Nature

Woodturner David Ellsworth Received the Smithsonian Institute’s 2021 Visionary Award

Anonymous — Fri, 05 Nov 2021 06:00:00 +0000

Woodturner David Ellsworth Received the Smithsonian Institute’s 2021 Visionary Award Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 11/05/2021 - 00:00

Barbara Brooks

David Ellsworth (Art’71; MFA’73) hovers over the lathe for hours at a time. Wood shavings catch in his beard, fly over his shoulder and pile on the studio floor as he masterfully turns and scoops a dense maple burl until its form is as light and hollow as an eggshell. He invented this technique some 50 years ago and has taught it ever since.

Ellsworth is an artist, teacher and community builder. His work is found in the permanent collections of 44 museums and numerous private collections worldwide. He is a fellow and former trustee of the American Craft Council and has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Pew Fellowship for the Arts. This year, he received perhaps the ultimate distinction: the Smithsonian Institution’s Visionary Award.

To Ellsworth, the honor was more than just an award.

“Recognitions can come in many forms, from a simple smile to a museum acquisition,” said Ellsworth. “It is an acknowledgment that the intrinsic value of an art object is not the price, but the process. Recognitions acknowledge a maker’s motivations. While the object supports the ego, the process supports the soul.”

Colorado’s wilderness has long fed Ellsworth’s soul. It gave him the freedom to challenge and make changes as he created his art.

“The blood was in me,” he said. “In the mountains. Swinging in the trees in the Chinook wind.”

"The intrinsic value of an art object is not the price, but the process."

Ellsworth encountered the rotating lathe machine in 1958 in a high school woodshop class in Boulder while his father served as director of CU libraries. Before finding his true calling as a “wooden potter,” as he describes himself, he studied drawing, architecture and ceramics. By the mid-70s, he was a working artist, having invented a series of bent turning tools that allowed him to make thin-walled bowls and vessels inspired by the Native American pottery his parents collected.

In 1974, he was invited to start the woodworking program at the respected visual arts program Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass Village, Colo., and then the woodturning program in 1981. In 1985, he became a founding member of the American Association of Woodturners. In addition to numerous articles, he published Ellsworth on Woodturning: How a Master Creates Bowls, Pots and Vessels in 2008.

Today, Ellsworth runs the Ellsworth School of Woodturning from his 34-acre mountain property near Weaverville, North Carolina. He returns to Anderson Ranch each summer to teach.

Ellsworth said he offers his students a combination of behaviorist and constructivist processes.

“The primary reason for the behaviorist part is that you really have to stand at the lathe and repeat and repeat until you hammer it down — which is the same as memorizing formulae in order to pass a test. In the constructivist style, you give an individual a bunch of things to play with and you watch what they do with those things. When making art, you’re constantly involved in the process of change.”

Ellsworth’s expertise as an artist and teacher helps him stand out. Upon receiving the Smithsonian’s 2021 Visionary Award — awarded to American artists deemed to have achieved the pinnacle of sculptural arts and design in their medium — museum secretary Lonnie Bunch cited Ellsworth for being a “generous and inspiring teacher,” while recognizing his “innovative and transformative career in wood art” and “commitment to the entire community of wood artists.”

Ellsworth’s materials and designs have evolved over five decades. At first, he worked with dried plank lumber. He later moved to fresh-cut, or “green,” material.

“As I grew in my work, I suddenly realized that parts of my personality were starting to soften up as more recognition and confidence came.”

Ellsworth’s wife, Wendy Neel (Hist’70), is an acclaimed seed bead artist. They sometimes collaborate on projects: Five of their pieces were included in Ellsworth’s show at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Whether it’s charcoal, clay or the seven-foot-tall wood structures in his 2009 “Emergence” series, Ellsworth said all his art has movement in common.

“I tell students to take a class in life drawing and another in tai chi,” he said, “because to make any kind of art one really has to understand how to move — from your toes on up to the tips of your fingers. And movement is what makes us free.”

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Photo by Roshni Gorur, courtesy of Anderson Ranch

The artist’s work is found in the permanent collections of 44 museums.

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Barefoot & Running

Anonymous — Tue, 23 Feb 2021 20:45:47 +0000

Barefoot & Running Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 02/23/2021 - 13:45

By Morgan Liphart (Law'18)

(Liphart LLC, 44 pages; 2021)

Buy the Book

Stunningly designed and heartbreakingly powerful. Liphart builds a world where anything can be healed and hope is a force that never lets go.

Barefoot and Running invites readers to embark on a healing journey of poetry. It unfolds in its hands a promise of a softer world.

Through her lyrical and vivid style, Liphart sweeps readers up into a collection of poems that are equally beautiful and heartbreaking, both powerful and remarkably tender.

This chapbook has earned its place on the bookshelves of poetry lovers everywhere, where it can be a beacon of hope gently guiding readers back to themselves. It serves as a tender reminder that everything you need is already inside of you and you can always, always, always begin again.

About the Author:

Morgan Liphart's contemporary poetry has appeared in anthologies and journals across the world, such as the University of Oxford's Literary Imagination, The Comstock Review, and Third Wednesday. Her work reflects on experiences and circumstances that she believes can connect us all, no matter our differences. Her debut poetry chapbook, Barefoot and Running, was written while attending law school in the foothills of Boulder, Colorado.

Barefoot and Running invites readers to embark on a healing journey of poetry. It unfolds in its hands a promise of a softer world.

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Photo of the Week: In Bloom

Anonymous — Fri, 19 Jun 2020 16:22:09 +0000

Photo of the Week: In Bloom Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 06/19/2020 - 10:22

You don't need this year's solstice — Saturday, June 20 — to tell that summer has arrived in Boulder. With flowers blooming, the average temperature has been a warm 89 degrees over the past two weeks.

Restaurants on The Hill and Pearl Street have utilized the nice weather to open into expanded outdoor seating in parking lots and closed-off streets. And while summer classes are fully remote this year, campus is still as beautiful as ever with its welcoming greenery, calming open spaces and full trees. Walk over the bridge at Varsity Lake and you’ll even spot some sun-bathing turtles.

Photo by Glenn Asakawa

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CU's Hiking Club is Celebrating its 100th Birthday

Anonymous — Mon, 03 Jun 2019 17:19:59 +0000

CU's Hiking Club is Celebrating its 100th Birthday Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 06/03/2019 - 11:19

Ula Chrobak

When the club started in 1919, it consisted of 23 women and 12 men. One hundred years later, it has more than 700 members.

The Four Pass Loop Hike outside Aspen, Colo., takes backpackers through alpine meadows, rocky scree, scrub and spruce forest — and some spectacular views. The Maroon Bells, two 14,000- foot peaks, put on a purple-tinged show for trekkers of the 28-mile trail.

But high-elevation terrain is also prone to fickle weather. In fall 2017, Katherine Feldmann (Bio’20) experienced this when she helped lead eight ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ Hiking Club members on the hike. “We had four seasons over four passes in two days,” she said.

Many on the trip were new to hiking at 12,500 feet in a snowstorm, and “there was a lot of hesitation and uncertainty,” said Feldmann, now a club officer. She talked to hikers coming down the upcoming pass to assess conditions on the other side, concluding the team could get across safely. She encouraged everyone to push onward.

By the end of the trip, one of the students told Feldmann that the hike was the “craziest, most incredible thing he had done,” Feldmann said. “It pushed people’s boundaries to the point where they understood ‘Yeah, I can do this — I’m not limited by my past experiences.’”

And that, in essence, is the mission of the Hiking Club, which turned 100 this year. Today, the club has about 700 paying members and an email list of more than 3,000. A group of about 20 officers takes turns planning and leading day hikes and overnight trips each weekend during the school year. The club also guides longer excursions during fall and spring breaks.

After a week, I had made lifelong friends. The experience of finding my place was incredible.

The club started in 1919 with 35 charter members. An early constitution says the group’s purpose is “to stimulate an enjoyment of the out-of-door life in the mountains of Boulder, and to establish an organization of true comradeship and recreational activities.” Old photos show groups of up to about 50 people — including women, who were members from the start — hiking up Sunshine Canyon, Arapahoe Peak and Longs Peak.

Even without today’s high-tech fabrics and gear, the club made some challenging ascents. At least one ended in tragedy: In December 1946, club member Jeanette Martin slipped on an icy descent from Navajo Peak, pulling her two companions down with her as they were all tied into a rope. Martin died. The two others were hospitalized but survived. In the 1980s, a Hiking Club team completed the Maroon Bells traverse, which follows a sheer ridgeline between 14,000-foot peaks, requiring technical climbing and route-finding skills.

Club outings are less risky these days, and most officers have some level of medical training. “In the past couple years we’ve really transitioned from a small organization where the same few members go on trips every weekend to a big community,” said Katherine Halama (EnvSt’20), another club officer. “We want everyone to have the chance to participate.”

Costs, gear and know-how can prohibit students from getting into hiking and backpacking. Many freshmen lack cars to even get to trailheads. The Hiking Club provides transportation, free gear rentals, and experienced leaders to get students outside, no matter their resources. It also provides a sense of community for its members. That’s why Jason Chalmers (ChemEngr’20) joined. He moved to Boulder as a freshman from Ohio and had few friends in town. Over his first spring break, he went on a club trip to Escalante National Monument in Utah, where the group trekked through canyons, waded across rivers and gazed at the star-strewn desert sky.

“After literally a week of spending time with people, I had made lifelong friends,” he said. “That whole experience of finding my place was incredible.”

In our print edition, this story appears under the title "Finding Your Place in Nature." Comment on this story? Email editor@colorado.edu.

Photos by Glenn Asakawa and ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ Heritage Center

When the club started in 1919, it was comprised of 23 women and 12 men. It now has more than 700 members.

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Q&A: Emily Fairfax Wants You To Appreciate Beavers

Anonymous — Tue, 16 Apr 2019 21:29:42 +0000

Q&A: Emily Fairfax Wants You To Appreciate Beavers Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 04/16/2019 - 15:29

Ula Chrobak

[video:https://youtu.be/IAM94B73bzE]

In February, Emily Fairfax (PhDGeol’19) made a 44-second video about beavers. To her suprise, the video blew up on twitter, with about 5,000 shares and 15,000 likes. Here, Fairfax explains what captivates her about wetlands and beavers, what she’s learned and why we all should see beavers in a positive light.

How did you get interested in beavers?

In elementary school [in Indiana], we had musicals about wetlands and we did field trips to wetlands and I always thought they were the greatest. Then in college I led wilderness trips up in the Boundary Waters of Minnesota with canoes. There’s tons of beaver dams up there. It was really impressive being so far out there and seeing these carefully engineered structures that were holding back water.

After college, I was working and I wasn’t a huge fan of the subject matter of my job. I was watching documentaries about wetlands, and I got to this one about beavers. All of my old interests resparked, and I was just, like, ‘I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna be a beaver researcher.’

How are you making the beaver research happen?

My adviser told me that if I won my own money for my projects, I was welcome to study whatever interested me. So I got a large fellowship that funded most of my research.

How widespread are beavers?

They're everywhere! Beavers have been in North America for millions of years. We know that the dam-building species or behavior is at least seven million years old, because that’s the oldest fossil dam we’ve found.

Before the trapping boom [which peaked in the 1800s], there was somewhere between 60 and 400 million in North America, or about a beaver per kilometer of stream. Then we trapped them down to almost nothing. Today there are somewhere between 10 and 15 million. They’re everywhere from Northern Mexico all the way to the Arctic, coast to coast. I study them in deserts and dry environments.

Tell me about your research.

I use remote sensing data to look at creeks in Nevada that have pockets of beaver damming, so that I'm able to compare the sections that have beavers to the sections that don't have beavers. I looked over four years: Three drought years and one wet. Over all those years, the beaver areas had a much lusher wetland.

Between drought years and non-drought years, the areas that had beavers didn’t really respond differently, which indicated that [the wetland plants] don’t really feel a multiyear drought in the beaver ponds. But in the areas of the creek that didn’t have beavers, the riparian wetland [wetland adjacent to the creeks] was really hit hard during the drought years, so it’s much more sensitive to multiyear droughts.

Was your study the first to look at that effect?

Yeah, there was [no research] directly tying beavers to that ecosystem impact.

What’s the significance of making wetlands more resilient?

Wetlands are extremely biodiverse. In the beaver wetlands I was studying there are threatened trout species, threatened frog species. A lot of insects will breed there, birds come there to nest. If you’re putting these systems into drought, those species are going to be hit hard. But if you can maintain these pockets of habitat [with the help of beavers], even when you have something like a drought that disturbs that ecosystem, it can still make it. It’s putting life support on the ecosystem.

A beaver dam in Colorado. (Photo courtesy Emily Fairfax)

What are you working on now?

The wildfire project, which was the subject of that video.

I saw these beavers maintaining ecosystems through drought and I wanted to see how far it can go. What’s more extreme than a drought? A fire! It's hotter and drier.

During fires, are these [beaver areas] actually staying green and wet? And how big of fires can they actually persist through? I imagine a wetland of any kind is going to make it through a little brush fire, but we're talking about big crowning wildfires [which spread at treetops independent of the ground fire].

I have data from five states that have five really big fires [and] also have beaver dams in them. I looked at each creek and compared where it stayed green to where there were beaver dams, and it’s an extremely tight correlation.

So, even with big fires, the dams helped the wetlands stay green.

Yeah, they were still preserved.

How does climate change tie into your research?

Most places where I look at beavers are getting increasingly hotter and drier.

I think that looking to things like beavers — ecosystem engineers that would be there anyway — is going to be a more sustainable way than trying to continue to manage every single wetland ourselves.

Does that mean reintroducing them to areas?

It means reintroduction and then also protection. A lot of states are starting to make more steps toward things like installing beaver dam analogues, which is when people build fake beaver dams, but also reintroduce beavers. And then, ultimately, putting policies into place where people can’t trap and shoot beavers without a permit. I think that’s going to really help their population grow and be more stable.

Tell me about the video you made.

Yeah! The base of the video is corkboard, and I covered it with green construction paper. And then I cut all the little pieces out of felt. The flames in the video are felt clumps that I sewed together, and for the dam I was just laying felt on top of itself to get a little more height. I already had the little beaver toy — I have lots of beaver toys.

I used my phone and an app to take about 300 pictures and stitch them all together to make the stop-motion. Between every picture I’d push the beaver toy and move the flames. I took it all and added the sounds in iMovie. All in all, it was about 2.5 hours of work.

Have you done other creative science communication projects?

I participated in a contest to haiku my research. I was one of the winners.

[The winning haiku:
Vanishing wetlands
Wilderness scarred by drought, fire
Beavers save the day]

Tell me about the reception the video had.

It exploded. I put it on my Twitter and I went for a hike and I didn’t have cell reception. When I got back from the hike my phone pinged and it was my friend. She was like “yo, your tweet blew up.” I was not expecting that, but it reached a really broad audience.

One of the coolest things was seeing it get retweeted in so many different languages and all around the world. I think it helped a lot that there was no speaking in the video.

I think if you can just think about how to take your science and distill it down into something really digestible, then you can actually reach a really broad audience.

What do you hope the impact will be?

First, I hope that other scientists think about how they can also get their research out there. There’s so much cool science going on and I think everyone should hear about it. It’s on the scientists to take it to a level where it is digestible by the general public.

And then, I hope people like beavers more. They’ve struggled with PR. They are 70-pound rodents, which can be hard for some people to enjoy. I wanted [the video] to be a resource for people, so if they're confronted with a beaver they can think, “Ok, I did learn about this, they're not bad, they are good.”

Here, Fairfax explains what captivates her about wetlands and beavers, what she’s learned through her research and why we all should all see beavers in a positive light.

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Field Guide to the Lichens of White Rocks

Anonymous — Tue, 28 Mar 2017 20:26:55 +0000

Field Guide to the Lichens of White Rocks Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 03/28/2017 - 14:26

Field Guide to the Lichens of White Rocks (2016, University Press of Colorado) By Erin A. Tripp, assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology

By Erin A. Tripp

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Campus News Briefs – Fall 2016

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Sep 2016 06:00:00 +0000

Campus News Briefs – Fall 2016 Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 09/01/2016 - 00:00

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CU's ATLAS Institute

Creative and curious engineering

Blow Things Up Lab

Two

Research labs: Playful Computing and Interactive Robotics

1,200

Students in Technology, Arts and Media program

Percent of ATLAS students are women

One

Drone-flying cage

Years since Roser ATLAS Center opened

A Tree Grows In... The Office

No one will need to water this office plant: A team of CU students recently designed and built a work space around a live linden tree in Boulder’s Central Park.

The modular structure — made of wood and metal and open to the sky — measures 450 square feet and has benches, workstations and a deck. The temporary building is not attached to the tree and will be moved periodically.

The undertaking, part of the Tree X Office project, which aims to modify the human relationship to nature, gave third-year environmental design students soup-to-nuts design, permitting and construction experience.

More of the story is available at www.colorado.edu/news.

Heard Around Campus

Jupiter is the biggest, baddest planet."

— Planetary scientist Fran Bagenal of CU Boulder, anticipating the arrival of NASA’s Juno spacecraft at Jupiter in July, a mission she and others at CU aided.

How Do You Say...?

Name an ancient language, the chances are good that Samuel Boyd can read it: In all, the CU professor knows 23, counting dialects.

“If someone wants to travel with me to Finland, I’m useless,” Boyd, a scholar of the Bible, told the online Colorado Arts & Sciences Magazine. “But if you ever want me to translate ancient Phoenician, I can help.”

An assistant professor of religious studies, Boyd also has advanced reading knowledge of Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek and Babylonian, to mention a few, as well as Classical Ethiopic, also called Ge’ez.

“I was obsessed with Indiana Jones as a kid, so once I started to learn one ancient language,” he said, “I got hooked.”

On and around campus

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Look: Plants

Anonymous — Tue, 01 Mar 2016 21:45:00 +0000

Look: Plants Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 03/01/2016 - 14:45

Eric Gershon

Where the Wild Things Are

About 1,000 plant species, mostly exotic, thrive inside CU-Boulder’s 30th Street greenhouse.

You won’t find many banana or chocolate trees growing wild in Boulder, or staghorn fern, Somalian milkweed or Venus fly trap. These aren’t Colorado plants.

But all thrive inside CU’s 30th Street greenhouse, along with hundreds of other species from as far afield as Central and South America, the Persian Gulf and South Pacific, Madagascar, Malaysia and Macedonia.

“I collected this in Venezuela in 1982,” greenhouse manager Tom Lemieux says, gesturing to a tiny flowering orchid native to cloud forests.

Lemieux likes to call 30th Street, one of four campus greenhouses he oversees — and, at 8,753 square feet, the largest — a “million-dollar” facility. It’s a reference not to cost, but to the building’s hardiness and the richness of the collections. CU acquired the greenhouse from Chevron for free in 1991, moving it from California to Colorado pane by pane.

Today about 1,000 plant species, overwhelmingly exotic, grow inside.

Worldwide there are about 350,000 known plant species. Lemieux and assistant greenhouse manager Janice Harvey (EPOBio’03) cultivate varieties that CU professors use in teaching and research, including members of the coffee and cucumber families and African milkweed, plus others selected to hint at plant life’s fantastic diversity.

There’s also room for live root cuttings from a special local tree — the Old Main Cottonwood, now about 110 years old. Those cuttings one day could yield a genetically identical twin.

The 30th Street greenhouse, part of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, is open for public tours four times a year.

Photos by Rich Ellis

About 1,000 plant species, mostly exotic, thrive inside CU-Boulder's 30th Street greenhouse.

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Wild Exposure: Jeff Diener

Anonymous — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 06:00:00 +0000

Wild Exposure: Jeff Diener Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 06/01/2012 - 00:00

Christie Sounart

Rappelling into a flooded canyon in Utah’s Zion National Park, photographer Jeff Diener (EPOBio’92) was sweating in his wetsuit in the 100-degree heat. Yet on his fourth rappel deep into the canyon, all was forgotten when a cathedral of glowing sandstone appeared 70 feet below. He immediately set up his gear and began shooting photographs.

“These wild, novel experiences, mixed with adventure and exploration in beautiful spots are what I live for,” Jeff says.

Many of his stunning photos have appeared in national magazines, including Outside, Men’s Journal, National Geographic Traveler and Oprah. In addition, he shoots for such commercial clients as Patagonia, Camelbak, Columbia Sportswear, Nikon and Gore-Tex. While the work is diverse, nature serves as his inspiration.

As a teenager growing up in upstate New York, Jeff was obsessed with skiing. He spent his days as a ski instructor and plastered the walls of his room at home with photos ripped from Powder Magazine. He would transport himself into the scenes of the photographs, memorizing each detail.

“I think the love of capturing unique, beautiful and compelling moments got deep into my core somewhere in this process,” Jeff says.

He attended CU-Boulder for its proximity to mountains, majoring in biology to gain a deeper understanding of nature. The majestic Rocky Mountains further fueled his appreciation for wild places, and he made the decision that his career would keep him outdoors.

After graduating Jeff took a solo,10-month trip to Nepal, Maui, Alaska, India and beyond. While abroad he steadily improved his photography skills, learning the most effective ways to use natural light in a scene.

Jeff moved to Jackson Hole, Wyo., for what he thought would be a season or two. However, he fell in love with the town and never left. His interests have since evolved from skiing to white-water rafting, backpacking and mountaineering.

His next plan is to buy a motor for his paraglider so he can shoot aerial photographs around Jackson. He also aspires to publish a book of his photography. In some moments he finds himself in awe of his career path.

“It always makes me smile when I find myself shooting amazing light in some ridiculously beautiful location,” he says. “I’ll have to stop just for a second and remind myself that I’m actually at work.”

To view some of Jeff’s work, visit www.jacksonholegallery.com

Rappelling into a flooded canyon in Utah’s Zion National Park, photographer Jeff Diener was sweating in his wetsuit in the 100-degree heat.

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Wandering the Wave

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 07:00:00 +0000

Wandering the Wave Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 03/01/2012 - 00:00

Staff

Jeff Diener (EPOBio’92) photographed this hiker exploring “The Wave,” a stunning rock formation on the border of Utah and Arizona. Large sand dunes covered this area 190 million years ago. Over time, the dunes were compacted into sandstone hills and erosion exposed the fins and ribbons of spectacular layering visible today. As a natural world and adventure photographer, Jeff explores and captures beautiful areas across the western U.S. More of his work, along with fine art prints, are available at www.jacksonholegallery.com.

A photo from the Spring 2012 issue of the Coloradan.

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Nature

Woodturner David Ellsworth Received the Smithsonian Institute’s 2021 Visionary Award

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