Lakeland PBS presents Common Ground, brought to you by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

Production funding of Common Ground is made possible in part by First National Bank Bemidji, continuing their second century of service to the community.

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Welcome to Common Ground.

I'm Producer/ Director Scott Knudson.

In this episode, Producer/Director Andrew Dziengel takes us along with Sarah Bowman of Nature's Canvas as she collects birchbark for a wildlife painting.

My name is Sarah Bowman, and I am a local artist based in Pequot Lakes, Minnesota, and today we will be scavenging for some birch bark, hopefully collecting some, bringing it back to the studio, and turning it into artwork.

Okay, so here is the jackpot.

we see some downed birch trees that are pretty much completely rotted in the middle, and the reason I'm initially drawn to this because of how clean and white this birch bark is.

I'm often looking for a big piece that I could possibly create a rather large canvas with, so once I find a piece of birch bark, I really want to limit my footprint, so I don't move it onto the trail.

I go to it and I just use a knife and I cut the birch bark where it makes the most sense, and then I'll kind of be able to look at it more carefully and any excess pieces that I know I'm not going to use, I actually leave here in the woods.

This is probably the piece that I will use; I will soak it and I will flatten it and it will become the canvas for my paintings.

I'm going to make an incision and then you can see the inside is rotted, so I just kind of shake all that out and that's going to stay here.

I try to clean it out as best as I can, now I know I'm not going to use this mossy area, so I also have some heavy duty scissors that I will probably cut some of these pieces off, but otherwise, once this is washed up and flattened, it will be the perfect canvas for my paintings.

So this piece that I just found and cut, there's sort of this layer that I can peel back and there's also this gunk there, so I'm just going to peel off this layer on the back, and then I can just very easily scrape off just the remnants of the rotted portion as well, because if I'm going to paint this, eventually put it in a frame, I want it to be as thin as possible for the frame.

There!

So the way I got started using things that I find in nature to create art was actually when I was serving in the Peace Corps.

Right after college, I joined the Peace Corps and I served as a volunteer on the small Caribbean island of Grenada, and I went on a rainforest hike with some children in the village once, and we found these donkey eye seeds and the kids were telling me about what they were and they're found in these pods of 2 or 3, and you kind of have to open up the pods, and all the seeds inside the pod sort of match in similar color, shape, and size, and the Rastafarians would string them into these large, kind of heavy, necklaces and I thought of the idea of actually painting them, so I used something that I found in nature.

I created something new, and I painted these tiny colorful mandalas on the seeds and I would turn them into earrings, and that went to coconut bowls to calabash bowls which are other things that are found in nature on the island I was able to create art with those found things in nature and then I actually sold them to raise money to get ukuleles for the kids in the village.

When I came back to the States and I got a job teaching music in north central Minnesota, I realized I needed a new canvas, and that's sort of where Nature's Canvas started, and I spent a lot of time outdoors and I came across some birch and I thought "you know what"?, I could, I could probably use that as a canvas and that's how Nature's Canvas began.

All right, this is a beaut.

Now, I probably come out scavenging for birchbark really only maybe 3 or 4 times a year, because I often find enough to last me for the whole season.

Like here, I could get probably about 10 paintings if I can harvest this whole log.

It's a very meditative thing for me to be entering nature and finding ways to reuse the things that I find and kind of bringing a new life to something that would otherwise rot.

I love being in the space and usually I'm alone, so it's peaceful and quiet and I feel sort of "at one" with nature, and it's a place that's almost like a sanctuary to me in many ways.

Now you can't just go anywhere and start collecting birch, even off the ground, like I do.

You actually need a permit from the DNR Forestry Service to do that, like at a state park.

I actually am on somebody's private property right now that has given me permission to do this.

In fact, when I started painting on birch bark, I had a lot of friends and people reach out to me and say "Hey, like I have some land we have a lot of fallen birch.

Would you like to come on out and collect some of it" So there are enough connections like that where I actually get all of my birch that way.

So I probably won't use these ends on this side, but right there in the middle it's beautiful white.

Oh, okay, so it's just gonna come out like this.

So along the way, I mean you run into all sorts of creepy crawlies, and I'm kind of not phased by that, especially after my Peace Corps Service when, when you live in a tropical climate.

I mean, there are cockroaches and all kinds of creepy crawlies everywhere, all the time, and I didn't have screens at my house, so I became quite used to that and you do find a lot when you are digging in the woods and unearthing pieces of birch.

Now that we've found our canvas, it's time for the painting part.

The next step is soaking the birch and kind of washing some of the debris and dirt off of it and then flattening it for at least a couple days while it dries so that I can use it as my canvas to paint on.

So as I'm washing the birchbark and soaking it, I just use a soft-bristled bamboo brush because I don't want something too abrasive that will peel back if you start to strip it too much.

It will.. you can see in this one, it reveals that sort of pinky- rosy color.

The piece has enough character as it is, so I just use water.

I don't use any soap, and I just use this soft bristle brush and then if I need something a little bit more abrasive for certain spots I very carefully use this little scrubby.

instrumental music music I did use, like Dawn dish soap, but then I realized that it wasn't really doing much, like it really mattered what tool I was using.

But then I've discovered this, where you know, I go over that and it really cleans it up.

Look at that beautiful... kind of a mix of that rosy color and the white.

In some pieces I collect from the woods, thinking, Oh, this will be great, and then once I try to wash it, it doesn't really come as clean or as..it doesn't have the look that I want and so then I turn it into kindling.

Sometimes I'll end up, like this piece actually has quite a few holes that I'm seeing now, so I'm not sure if I'd be able to paint an entire bird on this, but rather, I could use this piece and make some earrings.

That was something I sort of discovered later on, was "Oh, you know what, there's another use for these scraps and I can make earrings out of the scraps."

Nothing goes to waste.

Yeah, you can see this one, like the birch is peeling off pretty easily for that top layer.

Allright, so then I'll have to flatten these under some heavy objects for a while and once they're dry, then I can use them as my canvas.

So let's go look at some that are ready to paint.

So here are some flattened dried pieces of birch ready to paint.

As you can see, they are all unique shapes and sizes and colors, so depending on what bird I'm going to paint on my birch, I try to pick a piece of birch that's kind of the right size and shape, or whatever is speaking to me that day, so I want to paint a chickadee today, and I'm thinking it would look quite nice on this piece of birch.

Sometimes I use reference photos and sometimes I actually try to recreate birds that I've painted before, so the chickadee I will be painting today looks like this, and as you can see, I used some metallic paints with the chickadee.

Let's give it a go.

This is my dear furry friend, "Caribbean Cat".

I actually adopted her when I was living in Grenada.

She's always around me, she would follow me to every room.

She particularly is fascinated by the birds, as am I. I didn't always start with the birds and so I had started doing "mandalas", which are symmetrical radial designs.

I've always been intrigued by mandalas, they show up in many different cultures as well, and all around the world, and so that's kind of how I got started with the donkey eye seeds.

I would paint like very tiny mandalas on them and then I started painting the mandalas on other things, like bowls, or wooden platters.

then I tried painting one on the birch, originally thinking, "Oh, that's my new canvas".

I'll try doing that on the birch.

I wasn't in love with it, so I experimented with some different things and I did a collection, which was "Four Birds on Birch" - a robin, a chickadee, a cardinal, and a bluebird.

I really think I struck gold there because I remember doing an art show and I sold every single one of them.

After I did that collection, I really started to do birds on birch full time, and that's how it all began.

People will request certain birds, especially around the holidays, they'll say, "Oh, my aunt loves chickadees, could you paint me a chickadee on birch for her for Christmas"?

I do a lot of commissions, I've even done a rather large piece with multiple chickadees on it before.

That's kind of how I branched out to try new birds, is someone will be "Oh, can you do a male Pine Grospeak"?

and I'm, well, I've never seen that bird in my life, and so I've become more educated through this process, as well, learning about different birds in our area.

I've kind of reached the point now where I know I can identify quite a few birds and I will often see certain birds out and about.

I saw a goldfinch the other day and I'm 'Oh, that's a sign, I need to paint a goldfinch.

Some of my favorite birds to paint are the ones that have a ton of color, have bright bold colors.

and chickadees are really just black and white, so that's why I kind of like to add color and dimension with the metallic paints.

and you might have to dub the bird sounds if you can't get that in there, that is idyllic.

When I'm painting a new bird that I've never painted before, especially one based on a reference photo, it takes me more like 2 to 2.5 hours, sometimes longer.

But I've had people send me photos that they said "Hey, could you paint this bird"?

and I'll say, "sure, I'll give it a try.

In addition to doing "Birds on Birch", I also "woodburn", which fits right in with Nature's Canvas, because I'm again creating something new, something beautiful, out of something that is found in nature.

Often I will use wooden bowls or platters found in antique stores or thrift stores and kind of give them new life and add my intricate mandala designs to them.

It's quite meditative, even more meditative than walking in the woods and searching for birch and then painting birds and then finding that painting the eyes immediately brings the bird to life.

You can get it just right and it comes alive on the birch.

But if you just get it a little off, then you know you need to fix it.

Part of the reason I love painting on birch is the texture.

You have a texture that you're working with that adds that much more dimension to the painting.

I love it.

I just started doing art shows.

My first one was one in Fergus Falls, my hometown.

I did a Holiday Artisan Festival in 2019.

I absolutely loved it.

I loved getting to know some of the other artists and figuring out how the festival thing works.

Some people, you know, they do the whole circuit.

In the Brainerd Lakes area, I'm kind of getting to know what are some good festivals to have my birds at.

All right, I'm going to add a little color.

This is my Pearl White metallic paint.

The metallic paint is a little thicker too so it adds really nice dimension.

Oh.

I love it.

Oh, I just kind of let it be a little goopy, too.

All right, I think this is close to done.

I need to add some little feet, that's the hardest part for me, feet.

All right, gonna add my signature.

"Voila"!

I have an Etsy page where you can shop my work online and you can actually choose your bird and you can order a commission that way.

You can also email me, my email is included on my Etsy page, and I'm on Facebook and Instagram where my contact info is there.

I have a lot of people will just send me a private message on Facebook, or a direct message on Instagram, and that's how they order and that's totally fine too.

Thanks for watching.

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Production funding of Common Ground was made possible in part by First National Bank Bemidji, continuing their 2nd century of service to the Community.

Member FDIC.

Common Ground is brought to you by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund with money by the vote of the people November 4th, 2008. if you watch Common Ground online, consider becoming a member or making a donation at lptv.org.