Surdut

Announcement    Art that celebrates nature.
Welcome to my wild life listening to ravens, paddling with alligators and swimming with mermaids. My work as a writer and artist is an invitation to observe, with unbounded curiosity, the wildlife that flies, crawls, and skitters along with us in our changing environment. In doing so, we can actively discover our integrated place in nature and, in the process, nurture this planet we call home.
What comes of experiencing nature betters me and I am embraced and expanded by the particulars. Every walk, paddle, buzz, rustle, call, chirp, and squeak informs my creativity and deepens my sense of place. I moved to Tucson in March 2015. Arizona being home to more than 1,500 recorded species, the Sonoran desert offers endlessly fertile territory to write about for many years. Because I deeply believe that this is the most important work I’ve done in a long career of interesting projects, I have created the Art of Paying Attention illustrated nature radio series on NPR.
My multi-layered careers include architectural art glass and textile designer, painter, illustrator, print journalist, and radio commentator examining topics ranging from sewers to senators. I served as arts editor and feature writer for magazines and newspapers, and National Public Radio aired my essays including a six-part series for Marketplace on the art business and a response to 9/11.
Since 2008, when I moved to Santa Fe, I have been focusing on desert denizens and what we can learn from them. The Raven segment of the Encyclopedia of Santa Fe and Northern New Mexico by Mark Cross contains my illustration along with my explanation of Raven calling me to the southwest to draw and collect first person accounts of interactions with this clever corvid and iconic spirit guide.
My illustrated Listening to Raven collection won the 2013 Tucson Festival of Books Literary Award for Non-Fiction. Orion magazine published my illustrated essay on the Las Conchas fire that roared through New Mexico, destroying high desert habitats. My raven art and writing was chosen by the New York State Museum for the Focus on Nature exhibition of work by international scientific illustrators.
Prior to moving to the desert, I spent three years paddling with alligators on the Myakka River on Florida’s Gulf Coast, where human interactions with paradise informed my paintings and essays. Ever drawn to wild places, I have lived in Hawaii and enjoyed long sojourns in Indonesia, the West Indies, and Australia.
I illustrate, through art and writing, the creatures and habitats with which we share this world of wonders. While drawing demands that I pay close attention to detail and nuance, I must know as much as I can about an animal in order to tell the story and draw a creature that walks, flies, or crawls off the page. The most gratifying result is when someone brings me their story about a critter and tells me, “I never really paid attention until I met you.”
I am a certified environmental educator. Using my multi-platform nature stories as teaching tools, I facilitate outdoor Paying Attention workshops in the desert under the aegis of the National Phenology Network.

You'll also find opportunities for custom designed hand- painted silk tallitot (or tallises) -- Hebrew prayer shawls-- luminous silk scarves with or without healing prayers, Rock It in Your Pocket squares for men, chuppah wedding canopies, and color saturated paintings and prints of ocean, jungle, orchids and lizards.