You're making this podcast possible and I absolutely could not make it without your help. You allow me to travel to interview guests in the field to work with an artist to get this fantastic new art created to purchase things like microphones and subscriptions that I need to make the podcast and I even finally got a desk. So now I have a dedicated workspace instead of a workspace shared with a pile of towels I haven't folded yet, which is amazing. If you're not a patron yet you can become one for as little as $4 a month that $4 helps me so much and gives you access to all kinds of video and audio extras from the show lets you get your questions asked during interviews. And now there's even a brand new patrons only book club that's meeting for the first time this month. And of course, if you're a patron you can know that you're helping more people learn about and become connected with this biodiverse state on this beautiful blue.by continuing to make this show possible and helping it reach more people. You can find me on Patreon by going to patreon.com/michelle Fullner. That's Michelle with two L's and Fullner is fu LL and Er But now let's get to the episode. Jane Kim earned her BFA in printmaking from Rhode Island School of Design and then attended CSU Monterey Bay where she received a master's certificate in science illustration. She later founded ink dwell studio with her husband, they are Walker and she's created gorgeous and highly recognizable works of public art all across the country, including the 2500 square foot wall of birds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and her two migrating murals series, one a series of bighorn sheep murals along Highway 395 in eastern Sierra and one a series of Monarch Butterfly murals across the nation. She also creates fine art and has been the artist in residence at Facebook, the de Young Museum and more. In addition to all of this, she is just a truly delightful, warm, welcoming human being and I was honored to have gotten the chance to

So without further ado, let's hear from Jane Kim on Golden State naturalist.

I visited the ink dwell studio in Half Moon Bay on an overcast day, all the way back in March, and I was so nervous. Most of my interviews take place in hiking boots and clothes, I don't mind getting dirty. In the kinds of places I feel most relaxed beside a stream under a canopy of oaks or peering into a vernal pool. And the idea of going into an art gallery to talk to a super talented artist whose stunning images I'd been seeing on Instagram for at least a year at that point, had me feeling more than a little bit out of my element. That is at least until I met Jane, she and her husband there and another inkwell artists named Chelsea Roberts put me immediately at ease by showing me just unrestrained warmth and enthusiasm when I walked in the door. So bless them for being so kind because I was able to relax and look around to take in the space and the space is beautiful, filled with gorgeous paintings of species. I think of his friends and family members Coast live oaks, river otters, Monarch butterflies and Western pond turtles. It's also a working space with neatly organized cans of paint brushes, laptops and printers. A taxidermied bear named Cliff presides over the space, which is filled not only with paintings and the tools of the trade, but also less conventional art pieces. A pair of sneakers embroidered with blue footed boobies, spore prints tacked to a far wall and a small collection of sliced Redwood logs that have been carefully scorched and scrubbed for printmaking. In the studio, I'm not in a forest or wetland, but in a hyper concentrated collection of species and ecosystems, most of them found in California and a few from across the globe define that way this studio may be the most biodiverse space I've visited yet. And despite the stillness of the art, the place feels alive, like you might catch that turtle bobbing to the surface for air out of the corner of your eye. Jane herself is Petite in stature, and on the day that I visited was wearing coveralls, her hair pinned up and out of the way of paint. As she led me to a couple of chairs and we pass the numerous paintings covering the walls. I couldn't help but think of a line from Jane's bio on the inkwell website, which notes that her art career started when she was a little girl obsessively painting flowers and bears on the walls of her bedroom. I'm thinking about this as we get settled into our chairs and get our mics in place. And I asked her about the path from that little girl painting on the bedroom walls to who she is today painting on not only canvases, but on the sides of massive water towers and 11 storey buildings, was it a linear path to becoming a professional artist, or where there's some twists and turns along the way.

Jane Kim  8:03  
 So definitely twists and turns along the way, but also oddly linear, because I do feel like one of the things that bring me the most joy about what I do now is that it's so related to when I was a kid. So I feel like I'm accessing the same things that inspired me then as I am now. And that feels so good to return back to that because I did feel a little lost along the way. But then there were these core things that, you know, I think stuck with me and coming back to them even reinforced more profoundly that this is my true north and passion. And I think yeah, I don't know if anybody's life is totally linear. Another path that Jean could have taken was playing the violin, which she started at age three and continue to all the way through school and even a little bit after going to art school. But she found that she kept coming back to art and back to making things with her hands. This is how she tended to spend her time. And Jane's art for a long time has revolved around the natural world, he had been drawn to nature your whole life and in the works that you've created. But, you know, I kind of I look around and there are so many important issues in the world, right? There's so many important things you could communicate about. So what do you think has drawn you to communicating nature? When I think about that, I still come back to that being the most foundational had an important sort of disconnection that we've created in our as modern humans. And we're not really going to be able to continue to evolve, if we don't have a home to live on if we don't start, you know, listening to the real lessons and wisdom that we can also bring into our everyday understanding and way of living. And we really are at odds with that now, and so I think part of why I

Do what I do is just I've want to make nature exciting for people again, I want it to be cool, I want it to be hip and interesting, and not this, like woowoo thing that only certain type of people can enjoy. But that, you know, there is so much curiosity that one could have that if we were really as connected to the natural world, like we would have no need for social media, we would have no need for, you know, a lot of the things that we have created for ourselves to occupy our boredom, and occupy, like just so many things, right, this and anything that can help Reid foster those connections, and also I'm learning them along the way. So the thing that I love most about being a scientific illustrator, especially and not just an artist, because the art side does this, too, but the science illustration allows me to go really deep and understanding my subject matter. And it's like endless material, you know, I'm never going to feel like I run out of things to talk about paint about look at learn about. So if that is something that can be sparked by my work, and someone else, it's a huge win. Well, I mean, it's absolutely breathtaking work, and super inspiring. The first time I saw it, and I haven't even seen it in person, but just the photo of the monarch with the poppies, I was just like,

Unknown Speaker  11:25  
all right, it's almost like a, like a good kind of gut punch, you know, it's like, just like, takes your breath away. Absolutely. So I would imagine it's having that impact. I hope so. Exactly. And my favorite comment from somebody is after they have seen one of my pieces, say, Oh, my God, I see this out in the world all the time now. And you know, it's like, it's not that it wasn't there before. It's just now they're paying attention. Absolutely. And that kind of leads me into a question that I had about this idea of how we look at things and how we learn what to look at. So when I was an undergrad at San Jose State University, I had a professor named Nick Taylor, and he was teaching a fiction writing class. And in that class, he told me that the title of the book is the author's one opportunity to point their finger into the book and say, this is where you're supposed to look.

Unknown Speaker  12:18  
And I kind of feel like there's a parallel there with murals. Totally. Because murals are it's like your giant finger, like pointing like, this is where you should look. And so my question is, what do you think you're pointing at? What am I pointing at? That's a great question. Because it does differ from mural to mural. Of course, it's to honor the natural world and the environment that you're in. But a lot of our murals are site specific to so we're highlighting what's right here and right now. And so I think, for me, it's like lifting a nature blindness of any kind. I think if that if I, if I could maybe distill it into like one thing, it would be that and then there are layers of other meaning in every single one of my pieces. But that almost is secondary, like what I had to say about it, it's definitely secondary to just capturing somebody's attention. And if I can capture someone's attention with realistic depictions of something in nature, I think that that's a pretty huge win, because we go spend our daily lives pretty much ignoring it, and intentionally being away from it. And I think that was sort of the whole, you know, when cities were first designed and built, it was supposed to be without any nature in them at all right, and to remove that. So I think it's more like the finger is that we are supplanting ourselves in nature. And we have made an intention to forcefully reject it, and intentionally reject it. So maybe that's it, you know, I'm like, kind of talking in circles and trying to arrive at a point. But yeah, it's hard to kind of nail it to one thing, because each mural is pretty custom and specific to a story that is right there. And then that's so beautiful, though. And I think that it can be many things while also being the same one thing because it might look different in different places or in different situations. But ultimately, you're connecting people with a place. Yeah. And so I think that leads really well into talking about your migrating murals. I would love to hear just an overview of what's going on with those. What's the story of the migrating murals? Sure. And I can definitely tell you when I had that moment, because a lot of ideas they really do like like, Oh, I know what I need to do like or I want this and so like let's How can I make this happen? I briefly mentioned the migrating murals in the intro, but just to refresh if you're not familiar with these Jean has two separate

Unknown Speaker  15:00  
sets of migrating murals and they exist within or along the migration routes of the animals they represent. For instance, one set of migrating murals is of the Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep, and endangered species that live only within the Sierra Nevada Mountains. And they migrate up and down in elevation to follow the available food at different times of year, Jane's six Big Horn murals follow the route of highway 395. In the eastern Sierra, where the sheep live, you may have seen some of these murals if you live in eastern Sierra, or if you visited that area, which I highly recommend, by the way, because it's beautiful over there. And you may have seen Jane's other set of migrating murals, the monarch murals in much more populated areas as far flung as San Francisco and Orlando, okay, back to how she came up with the idea for these murals. And so it was when I was in the science illustration program at CSUMB. And it's, you know, a two hour drive from San Francisco to Monterey. And I would not every weekend, by any means make a trip back home, but I would go back and forth, every now and again. And on those long drives, I would be really annoyed, of course by the billboards. And I said, Well, rather than having billboards that have advertisement, how interesting and cool would it be if they were actually somewhat interpretive of the place that you're in, as you're driving through it? And so that like idea of wanting to even in a quick moment, get a sense of place that could connect you, I thought, wow, that could be so fantastic. And then, you know, migrating animals are without borders without boundaries. And we are all connected by say, the monarch butterfly, like almost all of the lower 48 Plus Canada plus Mexico, right? We share the species in common. And so there was that whole other sense of like, last idea of community, you know, and that, like, when we see a bird, we're so like, egocentric and thinking, Oh, we have this bird like warblers, right, but then they go somewhere else for the winner, they had salad, and they're spending, you know, their time only partially here. But we only think of them in this one way. Like we probably they don't get to know their winter plumage, or, you know, whatever else we might not understand about this animal because they're not here year round. And so yeah, there was just so many reasons that like, I wanted to point out how important movement and erasing those boundaries were. And that's even including our own human made boundaries, you know, and like trying to figure out how to start building and living our lives more integrated. And without these sorts of barriers, and walls that are often so arbitrarily overlaid on the landscape. Totally so connected totally right. And then and then we interrupt that connection. So that's another definite, like, we have really interjected ourselves in this fragmentation. Yeah. And so it's, it sounds like it's kind of this way of pointing out that we don't have to live in this fragmented way, while also connecting people hyper locally, really, but it can be something much bigger, but also hyper locally connecting them Yeah, to where they are. Absolutely. And then when I first started it, I also was putting a lot of emphasis on threatened endangered animals as well, because you know, everything that we are doing are driving a lot of these species that we're highlighting into Peril. So there was a point to the awareness of it, you know, is kind of the first step of building the momentum to want to even make any effort to protect it. So the bighorn sheep, for example, you know, the, which was our first migrating neural series, and it goes from Lone Pine to Lee vining in the eastern Sierra. And those animals are almost impossible to see, unless you're really high up hiking in the wilderness and no know what to look for, and where to look like, you're probably not going to just like, run into a bighorn sheep, or your average person is not going to. And so bringing those back down to the people was something that felt really important to me, too. And there were people who call the Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep Foundation, saying, like, I've lived here my whole life. And I didn't know that we had bighorn sheep and these mountains, you know, so it's just helping along on an awareness level as well. And yeah, and I love it too, because I feel like it's something to be proud of, you know, it's something where it's like, there's a sense of civic pride, like, we have these animals and also now this beautiful art depicting these animals, right, and it's something we can be proud of, and our community then can rally around that thing. And that's exactly what happened out there. You know, I think that that gained a lot of traction for support for these animals. And it was all of a sudden, like, wow, like, if that's another thing that public art does without trying, it sort of already puts the idea that oh, someone cares enough to make the

Unknown Speaker  20:00  
As as big and as an in the forefront as it is, as you know, in a mural format, and then all of a sudden, I think like without even meaning to they internalize and adopt that sort of pride or sentiment towards that animal to absolutely, I think that's really true. I think that, you know, for me growing up, and I grew up in Napa and I grew up in oak woodlands and those kinds of areas, and I think that for me, feeling connected to those places, we, my husband and I both grew up in the same valley, right? Yeah. And I grew up climbing those, those Coast live oaks, and I grew up collecting acorns and catching newts and that kind of stuff. And he really wish

Unknown Speaker  20:40  
we wouldn't have.

Unknown Speaker  20:43  
But I feel like, I feel so tied to that valley. That is my home. Right? And he's like,

Unknown Speaker  20:52  
I don't feel like connected to that place. Right. And I think that when you feel that connected to a place like I feel fiercely loyal, yes. So many things like Napa in particular, but also just California and like oak woodlands and, and I think that when you know, a place, part of that first step is seeing it and knowing that it's there. And then the next step is having that level of interaction or intimacy with that thing. Yeah, I want to tell you a really funny story about one of our latest murals. It's a new series. That's an addition to the migrating mural, but it's called City and nature. And basically, I wanted to just have that slight turn of phrase for that reason that we build our cities in nature, not the other way around, and we remove the nature, but it's funny how often it's talked about, oh, there's so much nature in the city. And that's, that could be always how,

Unknown Speaker  21:45  
so which city in this nature? Yeah, there's so much city in this nature. It's kind of the way that I like to, you know, think about it. So our first one was for the Aranda Public Library. This is actually just a hodgepodge of some of the species that were in that mural, but there was so much energy around that river otter, because there was one person who was on the board or does something that was a decision making opinion that Well, I don't like this river otter, we don't have river otters here. And it was like, well, just because you haven't seen it doesn't mean that there are no river otters. And then there was another person who's like, actually there are and they had footage of a river otter coming into their pool. And so then it was like, wow, oh, and so now just to even like, for the residents of Aranda to be able to see because the otter is one of the biggest animals on this mural. And it just absolutely takes up, you know, almost an entire wall. And so, you know, I love being able to point out the hidden nature, you know, because all of it actually is to some degree or to a large degree hidden in front humanize often it's trying, yeah, often it's trying to hide Exactly. So I think that that's another part of the of maybe your first initial question of like, what's the finger you know, that you're trying to point out that like, pay attention here? It is that it's like, pay attention. This is right here in your home. Oh, another awesome thing that the nature seasonal Almanac, I love in this in the spring issue. I was assigned to illustrate a ringtail. And I nearly fell off my chair when I saw that list because I was like, wait, what? Yes, I bet the one of my favorite things about that assignment is that I get to learn about Bay Area nature that I'm still learning about right and so or that I didn't I wasn't aware of and so the ringtail one totally took me by surprise. And I still kind of kind of in shock over it looks like a lemur. I feel like a lemur creature and in California.

Unknown Speaker  23:51  
And I love the little blurb that accompanies it because it ends with like the cutest animal you'll probably never see. But they're here.

Unknown Speaker  23:59  
They're flying under your radar. They're so under our radar, but I hope I get to maybe I'll just have to, you know, make a nocturnal effort. If you've listened to the Sutter Buttes episode of this podcast, you've heard me talk about ring tails, because one of the places they live is in the Sutter Buttes, which is the smallest mountain range in the world. And it's right smack in the middle of the Sacramento Valley. And I went to the buttes with a researcher named Dave Wyatt and his field ecology class to try to trap some ring tails in order to record data and release them. But on the day that we went, the traps came up empty, which was a bummer, and also maybe not a great sign. I still want to interview Dave, who is a phenomenal researcher and naturalist. But we don't have anything on the calendar right now. So just know that I'm aware of the ring tails and hoping to get you some more good ringtail content at some point in the future. Also, ring tails may look a little like lemurs, but they're actually related to records. But ring tails aren't the only things we're not noticing when we go outside. There's plenty of non human life

Unknown Speaker  25:00  
I've around us all the time. And much of it is a lot more common than the elusive ringtail. When we come back, Jane shares her perspective on nature, blindness and some creative ways to work against it, as well as so much more about art and what it can do to broaden our perspectives.

Unknown Speaker  25:48  
Now, back to the conversation with Jane Kim. And so I think that what that brings me to actually, is this idea of nature blindness. Yeah. And I've heard people talk about plant blindness before, but you're the first person I've ever heard use the phrase nature blindness. Really? Yes. Oh, that can't be well, I because I certainly feel like I heard it. But it's I don't feel like I've made that up. So yeah, but it is it is like, absolutely turn it off all the time. Right. And so I was just wondering, I guess, if you could say a little bit more about like, What is nature blindness? And how pervasive Do you think that is? And what are some of the ways that, you know, public art can help alleviate that? I think it's incredibly pervasive. I think we teach our children to be blind to nature. Like, I think that we don't actively encourage that curiosity that all children are going to have to explore and ask questions about, what is that plant? Who is this? What is that? You know, we because we that's not what we teach them. It's like, Ooh, look at that store, or look at this thing, or that it's like, we point out the human thing. So you know, there have been tons of studies out of kids being able to name like, so many more logos and, you know, products than being able to identify a sparrow by name, you know, and like, that is a huge problem. Absolutely. And I think that it's, I think you touched on something really important, because it's intergenerational nature, blindness. Yes. And when you have parents who don't know, you know, I was hiking in Sequoia National Park over the summer. And I had my kids, which is like, you know, I understand why people don't want to take their kids out hiking, it's not easy. It's not easy to do this. But we're out there. We're just on a really easy trail. And there was this little girl with her hands in a Giant Poison Oak bush. Oh, and she was just touching the leaves, like, and I was just like, I you know, I don't want to interfere with anybody's life. But I was like, you know, just, uh, you know, this is what that is. And here's what you should do. And, and it's a big FYI. Just Yeah, exactly. And so and I get it from a parent's perspective, if you don't know, either you're not originally from this place. And so you don't know the plants and animals, or you just have been so separated from it. intergenerationally, that one thing you know, is, well, it could be dangerous. So don't touch anything. Exactly. And so you're trying to keep your kids safe. Yeah, yeah. But then you break this vital relationship that they have to the planet that they live on? Totally. And I think that, you know, if a kid does ask a parent, like, Oh, what is this? And they're just like, oh, I don't know. Like, how dismissive is that? So then why should the child care? Or continue to ask if this is something that they should care about? Right. And so I do think it kind of starts there. And so we this is like years and years and generations and generations of this attitudes being passed down to us. So I can't really get mad at this state that we're in just because it's so long, you know, that this way of being and thinking has persisted and been encouraged, you know, so I don't know. It's, it's real. I just want to offer a side note here, which is that if you're a parent, or you have kids in your life in any capacity, just please be reassured that you don't have to know everything in order to foster kids curiosity. I think that we as adults sometimes feel like we need to respond to a kid's questions with definitive answers. We don't have to do that at all. Instead, we can respond by modeling curiosity about the things we don't know, we can say something like, I don't know what that plant is. But I do notice that there are little holes in the leaves. I wonder if it's good food for caterpillars. I constantly don't know the answers to my kids questions in nature. But responding like this gives them permission to get curious. And they almost always jump in with their own observations and hypotheses. And if you're worried about safety, and don't know what poison oak or sea nettles look like, or which wild foods are edible, you can always tell the child you're with. I'm not sure if this plant is okay to touch. Let's just stand right here and look at it and see what we notice. What colors do you see on the flowers? So those are some great ways to support kids curiosity about the natural world. But sometimes it's also nice to have ways to inspire them and give them information too, which is one of the many reasons why I love Jane's work. So I do think that public art murals inherently

Unknown Speaker  30:00  
Uh, you know, are going to provide a teaching moment. So a lot of our almost all of our murals have interpretation. So a sign that identifies all the animals. So like, if a kid and kids are our biggest fans, they're the ones who like coming back, wow, looking at this, and then, you know, then they can read the sign and they can see what is that or if a kid asks their parent, then they can all go look at that and have it be identified. So I would love personally to see more access to you know, I had this I think there was a woman, a woman, her handle on Instagram is locally ecologist, and I think she's in New York, or somewhere in the east coast, but she did it. But I also was like, Oh, my God, I've been wanting to do that for years. But she just sort of, on her own, in her neighborhood, put little tags on, like, the trees I love. Yeah. So that like if someone's walking by they would know the name of that, or what kind of tree that is. And I had this dream of doing that in San Francisco and giving a little name tag to every single tree that's in SF, I'm so centered around wanting our murals to be specific to this location, you know, that it's like, learn about this place. And certainly, you know, anytime there and I go to a new country, a new city, one of the first things I want to do is like, get a field guide of the flora and fauna, that place because I'm not going to know it and I naturally am going to be what's that? What's that?

Unknown Speaker  31:31  
The curio curious. Yeah. And I love that you're taking, you know, these concepts are giving people away in and you're doing it where people are. Yes. And I just I love that. Thank you so much. Because you do have to meet people, you can't ask people to change, you can just offer them tools that maybe they'll pick up on and appreciate. And that will create the change. Right. And I think that's something really beautiful to me. And I feel like it's a it's a form of science communication. And I think that, you know, people might not see art and think that science communication a lot of times, but it 100% is, and I think that giving people an invitation, rather than a key bout so yeah, I think that's really beautiful. Thank you. Well, you touched on something that's very interesting to me, because it's a tension point that I have internally, which is that science, illustration versus art. And I often think it's like, the other way around I struggle with is that this isn't art because it's too, like literal and communicative and educational. So it's like its own thing. And so I I also place a lot of emphasis on trying to break boundaries and operating in non definitives. And one of our trademarks is not knowing exactly where to place us, because we're not exactly like straightforward scientific illustration, although we do that sometimes. And then we're not like art for art's sake, and, you know, super conceptual and, you know, ego focused or human exclusive. Yeah, and, frankly, exclusive. So it's like, we kind of decided that we have no boundaries either just just like that in the natural world. And I'm not going to be put in these like little silos of depth finding, you know, what we are what who we are, it's actually an, it's more an action, like, this is what I want our work to mean and represent, I don't care. You can call it whatever you want. You want to call it art call it or you want to call it size, illustration, call science illustration, you want to call it none of the above cool by me. But is it doing the thing that I set out to do? Which is more about engagement and learning and curiosity and wonder much more purpose driven? Yes. And so I wonder, too, would you say you have figured out where the line between science illustration? And art is? Or would you prefer to erase the line entirely, I would love to erase the line entirely. And I think the thing is, is that it does that naturally. And we forget that even all of these definitions are constructed by people. So those are meant to change and shift. And so now I don't know if there even really is like a clear, I'm finding more and more as we keep doing this work. And I do think like the mood of the nation is changing a little bit more and having more focus on the environment and climate change, of course, right. All of a sudden has pushed those boundaries aside a little you know, and so I'm seeing so many more artists coming in and taking on a practice that feels a bit outside of standard what we used to think as art like 10 years ago, so I'm happy to continue to challenge lines when they've been drawn by us especially

Unknown Speaker  35:00  
Anything that's created by people? I'm like, it's just a human construct. That's all it is. It's not anything finite, it's not anything right or even wrong, frankly, it's just what we've decided collectively is our boundary or guidelines, or whatever, and we need them. But certainly, you know, it's funny that I was having this conversation about, we've clearly made so many mistakes. But I don't know how to course correct at this point. So I guess for me, like, my work is not meant to solve that problem. But it's more about getting people reconnected with the last connection. Like, you're not solving that problem of how are we going to fix all these things? You're solving the problem of how do you even make people aware that this is there, yeah. But that is so foundational to solving the other problems, because those problems aren't gonna get solved. And people don't know, you know, how to love the author. And, and also, like the experience, we're shaped and taught that money is the most important thing. We're shaped and taught that, you know, Nature doesn't really matter, like all of these things. So it's really more like how do we shape the values that humans in, especially the United States operate? And I don't know if but I do get the sense that it does start from emotional connections, because we also are fully emotional creatures. I don't care what anyone says about our rationality, That's bollocks, we are driven by emotion. First and foremost,

Unknown Speaker  36:33  
use our brains to rationalize our

Unknown Speaker  36:37  
brains come in, but not at the point where you might think totally, and then we've also done a disservice because we're taught that emotions are not meant to be taken seriously, either. So now we're just yeah, we've just really made a big mess of our ourselves here. And I might come on when we really talk, I can only speak to the Anglo Saxon experience, because that is my experience. Even though I'm Korean American, I have obviously my culture that bleed into that. But I'm American, I was raised in this economy, this environment, these standards. So for sure, I really liked that gene brings up how our way of interacting with the planet is a cultural thing, I find this idea to be incredibly empowering, because culture is something that we as members of a culture can change and evolve over time. And like Jean, I'm referring to Anglo American culture here, because that's also my background and experience. But I love the idea that we don't have to settle for the things we don't like about our culture. Instead, we can push back on the shortcomings. And I love that Jane took this idea and ran with it, she didn't like that she saw annoying billboards on long drives. So she thought of something more worthwhile to put up in large public spaces instead. And by bringing images of local threatened and endangered species into public spaces, she challenges the idea of what is worthy of taking up space, in our culture on our streets. And in our minds, as the images we see every day, people can sometimes be dismissive of art. And I'm probably preaching to the choir, if you've made it this far in this episode, but I think we should be very careful not to underestimate the power of art of all kinds, the images we see, and the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves are hugely impactful. And if we see ourselves as part of a culture that chooses to put up massive paintings of our native species on the sides of buildings, to honor them on that scale, maybe that can impact how we see ourselves, the very kinds of people we think we are. And maybe that can even impact how we behave in the world, whether we choose to donate money to restoration projects, or whether we grow native plants in pots on the patios of our apartments. But this external cultural kind of impact isn't the only kind of impact Jane's work has. So I have a question for you about this impact on yourself. Right? So how has doing this work actually changed the way that you look at the natural world? Or has it so much? Thank you so much for asking that question. Because it's a daily, almost like conversation and resetting. And I'm continually searching for answers that resonate with me and allow me to move through the world with an understanding or even empowered to, like, have tools for myself to process the way we operate. Because I don't always feel like I have a lot of choice. Like it's this is the construct that I live in. So it's almost like how do I make peace? So it's not so much like, how has it changed my viewpoint on nature? It's more how has it changed my relationship with the construct that human beings have created for me and this world that I live in and how, what parts of it work for me and what parts of it don't and

Unknown Speaker  40:00  
What parts that don't? Can I create artwork that can maybe help shift or find a new perspective that someone could maybe also connect to that? It's like, oh, I can look at it this way. And it's helpful. You know, and so I think you'll find that a lot of my work well, you know, honestly, I was just thinking, in my mind, oh, my God, thank you for giving me a platform to just vent about

Unknown Speaker  40:24  
you on this stuff. But I really try hard in my work not to be negative. And I really try hard in my work not to be polarizing. And I really try hard to try to find the common ground, which is the natural world. And that's honestly what it actually also for me, it's like, wow, this is the only connective tissue that we can rely on. That's true. Because everything else is a human construct. And frankly, I just don't trust human constructs. So I trust nature.

Unknown Speaker  41:00  
And so that's really like my guiding light of, you know, what these subjects can really be unifying. And that's maybe the finger point to so I think maybe we're really you're helping me arrive at some of my own pointers, you know? Yeah, like, Look at this. I love that. And I think that that is so we've seen that to be true in recent history with things like the Wallace Annenberg wildlife crossing, right. It's like that has transcended political walls that we've put up. Yeah, right. And the us versus them and all of that kind of stuff, which I think people have very good reasons for disagreeing with each other on the issues that they disagree on. Yet, we have this thing that we can see that it's tangible. Yeah. Which is, these mountain lions can't make it, they're going to be to us isolated, they're gonna go locally extinct. Totally. How do we help these populations? And it's something that it doesn't matter, your walk of life? It doesn't matter, your political orientations or anything? Yeah. This is something tangible we can do in the world. Yes. And I think that keeping that positive perspective, you know, it can be hard in a, you know, there have definitely been moments for me where it's like this climate grief and this anxiety. I suffer from that for sure. Yeah, it how do you how do you stay away from despair sometimes, right. But at the same time, you look, and you you still the population is a fragment of what it used to be, you still do see that monarch butterfly? Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so I'm just grateful that in my lifetime, I just really want to honor and understand what I have in my lifetime, because that's going to change, it's going to grow, I have a niece and nephew who are incredibly important to me there. And I do not have kids and nieces and nephews, I should like Pluraleyes that and I don't know what their experience will look like, you know, I don't know if they're gonna see the same things that we see in our lifetimes, that's already changing in our short lifetime, right? glaciers are melting in real time, like there's so many chain active changes. And I also often think of our murals as monuments to things potentially lost to and I don't like to think of it that way. But if we say in California lose our Western Monarch migrating population,

Unknown Speaker  43:20  
I want to at least be a part of the effort that has monument alized it on a giant 11 storey building in San Francisco, you know, and saying, be part of that community that cared to put this in the forefront of our city. You know, it's it's an act of resistance. Yeah. It's, it's, you know, we're not taking this lying down. Yeah, we're we still, we tried. Some tried it, I'm getting emotional, because it's like, that kid, it's like, there were people who cared. There are people who really, really tried, you weren't left this planet without somebody trying to fight for it. Exactly. And I'm already speaking in defeatist terms, you see that that's how much we have to actually accept the demise of the world as it was and the world that we know it and just watch it unfold in the way it's going to be. And part of that is up to us, but part of it is also just natural cycles. And that happens. And so, you know, I'm not by any naive means thinking that we're going to keep something exactly how it is for all of time. That's not at all back to or go back to the way it was. That's certainly not my point, either. But it's more that like, right here. And right now, let's emphasize what is what's great, and hopefully, when children learn about history, if that's even something that continues to be taught to children, where you can say like this used to be an animal and there used to be lots of organizations and people that cared about this, you know, and tried

Unknown Speaker  45:00  
really hard right? Working with them? Yes. And I think too, it's like if there's one Western Monarch left in the world, that butterfly still matters, even if you know that they can't reproduce, because there's only one. Yeah, but it's gone. It's still matters. Yes. And I think that it was here, I think of Martha, the passenger pigeon. You know, if you're not familiar with the story of passenger pigeons, I'm sorry, I have to be the one to tell you this. Back at the time of European contact, there were somewhere between three and 5 billion passenger pigeons in North America. That's billion with a B, there are many accounts of them having been so abundant as to black out the sky when they migrated. And while Native Americans did hunt passenger pigeons, settlers took this to a completely different level. The combination of extreme over hunting and deforestation made passenger pigeon numbers declined gradually until 1870, and then plummet between 1870 and 8090. By the turn of the century, there were effectively no passenger pigeons left in the wild. A passenger pigeon, they Martha lived her life in captivity in the Cincinnati Zoo. She died in September of 1914, and is thought to be the last passenger pigeon ever to have lived, her body was preserved when she died. And you can actually Google her name and see a fairly recent photo of her. If you're driving or washing dishes right now and can't do that. Just imagine a mourning dove with a more reddish tone and sort of reddish eyes, even though passenger pigeons weren't super closely related to morning deaths. And of course, these birds aren't the only examples of animals that have gone extinct or gotten down to dangerously low population sizes in captivity, due to human actions. I think of you know, so many animals in that are like the only one in their captivity, like there's more in captivity than in the wild. They're extinct in the wild. And like, all of that still matters. And so that effort of like, sometimes people struggle with zoos and aquariums, but I'm so grateful when they have a conservation program or rehabilitation or any kind of effort that shows that there's active effort

Unknown Speaker  47:05  
being made. So I agree, you know, I'm, I'm sad that whether there's this like poison dart frog, like the Panama dart frog, or something that's like only in captivity at this point, or very few in the wild are extensively extinct. I guess. I tried to look this up. And apparently, there are over 100 species of poison dart frogs. So I'm not sure which one gene was referring to. But I did find out in my googling that poison dart frogs are not poisonous at all, when bred in captivity. And it's thought that this is because their diet in captivity is different from what they eat in the wild, which is largely termites and ants that eat poisonous plants in the jungle. And if this fact makes you want to rush out and get one as a pet, there are some things you should know. First one is that aside, I looked at did mention that their lack of poison in captivity doesn't mean it should be a free for all for handling them, because too much handling can be harmful for the frog. And the other thing you should know is that well, poison dart frogs for the pet trade are usually bred into illegally, they're also sometimes illegally snatched from their homes in the wild and sold as pets. And if the seller says it's a rare species, and it costs a lot of money, those in particular are red flags that an endangered animal might have been taken out of its habitat for money. So definitely do some research before you get one or maybe just set a picture of one as your lockscreen instead, okay, but Jean was talking about endangered species in zoos. But I'm so glad that they're there in captivity for people to know that this animal was once in the wild, right? So that's kind of that evolution of like, accepting the outcome, and then continuing to adapt our value system of you know, change, and at that adaptation of talking about these things, right, right. And if you can grieve something, it means that you love that. Right? And I've never seen a more powerful motivator than love in my entire life. 100% You know, it's like, you will go out and do anything for love.

Unknown Speaker  49:08  
Yes. And so, if you love that one poison dart frog that's left in that little terrarium or whatever, in some zoo somewhere. Yeah. Then what are you going to try to do for the rainforest? Yeah, exactly. So I love any effort, effort is great, and all sizes and all shapes. And maybe a little bit of a happier lighter note is, you know, I understand the difference between correlation and causation. But I am just saying, your Monarch murals went up and then the Western Monarch numbers started to go back.

Unknown Speaker  49:44  
Oh, my gosh, that's so so kind. But yeah, no, I definitely did not even want to think of that at all.

Unknown Speaker  49:54  
You know, do you see though do you see your work having this tangible impact in some large or small way?

Unknown Speaker  50:00  
In the in the world making a difference for those animals? Yes, I think for sure, it's not to say that we didn't don't have impact. But I think that the impact that I've seen is more in the awareness of the animal and love of the animals starting to, you know, especially with the bighorn sheep, for example, you know, I feel like creating those six murals along that highway really allowed for people to rally around the bighorn sheep, you know, so that felt like a big win to me. And, you know, I see these sorts of wins and small and more immediate moments in like conversation, or just people sharing that, like, wow, I saw monarch butterflies or like, I'll get a text and be like, there's monarch butterflies everywhere. And the fact that they would think to let me know, you know, what I mean, like, that is a type of love that I am acutely aware of, and when anytime anyone sends me pictures, or they say, change, do you know what this is? You know, like, I love that kind of, you know, relationship that I can offer that to people and that, oh, I know, he'll know who, what, you know what species This is. Let's ask Jane. I love that. Yeah, I love that. And it makes me think, too, about how, you know, there's this, I have to look up the research about this and add it in later. But there's this this research that shows that more diverse groups make better decisions. Yeah. Okay. There's not just one study on this. There are a lot of studies, according to an article in the Harvard Business Review, which draws on a lot of that research, more diverse groups are better at investing, think more accurately in mock trial situations, and are even more innovative than homogenous groups. The article which I'll link in the show notes, asserts that non homogenous teams are simply smarter, working with people who are different from you may challenge your brain to overcome its stale ways of thinking and sharpen its performance. And it kind of makes me think, too, if you expand not only diversity within humans, which is important, but then also, what about outside of humanity, like other species, bringing in that diversity that makes our community so much stronger, and it's a way to connect with other humans, hopefully, but it also ties us deeply to the place where we live in it makes this whole ecosystem, right that we are part of our ecosystems, you may not realize it, but it makes that so much stronger. Absolutely. I 100%. Agree, I was just thinking, as you're saying that it's funny that like, sometimes that inclination is there, and the broader connection isn't there. So like when someone has property, and they have to cut that tree down, and it's so painful, because it's like the tree that represents that home and their lawn. And I don't think they're even thinking of that as like, Oh, you're taking, you're removing nature, but they formed this connection with that tree, that one single tree, and I had that experience as a kid, I grew up outside of Chicago and a suburb called Mount Prospect. And in our backyard, we had a huge willow tree. And it like, you know, kind of came out from the base and three trunks. And I would just like, tuck myself in, like that middle of that trunk. But then at a certain point, it just got to mess up with their power lines. And ultimately, it just was unsafe. And I, you know, safety is also something that tribes human beings do. So, you know, we did have to cut that down. And I remembered like, how painful it was to watch that tree get cut down. And when I was a kid, it wasn't like they're destroying nature. But that wasn't what I was thinking. It was like, Oh my God, they're destroying this thing. That is, like, part of my happy place that, you know, is this connection. So I think that like if we can think of our planet as a home in that sense to like you were saying, like your your connection to the valley that your your partner doesn't have. It's that same thing because like you formed an emotional bond with the living things that are in that place. The living and nonliving and living and nonliving things. The fog rolling over the cliffs. Yeah, you know, totally. And Mikado might as well be alive.

Unknown Speaker  54:24  
own thing, right. Totally. And like rocks. I kind of still think of rocks as living things for sure.

Unknown Speaker  54:34  
Absolutely, yeah. So I don't know maybe it's like, kind of reframing. I don't know what what it is, but like I do think for a good lot of people, the word nature even just as a turn off, they're like, I'm gonna get dirty. Yeah, exactly. You're disconnected people are too but if that happens, then how do you reconnect? So I'm so glad you asked this because this just sparked another thing that

Unknown Speaker  55:00  
I actively think about a lot is that I understand that it's not for everybody to actually be out in nature, and experiencing the nature. But what I love about art, and what I love about book learning is that you can still learn about it and observe it in different ways. And so I was one of those kids, like, I didn't necessarily spend a lot of time like, beyond, you know, like this tree experience. I love playing in the dirt and like picking apples or what have you, and I loved animals to death, but like, I was, grew up in a suburb, you know, where like, I would say that nature wasn't exactly wild, and it was very groomed and blonde and hedges, but I was actively like, so now I just sound like a total dork. But I was like, actively just like, read our Encyclopedia Britannica is, like, I remember my mom and my dad, like, led a traveling salesperson, like door to door salesperson into our house one day, and it was someone who was selling like the volume of, you know, encyclopedias, and my mom and dad purchase them. And they purchased another set of books called, oh, gosh, like children's craft or something like that. It was like this really cool volume of like, making things and, and then so like, Oh, and another one was this huge map of the solar system that like took up our entire dining room table. I love your parents for buying that. Yes, me too. It was so great. Totally. Me too. And so then it was like, my experience and learning was a little bit more like that, like from a academic or like reading and learning. And they would drop me off at like the library every Saturday, like as a way to like, get rid of the kids.

Unknown Speaker  56:46  
We're just gonna dump you here for like, eight hours. Don't be too crazy. Yeah, for eight hours. And so I still love nature through books and through art and making and illustrations and all of that. So like, there's so many ways to connect with the natural world that doesn't have to be in nature, because I know that people don't love it like to be rained on and like, Haha, yeah, funny, and I get it. And this is what we were talking about earlier, like meeting people where they're at, right? So I'm not judging you. If you're not like, No, I don't really like going tied to,

Unknown Speaker  57:21  
like, I don't want to get my hands wet or it's cold or this or that. And you can't judge that. That's just someone's preference, but like it makes someone do it. Yes, exactly. But you can still make them love nature. Yeah, yeah, that's great. Show him how to love nature. It's so much more inclusive. Yeah, too. And I think that that it opens it up to many types of inclusivity. Because people like where they live their income, there's so many barriers sometimes to or their physical abilities right to entering these spaces that we think of as nature even though I would argue right, we're in nature, like you said city in nature, right? Like, I would agree with that. But at the same time going to that national park or that even the state park or the park down the road can be a barrier to entry totally for different people. So I love the inclusivity of that. Thank you. One of the things I was wondering about is how you research these subjects like I'm thinking about the Cornell the ornithology like wall of birds, right? Like I'm imagining you with like this, this ornithology textbook, and

Unknown Speaker  58:27  
that's not sometimes a I do love theory.

Unknown Speaker  58:31  
No, no.

Unknown Speaker  58:34  
No, it was I mean, it was so many different things like from watching videos to reading to visiting different collections. So I made a stop at The Field Museum, just because I know that their epic collection of birds there. So Dr. John Fitzpatrick, the former director of The Lab of Ornithology used to work at The Field Museum. So he put me in touch with the curator there. And so I spent like, two days just going through all of their specimens. And then they have this huge bird Hall of taxidermied birds. And I was dying to be able to travel and actually, like, see a lot of these birds in person, but like, majority of those birds, I have to do this format of learning about them. That's totally not an observation of the actual nature. So you know, there was a lot of I've worked very closely with the scientific adviser to make sure the accuracy of my birds was there. And I learned I just learned so much through that process of doing that project. I was wild, I think about the last person I interviewed was John Muir laws.

Unknown Speaker  59:41  
So I think about how his you know, perspective on nature journaling, yeah. Is is very much like that. And my limited experience nature journaling. I'm like, Oh, I didn't realize you know, which direction the veins went on this leaf or these very fine details. And, and it seems, if you just glance at it, it doesn't seem that important.

Unknown Speaker  1:00:00  
Right. But then when you start looking a little bit more closely, it comes alive and you pay attention and you respect it more and you love it more. Totally. That's really, really beautiful. Okay, I have a listener question for you. Okay. Tori is wondering how we can find and support local artists who are working on representing the natural world in thoughtful ways. So she's wondering, do we just Google like, major artists in my area? Or is there like a tool or a resource people can use if they're looking to support local artists? Oh, well, there is a guild of Natural Science illustrators, and that's a national Guild and there are many like pockets and states and some are stronger than others or have more activity than others. But you can certainly look for illustrators that way, the science illustration program at CSUMB, you can go through their gallery of like, oh, former students of that program and engaged with the work that they made when they were in the program. One other idea for Tori on that is just to look at the murals around town. Like, for example, in Sacramento, I just saw on Richards Boulevard the other day, a fairly new mural that had like elderberries in it, and so there was like, some native species going on. And I think a pipevine swallowtail butterfly was also in this mural. So I don't know it might be worth going and finding murals in your area that are kind of the style that you like, and seeing if you can figure out who made them. Okay, last question for you. So what about this work that you do? Still takes your breath away? The information, honestly, like, I think it's like, Whoa, there's just so much that I don't know, that is really exciting. Like, I love that I don't know so much. And that even like, and I'm looking at the coast live oak in this print right now. And like, How many times have I depicted Coast Live Oak, their acorns or flowers or leaves, and I still feel like, I have more to observe and get to know and pay attention to. And so I don't know, it's like, it's an it's just endless. Just absolutely endless. And I think that that's maybe the most comforting part of it. That's a beautiful, thank you. I like it. Yeah, I got carried away. That's great.

Unknown Speaker  1:02:25  
Given this opportunity to just like speak my mind on these things.

Unknown Speaker  1:02:31  
Yeah, kinda Wow.

Unknown Speaker  1:02:35  
Honestly, like, opportunity, because, you know, I say it in my art tags. Like when I talk about my art work, I, I write on my Instagram, like very meaningful, often posts that accompany it. But when I'm giving lectures, it's more about the work. So it's not really about like the thoughts that exist in my head. So I feel like this has been a really unique and uplifting way to kind of get some of those thoughts out because it's constantly happening.

Unknown Speaker  1:03:07  
Because I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for very, very inviting me and taking the time. Absolutely. Thank you so much. So go look at art, and make art and hire people to make art on the side of your garage or your business, and let the art have an impact on you and your community. I want to thank Jane Kim so much for taking the time out of her day and for sharing with such openness and depth to make this conversation possible. It was incredibly meaningful to me and I hope we can nerd out and go hiking together sometime soon. Thank you also to Thayer Walker for helping out with coordinating calendars to make this possible and for making small talk with me when I first arrived at the studio and was still extremely nervous. And thank you to Chelsea Roberts for taking a photo of me by your amazing lifesize Blue Whale heart painting. And I don't say this in every episode, but I am always grateful to my partner, Stan, for supporting this dream in very tangible ways, including a lot of solo parenting of our tiny kids, and in tangible ways, like all of the emotional support. Thank you again to everyone supporting the show on Patreon. I'm going to go sleep a lot and then send you new podcast stickers to express my gratitude. If you listen to the very end of the episode, I always tell you something interesting for my week. In this time, I'm going to brag because for the first time in probably a year, I turned and watered my compost. I started throwing food scraps in there again. And now I'm going out there every day to turn the compost and see if the carrot peels are dirt yet, and it's all very exciting. Okay, that's all thanks for being here. I'll see you on the next episode of Golden State naturalist. Bye

Unknown Speaker  1:05:00  
The song's called I don't know buy grapes you can find the link to the song and the Creative Commons license in the show notes

Transcribed by https://otter.ai