Forestville land artist creates work only meant to last a few weeks

On a hillside overlooking a farm, deep in west Sonoma County's forested Green Valley, an owl hovers, wings outstretched. She is a formidable bird, her wingspan extending some 150 feet and appearing from the fields below like a shadow on the earth.

She won't be staying long. As the grass grows, spinning from spring green to summer gold, she will, blade by blade, recede into the landscape. As you read this, she will be gone, leaving no visible trace. The only way you might find her is by hiking uphill in the summer heat, poking amid the grass and spotting a remnant of the artist's mark — a bit of oyster shell or ochre clinging to a few blades.

That is exactly what earth artist Kelsi Anderson intends. Using natural pigments and a spray gun with a 100-foot cord as a brush — her "magic wand," she playfully calls it — she may spend several weeks painting a piece into the landscape that, by design, will last only a few weeks or days. She also has made extraordinarily detailed sand drawings raked onto a beach that may vanish within an hour, overtaken by wind and tide.

Anderson may feel slightly wistful, but she won't mourn. Her art is not meant to last. It's about her "dance with nature" to complete a piece on an uncertain canvas.

"Part of the awareness of the piece is that everything is always changing. It has both the elements of surprise and spontaneity," she said of her singular medium and method of creating ephemeral art. "When is a painting going to appear and when is it going away? That makes you feel and be really present when you realize, ‘This won't last.’"

She does this in hopes of coaxing people to draw closer to nature.

On a warm morning with the wind whipping through the valley, Anderson is contending with new grass that keeps popping up among the vast strokes of paint on a raptor's wings, requiring her to trudge back up the hill for touch-ups. Working against time and the changing season, she is determined to complete the work before Mother Nature erases it.

Calling herself an ecological artist and working under the name "Wild Earth Art," Anderson paints boldly on raw land with natural pigments such as iron oxide for black, calcium carbonate for white, ochre for yellow and terracotta clay of the Sierra foothills for red. The pigments are both eco-friendly and help enrich the soil.

The Petaluma native studied traditional fine art and environmental studies at New York University, where she was mentored by a like-minded environmental artist who sought out nature in one of the most built-up environments in the world.

"We were doing a lot of work directly in the city," Anderson said, "finding all the hidden streams in Manhattan and the different urban gardens. It was amazing. But now I’m in the complete opposite space."

She has an indoor studio at her home in nearby Forestville. But these days she revels in her outdoor studio at Green Valley Farm + Mill, a 19th-century homestead where farmers, artists, gardeners and other makers share a sylvan space that was originally the ancestral home of the native Pomo and Miwok peoples.

In a green jumpsuit spackled with pigment and boots blackened with iron-oxide powder, the 35-year-old eco-artist explores the land for possibilities. In her three years experimenting with equipment and developing a technique for a process few other artists have tried — she found only one artist in France doing the same thing — she has painted birds on a hill and a snake in a meadow.

"I follow the rotation of the cows. So going into a pasture where the cows have just been means the grass is nice and short for me," said Anderson, who normally has to weed whack to prepare her earthen canvas.

Before embarking on a piece, she sits on her chosen spot quietly meditating and tuning in to the birds and animals, wildflowers and trees, waiting for an image to appear to her. The process, she said, is spiritual as well as creative.

The owl represents her maternal grandmother, who loved owls and was a powerful figure of "comfort and security" to her, a "guardian owl" over the land.

"I do a lot of imagery with birds. There are a lot of barn owls and great horned owls in this valley and in these barns, and I wanted to pay homage to the species that live here."

Once she has her theme, she takes photos of the site and sketches an image in a notebook. She had to learn how to work on a whole different scale proportionally, and to decide what vantage point she wants the image to be seen from.

"I want this to look good and realistic from where we’re standing, so people passing by can appreciate it," she said.

She finds herself stewarding the land as she works it. When she's clearing a space to begin a painting, she's careful to not disturb the native grasses and wildflowers, even if that means leaving a splotch in the finished piece.

"So even in the act of preparing the canvas, there is ecological remediation work that is going on. And that, too, is my background and my passion and my love," said the artist, who also has a business designing and installing eco-friendly landscapes that welcome wildlife.

Anderson has been cultivating her inclinations toward "wild earth art" for a decade, since returning from New York disenchanted by the whole "art scene" there.

"I got disillusioned by that art world," she said. "It was about who you know and what gallery you were in. It was all just about the scene. It lost the heart and the spirit of making art and what that meant. So I came back to California and started getting back into gardening and farming and working directly with the earth and making my own pigments and paints. It just felt so tactile and real to me."

For about six years, she made naturally pigmented earthen walls for building interiors. She also worked alone, in groups and with fellow artist Andres Amador to draw stunning designs in sand on beaches in San Francisco and along the Sonoma and Mendocino coasts. These stayed long enough for a photo and then were gone.

"That work is not only site-specific, but you have to work with the tides," she said. "There are just those windows when there are super low tides. It's fun and another way to get in sync with nature, but also limiting."

Whether working with sand or soil, the satisfaction for Anderson is in the creation. She likens landscape art to urban graffiti and street art, work she finds "stunning" but "extremely toxic." She would rather play gently with nature and embrace its impermanence.

She sites her hillside pieces so they can be enjoyed to their best advantage. She was commissioned to create a piece for Paradise Ridge Winery in Santa Rosa in June. On July 16, she will welcome visitors to Green Valley Farm to walk the property, get a sense of how she works and view several new pieces.

As she sees it, it's all about "illuminating the natural spirit of the land" and drawing people to natural places of sanctuary, whether it's a park, a farm, a winery or a business. She hopes to partner with land-conservation groups and parks on more projects, like the salmon she painted last year to celebrate a local stream restoration project.

"I deeply believe in public art that is accessible to all," she said, "and creating work that makes people want to engage with the environment more. Art has that animism and that ritualistic quality that we’re missing in our culture now."

You can reach Staff Writer Meg McConahey at 707-521-5204 or [email protected]. OnTwitter @smallscribe.

Features, The Press Democrat

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