Artist Talk: Nature Through the Eye of a Needle - a Shared Adventure

Dr. Isabel Downs, Detail of “Tidepool Souvenirs - Littoral Memories” | Oil, cotton, ribbons, buttons, beads, tulle, monofilament fishing line, and origami

“Nature Through the Eye of a Needle - a Shared Adventure,” was an artist talk with Dr. Isabel Downs and Dr. Robert Warner.  The lecture will took place at the Wildling Museum on Sunday, February 10, from 3:00 pm to 4:00 pm. Dr. Downs is currently the Featured Local Artist, and her fiber art of bird and marine scenes is on display in the museum store.

Learn more about Dr. Isabel Downs at isabelsquilts.virb.com.

About Dr. Isabel Downs

A tension between art and science has defined Dr. Isabel Downs’s entire life. She was born and raised in the tropics by a naturalist father and a sculptress mother. From an early age, Dr. Downs was driven to draw, paint, sculpt, and eventually render in fibers the world around her.  One would never guess that the 35 years of her professional life were spent (with great pleasure) teaching the French language and literature; but she never ceased to work on the side as her marine biologist husband’s  field assistant, in addition to being a scientific illustrator for both the Smithsonian Institution and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

About Dr. Robert Warner

Dr. Robert Warner is currently Research Professor of Marine Biology in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Upon completion of a B.A. degree in Zoology from the University of California, Berkeley, Dr. Warner received a Ph.D. degree (1973) from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego. After two years as a postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, he joined the faculty at UC Santa Barbara, where he has served as Chair of the Departments of Biological Sciences and Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology.