Artists field guide to Yellowstone National Park

New artists' field guide touts ecosystem of Yellowstone National Park

MONTANA LIVING — The Artist’s Field Guide to Yellowstone introduces readers to the wildlife of the greater Yellowstone National Park ecosystem through the works of 50 of the region’s distinguished writers and artists.

This new anthology of eclectic artwork and inspiring storytelling from Trinity University Press offers an enlivened take on the traditional field guide and argues for the intrinsic value of this world-renowned ecosystem.

Yellowstone naturalist and artist Katie Shepherd Christiansen has compiled this sensible field guide and elegant art book to highlight the  biodiversity of the  Yellowstone National Park Ecosystem, organized across four habitat strata: sky, earth, soil, and water. Writers and artists pair up to reveal new ways of understanding key species through prose, poetry, and artwork.

The addition of scientific descriptions provides a natural history frame, and Christiansen’s illustrations of ecologically connected species bring life to every page.

"The warblers led me to wildflowers, a wildflower to worms, then to whitebark pines and the weather. Surrounding each individual thing I studied was a web of influencing forces or influenced bodies. Through this exploration of place, I pursued an unpredictably winding, starting and stopping, beautifully strenuous path. It was a path ever forming at the edge of my knowledge, through woods and fields forever deeper than my understanding. This was the path of a naturalist."

The editor of this collection of words and pictures, Katie Shepherd Christiansen, is an artist, naturalist, and conservationist whose natural history artwork appears in protected areas across the Mountain West. She holds a master’s degree from Yale University’s School of the Environment. She serves as artist-in-residence at the Northern Rockies Conservation Cooperative in Jackson, Wyoming.

Artists featured in the new book are Kalon Baughan, Tamara Callens, Meredith Campbell, Sue Cedarholm, Derek DeYoung, Loretta Domaszewski, Katy Ann Fox, Dave Hall, Dwayne Harty, Laney Hicks, DG House, Will Hunter, S. J. Karikó, Laney, Jennifer Lowe-Anker, Mimi Matsuda, James Prosek, Robert Schlenker, Jocelyn Slack, Tucker Smith, Kay Stratman, Kara Tripp, Shannon Troxler, Kathryn Mapes Turner, John Wasson, Carrie Wild, and Monte Yellow Bird Sr.

Writers are Elise Atchison, Rick Bass, Todd Burritt, Tom Campbell, Lyn Dalebout, Matt Daly, Joanne Dornan, Gary Ferguson, Matt Hart, Geneen Marie Haugen, Susan Marsh, Craig Mathews, Arthur Middleton, Doug Peacock, Karen Reinhart, Kelsey Sather, Jack Turner, Rebecca Watters, Tina Welling, Marylee White, Connie Wieneke, Todd Wilkinson, and Terry Tempest Williams.

 

The book is available here