Emily Underwood
Cachagua artist and scientific illustrator Emily Underwood has long made a custom of looking closely at plants, and reflects her intimacy with trees in a recent series of vibrantly colorful prints. One shows a Carmel Valley buckeye, one a stand of cypress at Elkhorn Slough. This one below shows a spot in the Del Monte Forest. Underwood, trained in geology, provides some context in an artist’s description: “During parts of the Pleistocene, Monterey pines were more widely distributed along the California coast, before their range contracted to the populations we have today. Populations of Monterey pines expanded and contracted with the cycles of glacial and interglacial periods (warming and cooling) over the past 2 million years.” Lucky for us, they stuck around. underwoodillustration.com.
Matt Koller
Matt Koller is a naturalist, an environmental educator and a photographer. (He’s also a former Weekly intern.) During SIP he’s returned to photography, though it took a while – he sent his camera in to the Nikon repair shop just before the pandemic, and the repair process stalled. He buckled down and got a new digital camera (a Nikon D750) and also has been using film (with a Pentax ME Super). “It’s like being reacquainted with an old love,” Koller says. He used his new camera for shots of the NEOWISE comet as seen from the top of Fremont Peak, the tallest point in the Gabilan Mountains. mkoller.com.