As a fine artist, Josie exhibits large-scale prints at select galleries and museums, and she has designed a line of luxury scarves and shower curtains. Her writing and art focused on seaweeds, kelp, and sea otter put her on the forefront of ocean activism, collaborating with scientists and groups working to preserve the kelp forests of our Pacific Coast. She is still captivated by the fluidity with which this technique allows her to render and design with three-dimensional objects. For over twenty years Josie has used her flatbed scanner and computer to generate imagery. She holds a BA in Visual and Environmental Studies from Harvard and an MFA from San Francisco State University. Josie Iselin is author of eight books that focus on those forms in nature we find at hand-in particular, at the beach. There will be an opening reception on Sunday, May 15 from 1-3 pm. The first paragraph in our discussion of tides (found in the section: Coastal Processes) introduces us very briefly to tide pools and biological zonation and shows this picture of curious adults and children at low tide marveling at the animals and seaweeds clinging to the steep faces of massive rocks. The bull kelp itself will be celebrated as will be the abundance and color and diversity of this algal flora of the oceans in multi-paneled artworks. There will be a visual reference to sea urchin, the voracious kelp eaters, whose increased populations are threatening the bull kelp forests of our Northern California Coast. We will consider the coralline algae, that calcify in their cell walls to protect themselves from the gnawing jaws of small herbivores, and encounter nori, or Pyropia as it is known scientifically. The exhibition begins with five foundational kelp panels and then introduces us to the three color groups that designate the evolutionary lineages of the seaweeds: the greens (from which all our terrestrial, vascular plants evolved), the reds, and the browns (which include the kelp). Josie Iselin exhibits the artwork that inspired the research and writing of her book, The Curious World of Seaweed, and makes us appreciate in awe these dynamic and spectacular organisms of the ocean world or found flung up on a local beach or in the tide pools. Tide pools can be found in depressions along the shoreline of rocky coasts. Journey through the underrepresented stories of the marine algae, (seaweed and kelp) flourishing just under the dynamic waves of the Pacific Ocean. A tide pool is an isolated pocket of seawater found in the ocean’s intertidal zone.

Nori in tidal pools