And check out my YouTube channel to see some of my videos (you might enjoy the one about filming coyote puppies for two weeks!), David Lukas - YouTube. 

I am part of a family with generations of women artists. My medium is mixed - I work in glass, wood, painting and metal. I create symbolic images inspired by nature and the feminine spirit.  I participate in several gallery shows a year. Additionally, I sell a wholesale line of items, teach adult painting classes, and co-teaching mind/body/spirit workshops.  I also teach k-6 art. I have served on many art boards and am involved in the community.

Looking forward to this residency to see more pieces to the puzzle in understanding the sense of place of where we live and how it has changed. I hope to learn from other artists’ interpretations and insights. I hope to learn more about the Wenatchi that live here and honor their place through history and now. Seeing a place through new eyes offers new connections and new ways to grow. A visual language has the opportunity to connect us all to a sense of place in a deep and profound way. I hope to weave details of the watershed into a large mandala as a finished piece reflecting on this residency.

Instagram and Facebook: @amberzimmermanart

Website: https://www.amberzimmermanart.com/

One of my other passions, coaching kids’ running, for ages 5 to 18, is about sharing the love of being and moving outside. We run often in parks and on trails. Running in the woods when I was young enabled me to grow and learn about myself and my environment. I hope these young runners are encouraged to explore and be astonished by the world again and again.

I write a lot, but mostly for the newspaper, magazines and fundraising appeals. But it’s like I’ve pruned my own branches through the process of editing and tightening my prose, so that now I can see and share my truths with more clarity and less adornment.

I am curious where this residency will take me and all of us. I look forward to really paying attention, to listening and learning from our predecessors and you and the places in our watershed where I find myself. 

Estoy trabajando duro en mi espanol ahora. Es dificil. Aprender un nuevo idioma me prepare para escuchar la idioma de la naturaleza.

Emily kindly said she’d share a few highlights of my pieces from my application.

Snorkeling surveys taught me how unlike a fish I am. Especially in 2006, when I was four months pregnant.

In order to submerge myself in frigid rivers to count fish for my U.S. Forest Service work, I bundled first in head-to-toe fleece. These layers fit underneath a heavy-duty canvas drysuit whose rubber seals bound my wrists and neck. My belly was not too large yet, but it was beginning to press against the unyielding canvas.  

The zipper in the back had to be opened or closed by another crew member, and once inside the drysuit, I felt less human than vehicular. Especially when I added my accoutrements: snorkel, mask, PVC arm cuff and attached pencil for recording fish sightings, and waterproof headlamp. The headlamp both lit my way and illuminated the fish during nighttime surveys. In the darkness, the fish flashed and darted rather than lurking out of sight under and within submerged woody debris. 

We entered the water as if receiving a group baptism. But rather than leaning back for an immersion, the four of us spread out across the river, dropped to our knees, kicked the toes of our boots into the gravel, and plunged face first into what was often a powerful onslaught of cold water. We then worked our way slowly upstream, observing fish within our parallel lanes.

Underneath, the water was hazy, almost viscous, and the colors muted. I lumbered against the flow, my gloved fingers making small purchase in the streambed, sometimes sending pebbles tumbling past me. With no smells to distract me and the sound of rushing water an internalized white noise, it was easy to focus on the fish—dark shadows that suddenly glinted in my light. Examining this unfolding world, I barely noticed my face slowly numbing in the icy water. 

I had to search the substrate for some of the fish, like the sculpins, which rested on the streambed and blended in, matching the mottled patchwork of tans and grays. To find them, I learned to spot the frilly edges of their fanlike fins. The trout and whitefish, stationed mid-water column, let us creep toward them. Surely, they heard us coming. But they held steady against the flowing water, hovering in place with little apparent effort. They scattered only when I came close enough to touch them.

These beautiful fish, their sleek bodies evolved over millennia, moved with a finesse I lacked. I needed three points of contact—both boot tips digging into the streambed and a gloved hand gripping the substrate—to hold my position. The tiny one inside me, however, was something in between. She was suspended in water, moving tiny limbs and spinning in place. Unable to undulate or dart, she was more like a goldfish trapped in a bowl. But she was in her natural habitat.

We finished snorkeling a section of river and emerged for a break on the bank. And now that I was upright, the small bulk of her pressed on my bladder. I asked for help unzipping my drysuit, then squeezed my head through the neck gasket, peeled the unwieldy suit most of the way off, and reversed the arduous process a few minutes later. I envied my colleagues who went about work without needing double pee breaks or cycling through hunger, eat, heartburn, repeat. 

When we returned to the water and I thrust my face below the surface again, the force of the current hit me anew. The full body tug exerted by the river reminded me suddenly of twenty months earlier, when my first baby—a boy—was tugged from my body, and I, under lower-half anesthesia, felt my body resist the doctor’s efforts to wrestle him from my womb. How I got there was closely intertwined with my previous field job, which was as terrestrial as this one was aquatic.