The Art of Nature 2025

Get to know Santa Cruz’s WILD SIDE at the Museum of Natural History! Nerd out on your night out during monthly after-hours events, featuring rotating themes, vendors, and activities. FREE admission to the Museum all day 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., with special festivities from 5 – 8 p.m.

Just like mixing a palette, we are blending art with science at April’s First Friday. To celebrate the 36th year of the Museum’s Art of Nature scientific illustration exhibition, we are inviting you to a special after-hours event to meet the local artists who are expressing the distinctiveness of Santa Cruz’s wildlife on canvas. In this year’s exhibit, you will be moved by masterpieces from 46 artists, in a wide array of artistic media, as well as having the opportunity to connect with the artists’ other works at their gardenside booths.

In addition to the exhibit, you will engage with California State University Monterey Bay’s Science Illustration Program, from where many of the featured artists graduated, explore items from the artists in the Museum’s Gift Shop, learn about this month’s art workshops and lectures, enjoy an open bar, food trucks, and much more. You won’t want to BRUSH off this First Friday!

📆 Friday, April 4th, 2025

⏱️ 5 – 8 p.m.

📍 Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History
1305 East Cliff Drive, Santa Cruz, CA 95062

Exhibit Artists & Community Partners

Accessibility

🔵 Drop by anytime 5-8 p.m. to join the festivities!

🟠 Admission to the Museum is free all day from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.

🔵 Follow the latest guidelines for health and safety.

🟠 Restrooms and water fountains are available inside the Museum.

🔵 Booths and activities will be both indoors and outdoors.

• 
  [Sold Out] 3/23 Intro to Plein Air Painting – Sandhills
  Go outside and learn to paint gouache and watercolor landscapes while surrounded by nature as inspiration. This open-air art workshop will teach … Read more
• 
  3/26 Plein Air in Plain Sight – The Legacy of Santa Cruz Nature Painting 
  Santa Cruz has been an outdoor painting hotspot since the 1890’s, well-known across the nation as a destination for exploring art while … Read more
• 
  3/28 Member Opening Reception: The Art of Nature
  Join us for the exclusive opening of our beloved, annual exhibit, The Art of Nature! Scientific illustration brings to life the wonders … Read more
• 
  3/29 Horticulture Workshop: Living Springtime Wreath
  Let’s get festive with native flowers, succulents, and air plants!  Celebrate Springtime and the wonder of wildflowers by crafting a living botanical wreath. This course … Read more
• 
  4/4 The Art of Nature: First Friday
  Get to know Santa Cruz’s WILD SIDE at the Museum of Natural History! Nerd out on your night out during monthly after-hours … Read more

Let’s get festive with native flowers, succulents, and air plants! 

Celebrate Springtime and the wonder of wildflowers by crafting a living botanical wreath. This course will satisfy both plant and art lovers alike; learn the science of epiphytes while you design and mount native flowers, succulents, and air plants. Create a masterpiece for your seasonal decor or a treasured gift for a friend or family member, all wrapped up in a fun activity that brings the beauty of the outside, inside. 

Gardening gloves recommended. You will be working with live plants, wire, and gardening tools. Feel free to also bring hand pruners and/or safety glasses.  

No prior experience required. Participants will have a completed piece to take home at the conclusion of the workshop. Open to ages 16+/all experience levels. All supplies included.

📆 Saturday, March 29th

⏱️ 10 a.m. – 12 p.m.

📍 Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History

1305 East Cliff DR, Santa Cruz, CA 95062

Materials Fee: All supplies are included in class fee. Participants are welcome to bring their own gardening supplies.

Class Fee: $39 – Museum Members receive a special discounted price applied at checkout.

Instructor: Dion Shattuck – SCMNH Horticulturalist 

What to Expect

🔵 This class takes place outside, so please dress appropriately for the weather.

🟠 Supplies may get messy, so casual attire is recommended.

Santa Cruz has been an outdoor painting hotspot since the 1890’s, well-known across the nation as a destination for exploring art while surrounded by nature. In fact, the Seabright Community in particular has been an artistic hub for plein air painters for over a hundred years and continues to have a robust presence even today.

Join Kathleen Aston, the Museum’s Collections Manager, as she opens the vault to spotlight rare art from the Museum’s historic archives and Taylor Seamount, a local plein air artist trailblazing the contemporary nature painting movement. You won’t want to miss experiencing this living timeline of Santa Cruz’s art scene.

📆 Wednesday, March 26th

⏱️ 6 – 8 p.m.

📍 Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History
1305 East Cliff Drive, Santa Cruz, CA 95062

Light refreshments will be served prior to the start of the program.

Class Fee: $11 – Museum Members receive a special discounted price applied at checkout.

Instructor: Kathleen Aston, Collections Manager at the Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History, & Taylor Seamount, local artist/activist/instructor 

About the Instructors

Kathleen Aston, Collections Manager at the Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History

As Collections Manager, Kathleen Aston is responsible for the physical and intellectual organization and preservation of the Museum’s collections. She joined the museum’s staff as collections specialist in 2017, and holds a B.A. in Linguistics from Reed College and a Master’s of Library and Information Science from the University of Washington. Kathleen is fascinated by the informational life of collections and how they anchor people to an understanding of the natural world. Her other interests include coffee, stargazing, weird plants, animals that look like blobs, and the repair and reuse sections of the waste management cycle.

Read more about Kathleen.

Website: taylorseamount.com

Instagram: @taylorseamount

Taylor Seamount, local artist/activist/instructor 

Growing up in the natural beauty of Santa Cruz, CA, Taylor was set on a winding path between science and art. She received her bachelors in biochemistry at UC Davis and later spent two years at the Mark Kang-O’Higgins Modern Painting Atelier in Seattle. After the atelier, Taylor moved back home to Santa Cruz due to a worsening of her invisible disability, POTS. Adapting to her new limitations, Taylor’s artistic practice refocused from large imaginative realist oil paintings to small works in gouache. She came to aspire to the visionary landscape styles of gouache illustrators, James Gurney (Dinotopia) and Kazuo Oga (Studio Ghibli), and accordingly began to study natural color and light through plein air (i.e. painting landscapes on location outdoors). As plein air became central to her creative practice, she developed a distinctive crisp flat-brush style. Additionally, she began a successful business designing and selling her own unique ultra-light-weight plein air sketch easels, fabricated here in Santa Cruz. As a UC Certified California Naturalist and climate justice artivist, Taylor uses plein air and solar punk illustration to envision a regenerative future for her community. In this work, she often collaborates with local activists and environmental stewards. Hobbies not yet incorporated into her work are napping and saying hi to the native plants that are walking distance from her house. Her pronouns are both they/them and she/her.  

Go outside and learn to paint gouache and watercolor landscapes while surrounded by nature as inspiration. This open-air art workshop will teach the techniques necessary to capture environmental perspectives through the creative use of negative space, layering, various stroke techniques, and more.

Using the Museum’s exclusive access to various vistas as reference, participants will be guided through the basics of transferring the beauty of beaches and shorelines to canvas with step-by-step instruction.

No prior experience required. Participants will have a completed art piece to take home at the conclusion of the workshop. Open to ages 16+/all experience levels. All supplies included.

📆 Sunday, March 23rd

⏱️ Noon – 3 p.m.

Location:  To be released closer to the date of the program, with the goal of featuring seasonal environments.
Class Size: 18 Students
Class Fee: $43 – Museum Members receive a special discounted price applied at checkout.
Materials:  All supplies are included in the class fee.
Instructor: Taylor Seamount

This class takes place outside; dress appropriately for the outdoors. Supplies may get messy, so casual attire is recommended.

About the Instructor

Website: taylorseamount.com

Instagram: @taylorseamount

Growing up in the natural beauty of Santa Cruz, CA, Taylor was set on a winding path between science and art. She received her bachelors in biochemistry at UC Davis and later spent two years at the Mark Kang-O’Higgins Modern Painting Atelier in Seattle. After the atelier, Taylor moved back home to Santa Cruz due to a worsening of her invisible disability, POTS. Adapting to her new limitations, Taylor’s artistic practice refocused from large imaginative realist oil paintings to small works in gouache. She came to aspire to the visionary landscape styles of gouache illustrators, James Gurney (Dinotopia) and Kazuo Oga (Studio Ghibli), and accordingly began to study natural color and light through plein air (i.e. painting landscapes on location outdoors). As plein air became central to her creative practice, she developed a distinctive crisp flat-brush style. Additionally, she began a successful business designing and selling her own unique ultra-light-weight plein air sketch easels, fabricated here in Santa Cruz. As a UC Certified California Naturalist and climate justice artivist, Taylor uses plein air and solar punk illustration to envision a regenerative future for her community. In this work, she often collaborates with local activists and environmental stewards. Hobbies not yet incorporated into her work are napping and saying hi to the native plants that are walking distance from her house. Her pronouns are both they/them and she/her.