Sara Lubinski
Artist and botanist Sara Lubinski has just completed a two-year project entitled River Sojourn - A painter's portfolio of the Mississippi River Blufflands. She traveled throughout this area along the upper Mississippi, also called the Driftless Region, in parts of Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota with her sketchbook and painting gear. 
Rugged and wild country with high bluffs over-looking the river, the area is rich habitat for waterfowl, birds, fish & wildlife, and a recreational resource for more than three million people a year (more than Yellowstone).
In addition to oil paint, she uses pastels, watercolor, gouache, Conté crayon, homemade walnut ink, pencil, charcoal and silverpoint.
"What I attempted to do was to keep my mind open to new possibilities and to let the forest tell me what to look at. And, after a while, I would see things differently. I would see things that I hadn't noticed...things that I was surprised that I had never noticed before."
Her exhibition of approximately 50 paintings, drawings and field sketches is now on view at the Bell Museum on the U. of M. campus in Minneapolis. We learned about it when someone told us they had seen one of our boxes as part of the exhibit!
You can see a video interview about the project HERE.
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