BriarPatch Food Co-op | Spring 2022
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Obi Kaufmann’s Love Story for California Continues with Newest Book
bi Kaufmann has dedicated his life to studying California’s natural world. His writing and art are influenced by a path combining science, an inquisitive and creative mind, a knack for research and an unquenchable wanderlust. And the good news — this adventure through Obi’s subjective lens —is available as an invitation to us all to join him.
By Laura Petersen
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his spring, the artist and author is releasing the much-anticipated newest book in his California Field Atlas series. The Coasts of California, a nearly 700-page odyssey, is sure to be an instant Kaufmann classic alongside The California Field Atlas, The Forests of California and The State of Water— Understanding California’s Most Precious Resource. Native plants, animals and landscapes come to life in warm, earthy watercolors, immediately charming and drawing the reader into the pages of the latest addition in the natural history
series published by HeyDay Books. Easily accessible to nature lovers young and old, anyone who picks up a copy can embark on Kaufmann’s world of analytic discovery, diving deep into art, ecology and philosophy. Illustrated stories and maps spin an almost fantastic tale, spanning ridgelines and rivers, mountains and valleys. Yet this is no myth or makebelieve. These characters and places are as tangible as our own backyards. “These books are me looking at California. This is my process of figuring it out. The reader is invited into the narrative that is affectionate, intimate
The Coasts of California: A California Field Atlas By Obi Kaufmann
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Bursting with color, The Coasts of California is in Kaufmann’s signature style, fusing science with art and pure poetic reverie. And much more than a survey of tourist spots, Coasts is a full immersion into the astonishingly varied natural worlds that hug California’s shoreline. With hundreds of gorgeous watercolor maps and illustrations, Kaufmann explores the rhythms of the tides, the lives of sea creatures, the shifting of rocks and sand, and the special habitats found on California’s islands. At the book’s core is an expansive, detailed walk down the California Coastal Trail, including maps of parks along the way—a wealth of knowledge for any coast-lover.
and loving,” says the artist and naturalist who has captured the hearts and minds of many in recent years. Finding his way along this journey to get to know California’s wonders, Kaufmann has developed a specific analytical approach to storytelling that shares his unique voice and eye. To make sense of his surroundings, he has invented a new genre of nature handbook, affectionately referring to them as love stories and family albums. Over time, his relationship to his subject has matured and deepened, allowing him, and us, to tap into a rich vastness of biodiversity across the biosphere more infinite than the human mind is able to comprehend. “The more I learn about California and nature, the more that I find there is to learn. It’s like a magic well and I’m drinking from this well and as I’m drinking and drinking and drinking, the water level doesn’t go down, in fact there’s more water to drink from.”
A leap of faith Kaufmann is the son of an astrophysicist and clinical psychologist and grew up in the East Bay, scrambling around Mt. Diablo on weekends. Trained from an early age to be a mathematician by his late father who studied the cosmos, the artist and poet is very sensitive to what science is. “I realized at some point how he explored the universe, I explored California, as a metaphor for looking at nature in general.”
