What follows are the drafts I’ve been working on for the Bureau of Land Management, a series of commemorative, handpainted maps that describe the additions to the California Coastal National Monument, 2016. #fieldatlas #trailpaintings
instagram @coyotethunder
Hollowed and gracious, gentle pieces of sky in forms of song written once across creation and hardly remembered, never reproducible across extinction’s ledger. Listen to enough songbirds at dawn and you see the evolutionary utility in even the most beautiful art, as if every thing we are is product of nature in tooth and nail. The wonder of natural science with all its empirical, terrestrial truth is all the mysticism I need. The expansive quality of beauty in this world had no limit.
A project so big that my life will forever be that which comes after, and now, that what has come before. Do I define my art or does my art define me? Do I get to designate that what and who I love, or have the energetic, magnetic, attractive forces within this place of my birth and of my life, sculpted me to be the maker of this and the next Field Atlases to come? Am I alone in the endeavor or do I dare think I may be a momentary pulse in a greater becoming? #californiafieldatlas
I painted 20 bears today. The best painting is always the one where i’m not actually painting with a brush but a lazy claw, a self portrait with water and wine where the form fills like a reservoir and all things bend to the river, the river does not bend.
You’ve got ancestors. It is only humanity’s blessed curse to forget this pride. Every other thinking species under the sun speaks directly from their bodies through their instinct to those who who made them. We must secure our narratives outside our skin, in words, yarns that weave flags for our families; sketched maps that can only loosely, ever efficiently do what they were meant to do. We’ve told, we tell the same stories to open the dialogue with the people, with the land, and the transmission is always as beautiful as it is imprecise. My story becomes only part of my story. The map disregards circumstance and is happy to devour time. Our drive to media is the instinctual, written, hard-wired road into the living memory of the impossibly imaginative being of landscape that you are.
I can’t stop singing. Even facedown in the sunbaked dirt, the drums keep calling and I’m left broken by the water, a red throat for whales. Galaxies spin in my sour wine, when out in the void, dying stars hold unborn romances too numerous to count. Meanwhile I’m tracking dinosaurs as if nothing ever goes extinct. Me again on my crazy horse in my freezing waterfall, humbled and yet sensing traps everywhere, can’t ever stop remembering how beautiful it is and you are.
I have been practicing speaking with many different voices across many different platforms. I like to reserve my voice on this one (instagram) as being my highest, daily-obersvational tuning; my most poetic. I have been making quite a few public appearances, speaking about not only how and why I made the #calforniafieldatlas, but also matters of the day that I find the most relevant: conservationism and the restoration and the protection of the living, natural world. In this context, my voice as a storyteller is rather straight forward, and although I would never full expel the flowery nature of my spoken prose, I don't recite my poetry. I think the quiet word forms of my subtle work are best whispered, not proudly broadcast. I have a five dates in May - please check www.californiafieldatlas.com. I am very pleased to announce that I've been invited by the Department of the Interior to speak at the Parsons Lodge in Tuolumne Meadows on Saturday, July 28th, 2018 as part of the High Sierra Natural History Celebration inside Yosemite National Park. I was told there are only a few camping sites left available for reservation and that this event will sell out soon. Photo by @restorehetchhetchy @yosemitenps @usinterior
The legacy of one hundred thousand years of storytelling is reflected in both each of our individual minds and the collective mind we each tap whenever we speak, create and love. Our society is built on stories. A story, either composed of words or pictorially rendered in art, transmits apprehendable information - a flower well rendered in paint, for example, transmits viable immediate beauty, everything a human could know, or at least needs to know to identify and appreciate the reality of that flower on some almost metabolic level; something core revealed and celebrated - a communion and an atonement with that flower’s world. We change the story we change the world. Depending on how we fair the coming, inevitable paradigm shift, we will be charting a course not only of our continued human residency here over the next one hundred or five hundred years, but over the next ten thousand years. Let’s go ahead and trust each other enough to begin that conversation.
I’m back in the land of the beaver and the bear for a few weeks on a writing residency (or is it self-exile?) This is my mother’s cabin, my father’s ashes are scattered here in the Red Fir forest. She and her husband are traveling and I’m taking care of her dogs and working on articles for @zyzzyvamag and @baynaturemagazine and of course, my next books for @heydaybooks. The silence is full of grace and surrounds these mountains on all sides. Between the coffee and the wine, my two favorite drugs, I hope to get some work done and some bigger themes hammered out.
One eye inside, one eye dreaming, both eyes open. Nothing is ever forgotten between these lenses, ground horizons as they are, smoothed on a spinning fulcrum, boiled and frozen from all the light of the world over exposed. I see you and I accept you, graceheld dewdrop. My heart beats once a day when the moon comes for me. Across the sun at dawn we hunt together, my and all my eyes, even the ones I don't dare open.
From a knife to a spoon, the mountain trail blinks and falls from the fox’s green eye, her fur left for the hungry moon. The careful butterflies, mummified in thunderstorms, offer little direction in the vast dreaming wilderness, where no one sleeps and everyone gets eaten. What grace do these veins give, when my water-body now spilled and given in silence to the roots of the world tree, are tuned only to listen to the tiniest of foot prints. Even the sun holds its breath when just before birds move, the single grass blade bends in darkness under the silver paw.
I’m so proud to have been tapped for the new @blackberrysmoke album art. The design is sharp as all hell and #findalight rocks the same. I’m so honored to be at all associated with this incredibly hard working, Georgia band. Pic by @dan3ix
Practicing the talk of hummingbirds. Maps on maps of sensual impulse and input confuse and equate stars and flowers. The garden floor becomes a constellation for perfumed rivers to bounce around on their downhill quest, ever home. Chaos is not the rule of nature anymore than order is solely the dream of humanity.
I awake in a circle of mountain lions, all made of water and speaking butterfly. In their eyes, thirty thousand years of dwindling biodiversity burns white hot. Across the endless range, kittens in caves of gold, toy with the skulls of politicians, while the council of their mothers always remains the same.
I paint bees like some say prayers. The divine frequency of the hive, its sweet syrup was fed to me in dreams since before my birth. Soon the harmonies will synchronize, as it already has begun, and the species-wall will come down and the happy fire of this hyper-social poetry will spread, finding us united before too long, just before it is too late.
I’ll be spending the next six months writing, painting, mapping and backpacking Northern California, the Klamath Mountains and the Sierra Nevada for @zyzzyvamag @baynaturemagazine and @heydaybooks. If you would like to come along on a long walk, let me know. I’ll be bringing friends on most of these walks. It is going to be a beautiful summer. Thank you to my friends at @ospreypacks @oaklandsurfclub @standardandstrange and @indigoferajeans for their continued love, sponsorship and support.
Hometown event this Saturday. Looking forward to checking in with you, my neighbor. #californiafieldatlas
I am sure that whatever success the #californiafieldatlas is enjoying comes from the electric upswell of inspired souls that I've witnessed working to build a new network of California Eco-Conservation, ready for the nature-first narrative beyond the short sighted schemes being imposed by uncaring men so far away. After almost three months at the number one spot of bestselling non-fiction paperback for Northern California, the third printing is now available. If you would like a signed copy directly from me, please go to www.californiafieldatlas.com and order yours - there is even a field where you can enter to whom and how you would like it signed. If you would like to wholesale the book at your store, please contact me via email coyoteandthunder@gmail.com and I can hook you up with my wonderful publisher @heydaybooks. As I delve now deeper into the adventure that is writing my next books, I appreciate your patience with me and my limited availability to respond to all the excellent correspondence you, my community, has offered. I will be in touch shortly, and thank you. Obi
The genius of the poppy is a map home, a ladle full of the cresting spring waving us towards simpler, cleaned up versions of ourselves. Flags that welcome the mud parade of sodden hope to carry us through the arid season to come, however animate or still in their wonderful dance, ever inviting us to join and with our little bird hearts and we are powerless to resist.
I grew up in this place and this place grew up in me. Every time I return, my relationship to it has matured, evolved and deepened. We rejoice in the intactness of its living systems. The natural history of the Diablo Range is a depthless catalog of archetypical forms that roil and sing, century after century, a symphony that my spirit hears as a call homeward. It is my home terrain, my starting place and my base line.
Song birds sing all day in the hour of plenty, when every crack in the clay is called on to hold the last of winter’s big rain. There is no landscape more welcoming in contour and disposition than this hypnotizing terrain; easy place for the love-sick poet or the young, red-tailed hawk. There is no desolation here at all, only the delightful green. Every piece of natural history tells its individual story in this book calling itself a trail.
Obi Kaufmann Art Archive
In Defense of the Western Wilderness…
- Conservation Alliance
- Ventana Wilderness Alliance
- Condor Trail
- Yuba River League
- Los Padres Forest Watch
- Pacific Crest Trail Assoc.
- Klamath Siskiyou Wild
- Yuba Salmon Now
- Friends of the Inyo
- Western Rivers
- Wilderness Land Trust
- Los Padres Forest Assoc.
- Friends of the River
- California Wilderness Project
- The Wilderness Society
The Storytelling Sponsors…
- Six Point Brew
- Outlier Clothing
- Poler Stuff
- Workhorse Rye Distillers
- Revist Products
- Duckworth Co.
- Topo Designs
- Dogfish Head Brew
- Indigo Fera Jeans
- Havstad Hat Co.
- Winston Made
- 18 Waits
- Iron & Resin
- Danner Boots
- Third Eye Headlamps
- Orox Leather
- Freenote Cloth
- Frost River
- Ticla
- Sierra Nevada Brew
- Juniper Ridge
- Leatherman
- Tin Cup Whiskey
- Union Wine Company
- Freeman Seattle
- Brass Arrow
- Wood and Faulk
- Osprey Packs
- Icebreaker
- Alite Designs
- Kern and Hyde
- Bulldogge Books
- Winter Session
- Kletterworks
- Jungmaven
- Madden Equipment
- Snow Peak
- Hydrapak
- Westerlind Outdoor
- Oakland Surf Club
- Otter Wax
- Tellason
- Rook Town
- For holding up the trousers
- Ft Lonesome
- Oli Rose Collection
- Peg and Awl
- The Coast and You
- Gnome Life Records
- Bridge and Burn
- Crawford Denim
The Storytelling Retailers…
- Pilgrim Surf, New York
- Spartan, Texas
- Stag Provisions, Texas
- Art In The Age, Philadelphia
- Kitkitdizzi, California
- Beam & Anchor, Oregon
- Love Adorned, New York
- Cameron Marks, California
- Una Mae’s, Chicago
- Marion and Rose’s Workshop, California
- Make Smith, California
- Denimheads, Czech
- Small Home Studio, New York
- Rivet, New York
- Cedar and Hyde, Colorado
- Blok Hill, New York
- Deus ex Machina, California
- Neighbor, California
- Armitage & McMillan, Colorado
- Cotter Barber, New York
- Ball and Buck, Massachusetts
- Standard & Strange, California
- Mohawk General Store, California
- Bespoke, California
- Individual Medley, California
- Seaweed and Gravel, California
- Fellow Barber, New York
- Union Made, California
- Asher Goods, Washington
- Forage Modern Workshop, Minnesota
- Fleur, Chicago
- Rail and Anchor, Michigan
The Storytelling Artists…
- Jered Nelson, Pottery
- Nathaniel Parsons, Carving
- Claudio Martonffy, Architecture
- Peter St. Lawrence, Ceramics
- Crystal Morey, Sculpture
- Alison Tharp, New Media
- Derek Weisberg, Sculpture
- Steelee Faltis, Illustration
- Dave Higgins, Illustration
- Julie Harleman, Proprietor
- Kate Williams, Director
- Chris Sewell, Proprietor
- Chris Adamiak, Maker
- Greg Hennes, Snake Oil Salesman
- Mikael Kennedy, Photography
- Jeff Thrope, Consultant
- Alana Douvros, Designer/jewelry
- Marisa Haskell, Designer/Jewelry
- Josh Chen, Designer/Branding
- Ali Golden, Designer/Clothing
- August Varlack, Acupuncturist
- David Polka, Graphic Design/Art
- David Lyle, Paintings
- Ciel Bergman, Paintings
- Gus Elg, Audio Mastering
- Rachel Craven, Textiles
- Lauren Wolf, Designer/Jewelry
- Eric Bowley, Studio Arts
- Tom Bonamici, Ecological Arts
- Merrick Rhodes, Photography
- Skyler Greene, Producer
- Nirav Patel, Photographer
- Patrick Dunaway, Illustration
- Matthew Decker, Tattoo
- Kirby Stenger, Photography
- Rod Hipskind, Art Director
- Cory Jarman, Road Paintings
- Drew Heffron, Art Director
- John Casey, Illustration/Painting
- Brody Leven, Adventure/Storytelling
- Gale Straub, Storytelling/Photography
- Yumiko Sakuma, Journalist
- Kelly Ishikawa, Photography
- Eric Kvatek, Photography
- Frederick A. Bouchardy, Perfumer
- Nicholas Weinstein, Herbalist
- Brian Caraway, Paintings
- Catherine Meng, Poetry
- Lena & Matt Reynoso, Gallery Owners
