When a film-maker asked to chase dragonflies it sounded like fun and that is what I would be doing anyway so we did and it was. Sloshing windy floodwaters an overcast day sluggish odonates makes, making difficult quarry a little less so and so we did and indeed they were.

Every day we find our wildest selves released in creativity freed. A naturalist is an artist on foot and these beautiful wilds a poem ever becoming, “what would a better poet look like?” my friend asked me and it is a good summer for tree-frogs today.

Film-maker Emma Piper-Burket joined us for wild forays during her residency at Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts.  Photos by Jack Phillips using Emma’s phone. 12-spotted skimmer by Robert Smith.

We welcomed 2019 Bemis artists-in-residence from The U.S., Canada, and Australia. We will miss our new and wild friends Richard Ibghy, Marilou Lemmens, Isadora Vaughan, Emma Piper-Burket, Raven Chacon, J.C. Todd, curator Sylvie Fortin, and Columbia University scholar Robert O’Meally. With good fortune we will find them wildly again! Visit Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts.

We meet Sunday mornings throughout the year, often on Saturdays and during the week as well. If learning nature face to face, walking thoughtfully in prairies and woodlands, doing wild art and deep ecology sounds good to you, contact me at thenaturalistschool@gmail.com.

And frogs,

Jack Phillips