Art & Nature: A New Year’s Gathering

Art Displays Featuring Bay Area Nature Artists

Buy Drinks & Make Your Own Nature-Inspired Art

Live Music By Sunny State and Sweet HayaH

Great for all ages! Click here for our Facebook Event

Join Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST) and Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority for a fun New Year’s event in downtown San Jose! Enjoy drinks, live music and beautiful art while connecting with other people who care about nature in the South Bay. We’re also excited to celebrate our recent conservation success in Coyote Valley! The event is free. Register in advance and receive a bandana with a custom Obi Kaufmann design at the door (while supplies last)! Drinks will be available for purchase at the Forager Bar.

We will be joined by incredible local artists and writers Jane Kim and Thayer Walker (aka Ink Dwell), as well as Obi Kaufmann (aka Coyote Thunder). You’ll have a chance to meet these artists and buy signed copies of their books The Wall of Birds and The State of Water. Additional artists will include Plein Air Artist Edward Rooks, Angie Chua of Bobo Design, student artists from Grit Art and Tech Association, Jerarde Gutierrez, Joaquin Newman, Cameron Moberg. and Brittni Paul.

• Doors will open at 6:00 PM. Come early to grab a drink, check-in with artists and conservation groups. Adults and kids will have a chance to make make their own art while, facilitated by OSA and Grit Art Tech listening to the music of Sunny State. Beer, wine, kombucha, and soft drinks will be available for purchase at the bar.
• The speaking program will begin at 7:15 PM. Hear from POST, OSA, and our featured artists, Jane Kim, Thayer Walker and Obi Kaufmann.
• The party will continue at 8:00 PM with a performance by Sweet HayaH and more opportunities to enjoy drinks, make art, and interact with our artists and event partners.

This event is part of POST’s community event series. These events are open to the general public as well as POST donors, and we hope you will join us! We also curate a separate series of private events for our donor community. Learn more about how you can support POST here: openspacetrust.org/support

About the Artists & Exhibitors

Ink Dwell: Artist Jane Kim & Writer Thayer Walker

Founded in 2012 by artist Jane Kim and writer Thayer Walker, Ink Dwell studio creates art that explores the wonders of the natural world. Merging classical techniques of science illustration with modern fine art, they create public and private commissions, illustrations, exhibitions and much more. Ink Dwell makes everyday places special and enhances iconic locations with wondrous imagery. To celebrate its centennial, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology commissioned Ink Dwell to paint a 2,500 square-foot mural titled “From So Simple a Beginning: Celebrating the Evolution and Diversity of Birds.” The mural depicts the 375 million year evolution of birds, from the 30-foot long Yutyrannus, ancestor of the first feathered dinosaur, to the tiny marvelous spatuletail hummingbird. All 270 species represented are painted to scale. Check them out on Instagram.

Coyote Thunder: Artist and Writer Obi Kaufmann

Obi Kaufmann is author of the popular and epic California best-sellers The California Field Atlas and The State of Water that are each filled with science, history, poetry and art. Growing up in the East Bay as the son of an astrophysicist and a psychologist, for Kaufmann, the epic narrative of the California backcountry holds enough art, science, mythology, and language for a hundred books to come. When he is not backpacking, you can find the painter-poet posting at @coyotethunder #trailpaintings on social media. Open Space Authority will be displaying commissioned original paintings of Coyote Valley by Obi Kaufmann at this event

Camer1: Artist and Curator Cameron Moberg

Cameron “Camer1” Moberg’s art often has a theme of life, nature, positivity and spirituality. Growing up surrounded by concrete buildings and urban blight, Cameron wanted to contrast his surroundings by changing the mood of his community. Bringing nature in to a place where nature is lacking can often inspire and bring warmth to a cold, hard environment.

Edward Rooks – South Bay Naturalist and Wildlife Artist

Edward Rooks is a naturalist and wildlife artist living in San Jose, California and works closely with the Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority, having completed paintings of Coyote Valley and leading regular plein air workshops. Edward grew up on the Caribbean island nation of Trinidad and Tobago. He graduated Syracuse University in 1983, with a BFA in illustration. Edward worked at the Asa Wright Nature Centre in Trinidad between 1983-1986. Moved to the US in 1986 and moved to San Jose in 1988. He works as a freelance wildlife artist painting landscapes and wildlife with acrylics, teaches drawing workshops and illustrating for books and magazines. See his website

Angie Chua – Bobo Design Studio

Angie Chua is a San Jose based lettering artist, illustrator, and founder of Bobo Design Studio.  She designs and creates wanderlust inspired stationery and travel accessories that encourage, enable, and inspire people to get outside and explore the world around them. Angie will be creating a large chalk mural at the event that guests can view and take selfies with. She will also be selling her Wanderlust Passport Travel Journal  and adventure-themed stickers that are inspired by the outdoors and desert plant life of California.

Jerarde Gutierrez & Joaquin Alejandro Newman

Bay Area Artists Joaquin Newman and Jerarde Gutierrez share their personal paintings and digitally collaborative works rooted in nature. Jerarde and Joaquin are artists who have grown up the urban East Bay-Area, and have found the lush and various natural areas of the hills, waterways, and coastlines to be inspiration for their artworks. From plein-air landscape paintings to expressionistic interpretations of birds and wildlife, they create images that put form to the spiritual connection humans have to nature. Jerarde’s landscapes are a dialogue with nature and reveal as much about the physical and mental experience as they reveal about the visual experience.

The act of gazing at nature, intensely, for hours in order to capture a painting, allows Jerarde to capture a sense of emotion, time and place. Joaquin’s painting practice pulls the bird spirit into view through the exploration of form and space. Taking guidance from ancient rituals of painting sacred birds on pottery, building in landforms, and carving into potent objects, Joaquin paints the intersections of nature and urbanity, the crepuscular dwelling between light and dark, and in these spaces birds emerge as our talismanic guides.

Brittni Paul – Mixed Media Artist

Brittni Paul is a self taught illustrator and mix media artist of all things nature with a passion in biology, geology and space. After leaving her corporate job in late 2018, she chose to finally pursue a life of art, even though she hadn’t drawn in over a decade. Her work focuses on flora and fauna on the brink of extinction: some iconic, some lesser known. Brittini wants to evoke an emotional connection with the animal and conjure up images of these diverse species thriving in their respective ecosystems. Her hope is that her work will inspire, challenge and inform.

Kyrod Myatt – Photographer

Photographer Kyrod Myatt, currently living near Santa Cruz, CA where the forest meets the ocean. Finding insipration from epic seascapes and mountain vistas to the overlooked details at our feet, my hope is to always communicate a dynamic, mysterious sense of the beauty of the universe through my images. See his Instagram

Streetlight Birds

Back in the 1960’s, before digital cameras and the internet, Jerry Buzzell was painting, rescuing and advocating for birds. He had a passion for the environment that was ahead of his time. After illustrating ‘The Handbook of California Birds’, his paintings remained for himself and his family. His son and daughter have continued his legacy by printing the original art to share with the world. Streetlight Birds shares unique art and encourages a passion for birds of all kinds. Chris Buzzell and Laurel Johnson offer prints, coasters and canvas’s to showcase Jerry’s original artwork.

Explore your Surroundings – Robel Fessehatzion

Explore your surroundings is a photography business founded by Robel Fessehatzion. Its core business is selling prints of Robel’s fine art photographs. However, its long-term goal is to foster a community for travel enthusiasts and adventure photographers as well as being a place for those that want to share their travel experiences to a community of eager explorers.

Grit Art & Tech Association (GATA)

GATA is a Bay Area non-profit organization dedicated to developing and sponsoring children’s artistic talents through active involvement in community services. By engaging their young artists to be active members of the community, they foster and teach common social values such as sharing and striving for excellence. The GATA students will be sharing some of their paintings for purchase, with proceeds benefitting GATA and POST! There will also be an opportunity to learn some basic art tips and tricks.

If you are a local artist who works with themes related to people, nature and land, and interested in having space at this event, please reach out to us at [email protected]. Space is limited.

Event Partners

Peninsula Open Space Trust

POST protects open space on the Peninsula and in the South Bay for the benefit of all. We havepreserved over 78,000 acres of open space in San Mateo, Santa Clara and Santa Cruz counties. Explore this map to discover how the landscapes we protect and care for enhances the lives of residents and visitors, ensures a vibrant future for wildlife, and benefits our local economy.

Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority

The Open Space Authority works to protect the quality of life in Santa Clara County by preserving open space and natural resources. Since 1993, the Authority has protected over 25,000 acres of open space, natural areas, watersheds, and wildlife habitat – providing ecologically friendly outdoor recreation and preserving the natural beauty and environmental health of the Santa Clara Valley.

Pathways for Wildlife

Pathways for Wildlife is a research organization specializing in identifying, monitoring, and implementing connectivity designs for wildlife movement within a landscape. During the event, we will be displaying videos and photos of their research on wildlife movement in the area.