The sculpture garden at Earth Art Studio is a perpetual work in progress. We want you to have new corners to visit and new art to enjoy, making each visit unique. When you donate, you help us…
create new sculptures + installations for the permanent collection of the garden
off-set local artists costs for exhibiting like transportation, installation + infrastructure
maintain the sculpture trail – the desert likes to take over!
make upgrades to the garden like new features, nooks + trails to explore
make visits free to local schools + educational groups
It hasn’t rained in almost a year, and it would appear that most of the plants in the desert are dead. When you look out the studio windows, you see the desert in all shades of brown with leafless gnarled, tangled sticks, sparse and bare except for the green of the cardón cactus. But, what has amazed me about this landscape is that if you look closer, you will see signs of life everywhere. There may not be enough energy in a plant to put out leaves and photosynthesize but it might throw out some flowers for the pollinators. Sometimes the flowers are very short lived, wilting in the summer heat but they are there and getting their seeds ready for when the rains do come.
Last week we were overrun by ants that were carrying all their eggs to higher ground, trying to nest in our kitchen and furniture. They weren’t looking for the crumbs on the counter or the drip down the side of the honey jar, they somehow knew that it is the season of the rains and they needed to find a better spot to hide out their next generation. Life in the desert is a lesson in patience and opportunity, you see it in the birds, plants and mammals and I find it fascinating to watch.
Just this morning we got a light sprinkling of the first rain of the season – it was hardly enough to even be called rain, but in the desert every drop counts. As the season progresses, the storms off the ocean will inevitability come closer to land and the afternoon thunderstorms in the mountains will spill out to our area. We will be inundated with water, and for a time it will feel like way too much water. But it only lasts for a small period of time and the desert will soak up enough to last through the whole next year. Stay tuned as we watch the desert come alive again and turn from brown to vibrant green, until then, we wait for the rain.
For almost a decade, I have been inspired by microscopic plankton, how can this tiny little organism be the source of so much inspiration for my work you ask. Let’s start with the obvious. They. Are. Gorgeous. Check out these images I took looking at a slide through my microscope…
The particular type of plankton I’m looking at are radiolarians, they are single cell organisms, most are tiny but some are visible to the naked eye. They have intricate skeletal structures formed by silica which is what you’re seeing in the microscopic images. Imagine being a single cell and yet so complex in structure?! They fall into the category of being both phytoplankton and zooplankton, sometimes jokingly referred to as vegimals. Their fossil record dates back over 500 million years and have been found even in the Himalayas. Their forms have inspired me to create my versions of their skeletal structures using porcelain clay.
Plankton are marine drifters andrange in size from microscopic to large jellyfish, they are in all waters across the planet. Some are bioluminescent, some are only considered plankton in their larval stage and then change taxonomy and they can also cause harmful algae blooms(HABs), commonly referred to as a red tide. Algae blooms are often so large that they can be spotted by satellites in space. The color of the bloom depends on the type of plankton that is blooming and the form is based on the tides, currents and wind. I created this installation based on the shape of an algae bloom off the coast of Antartica that was captured by a NASA satellite image.
Plankton Bloom in McMurdo Sound | ceramic + kanthal wire | 360″ X 120″ X 4″ | Eloise Pickard Smith Gallery USCS Santa Cruz
The fact that we cannot survive on this planet without plankton and that we generally never think about them is mind-blowing to me. They are the base of the entire marine food-chain, produce more oxygen than all of the trees and trap carbon from the atmosphere locking it in the deep ocean. We use diatomaceous earth in our gardens and in our toothpastes, which are the fossilized remains of diatoms – another type of plankton. Plankton have helped us mitigate climate change and provide a viable planet for life.
So, why plankton? For me, nature is the best artist and the skeletal forms of radiolarians will never cease to amaze me. I love the idea that they are too small to see without a microscope but can also be seen from space when they bloom. And, their purpose in the systems of nature, seem to be a never-ending source of inspiration and ideas, even after almost ten years, I still have a million ideas of things to make and stories to tell with these forms. Are you inspired now too?
No watering required to keep these bright red ceramic flowers blooming all year long. Inspired by ocotilla flowers, this ceramic and steel sculpture is ready to be transplanted into your garden!
Local delivery in the Todos Santos area and installation included, drop us a message if you’re interested!
We’ve created a new platform on the website to make it easier to sign up for tours of the studio and sculpture garden. You can book your tour months ahead when you’re making vacation plans or share it with friends who you know love art, nature + the adventure of finding us!
Please drop us an email to inquire about group rates (6 or more), corporate retreats + specialty events. We’d love to plan something special with you!
Note that summer tour rates are available July – Sept.
We have wearables, stickers, books and more available! We will be adding more products in soon for local pick up in Todos Santos but if you’re from out of the area, there are downloadable books and classes too!
You can also donate to our sculpture garden to help us keep it growing and share our space with educational groups!
It took me about four years of trial and a lot of errors to figure out how to make these porcelain urchin and medusa pieces consistently successful. Now, a small simple urchin form takes me about an hour to make and I have a pretty high confidence that it will make it through the kiln firing process. Although, larger and more complex forms can take much longer to create. Here’s a little time-lapse video of the process…
The heat of summer has officially descended on us in the desert! If you want to come sweat it out with us over here, we just posted our summer rates for tours of the studio and sculpture garden.
These rates will only be good through the end of September, so take advantage of the off season rates while you can!
We took advantage of the cool weather and cloud cover today to work on the sculpture trail and make a new path to one of the largest cardón cactus we have on the property. Now when you visit you can get up close and personal with this amazing cardón that could be hundreds of years old! Come visit again soon!🌵
