I live on a floating home in the intertidal zone, where two ecosystems overlap. Wetlands, salt marshes, and tidal zones are some of the richest and most vulnerable regions. My home floats on Richardson Bay, that makes up part of the SF Bay estuary.  Just inland are eucalyptus, redwood, and oak forests. Through these run streams and around them are chaparrel covered hillsides that level out into marshes and eventually lead to the Pacific Ocean. Nearby, the beach is flanked by huge chert boulders tossed up from teutonic plates that collided long ago. I live in Shangri La. I love to get out and swim, dive, surf, hike, mushroom hunt and forage this area; I've also developed an obsession for wildcrafting with it. Salmon bones salt and salmon leather LED lamps, mushroom fabric dyes and indoor wall-hanging mushroom gardens. Preserved cherry blossoms and rose petal honey, and seaweed for food and salve. Oyster shells backsplash tiles and a floating native oyster garden. Come geek out with me.  ​

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This map was part of my Autodesk Artist-In-Residence Project. Illustrations by Iris Gottlieb and graphics assistance from Jennifer Berry and Heather Graef. It's on display in the map room of the San Francisco Exploratorium. 

Oyster Shell Tiles 

​I'm oyster obsessed and love everything about them.  They filter the water and make it healthier, contour the bottom of the bay to protect from surges. And the barnacle-textured concave of their shells, the act of prying the lip open, putting the wide part of the shell against my lip and then the sensation of the briny, plump oyster in my mouth.  I saved my shells over time, cleaned, dried, tumbled, and then made them into tiles for my kitchen backsplash. Visit here for full instructions. 

Wall Hanging Mushroom Garden

Wild mushrooms are a passion, but cultivated ones are also a marvel. They have wonderful architectural shapes, can grow indoors, and require with minimal care. So along with Vanessa Sigurdson, who works with the Artist-In-Residence program at Autodesk, we created an indoor
mushroom garden with three varieties- shiitake, oyster, and lion's mane.
​The goal was to make beautiful boxes to hang on your kitchen wall to grow mushrooms.For full instructions visit here. And chances are you don't have an Omax Water Jet or a CNC machine expert like Vanessa to collaborate with, so you can also get a cigar box and drill holes in it for a similar effect.  You can also see a time lapse video that Vanessa shot here. 

​​Pendant Lamps Made with Seaweed, Moss, Lichen, and
​Sh​​ells

hae​These are standard DIY string-and-glue pendant lamps that I wrapped dried sea lettuce from my tie-up lines, moss and lichen from local forests, and some oyster and farmed abalone shells I had. I had too much glue all over me to take photos of the process, but follow a DIY, like this one, then just add what you love. The effects at night are wonderful. After I dried this and took out the ball, I sprayed it with resin. 

 I hung three small ones in clusters, a large one, then another small one over my stairs. They have LED light bulbs in them to avoid fires, for longevity, and cleaner eco-living. At night, it's like an enchanted forest from the rays they send out. 

Salmon Leather LED Light

As the saying goes, it takes a village to make an LED light out of salmon leather. I believe my father caught the king salmon off Duxbury Reef near Bolinas, CA. My friend and fellow Autodesk AIR Jennifer Berry helped tan the skin, and Eric Foreman, another Autodesk AIR had the savvy to cut this on a meta laser. 

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Responding to the Sea Urchin Explosion- with Crafts 

If you've visited my "articles" page, you may have noticed that I've been writing about the purple sea urchin explosion on the coasts of Northern Sonoma and Mendocino.  Due to several climate change related factors like warmer waters, there's an explosion of purple urchins on the Northern California Coast. Groups have started harvesting them so they don't eat the small amounts of Bull Kelp left- over 90% of the kelp forests are gone in Northern California. ​ ​If there was uni inside them, of course I ate it- or mixed with butter and froze and then used later on soba noodles or to add umami to braised greens. But since the urchin are in starvation conditions, there often isn't much uni. 

Preserving Cherry Blossoms and other Crafts with Flowers

Flowering tress are a brief, showy start of springtime; a stirring of the natural world that inspires optimism and awe. They make me think of the line from the Pablo Neruda poem, "I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees."

In Japan, there are festivals focused on the blossoming of cherry trees, and the flowers are referred to as "Sakura." In Japan, they preserve cherry blossoms in salt and ume or plum vinegar and then use them for tea or mix them with rice. They also sometimes appear in desserts.
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I couldn't resist trying to preserve a bit of this ephemeral beauty, Japanese style. Click Here for full instructions. 

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