Nature

Gail Potocki

Gail Potocki

“I know of no other artist who wields insight, emotion, and intellectual heft—not to mention gorgeous technique—to examine the environmental ills besetting us today. Gail Potocki‘s landscapes are catastrophes unfolding before our eyes—in the sea, in the air, and on the land. Yet her human subjects, shattered and vulnerable, are creatures of exquisite hope… precisely […]

Sand Dollar!

Sand Dollar!

Walking down the beach in Guiones you can still find sand dollars at the waterline.  These little critters are beautiful and fascinating but because they are typically pretty motionless, some tourists pick them up thinking of them like “seashells” and leave on the beach to dry out and inadvertently kill them. Here’s a short clip […]

Wolfgang Bloch

Wolfgang Bloch

The ocean is the inspiration and essence to my work. Its size, its constant physical and visual movement, fascinates me. It’s beautiful, powerful, quiet, mesmerizing and grand. Rather than recreating something I’ve witnessed, in my paintings emotion dictates the pace. —Wolfgang Bloch in interview with Project Be Bold


The Sheltering Sky

The Sheltering Sky

  “Whereas the tourist generally hurries back home at the end of a few weeks or months, the traveler, belonging no more to one place than to the next, moves slowly, over periods of years, from one part of the earth to another.”― Paul Bowles

Contemporary Art Archipelago

Contemporary Art Archipelago

I’m just back from Finland. Read all about it here.

Renee Green, Endless Dreams and Water Between

Renee Green, Endless Dreams and Water Between

LORRAINE CWELICH: One of the framed prints outlines a proposition for the September Institute. What is the September Institute? GREEN: The September Institute is a non-utopian vortex of thinkers and artists that gather each September in the island of Majorca. There’s a lot more supposed connectivity online but there also seems to be a dwindling […]


Clifford Ross Hurricane Series

Clifford Ross Hurricane Series

It is testimony to the power of photography that one can contemplate one of Clifford Ross’s “Hurricane” images and see a thundering wave stopped cold, spray and spume arrested in mid-flight, its fluid power trumped without so much as a molecule deflected from its path. The project Ross designates “Wave Music” is, in his view, […]

BirdScraper

BirdScraper

Zhong Huang recently took third place in the Animal Architecture awards with plans for a BirdScraper in New York City. The massive structure designed to house birds should address the problems faced by our feathered friends. “Over 90,000 birds die every year by crashing into skyscrapers because lights inside the buildings attract birds flying right […]

Dan Torop, Ocean

Dan Torop, Ocean

Ocean overview (brief) from Dan Torop on Vimeo. I’ve worked on the digital Ocean since 2000. It is a real-time, physics based, interactive manifestation of the ocean. I was spending a lot of time out at the ocean, photographing the waves. It was sublime. But, apparently, also determined by the laws of physics? So I researched a […]


Hannah Whitaker, Dome

Hannah Whitaker, Dome

Consisting of 42 acres, Bear Island is part of a small archipelago in East Penobscot Bay, about 11 miles east of Camden. Along with forests and fields, the island has a dock and several traditional New England wood frame buildings. Though Buckminister Fuller once built a 21-foot tensegrity dome that was recently reconstructed, none of […]

Serena Mitnik Miller

Serena Mitnik Miller

San Francisco based artist Serena Mitnik Miller watercolor on paper (above) and custom painting on a board (below). See more of her work here: twobirdsfly.blogspot.com.

Ultra-Ex

Ultra-Ex

Ultra (Urban Long Term Research Area) scientists have found an interesting use for vacant urban lots—they study “bird and insect populations, watershed systems, soil nematodes and urban farming” in these abandoned areas. According to the Times, “Ultra-Ex advances a forward-looking mission: to document the ecological benefits that vacant lots might provide and to redefine the […]


Underwater Art Installation

Underwater Art Installation

Artist Jason deCaires Taylor is a former scuba instructor who’s found a novel way to reduce tourists’ footprints on Caribbean coral reefs: create a new reef. Using marine-grade cement designed to foster coral growth, deCaires Taylor sculpted more than 400 life-size human figures and submerged them 30 feet underwater. The sculpture installation—strategically located near the […]

Tim DeChristopher Sentencing

Tim DeChristopher Sentencing

Tim DeChristopher, who was convicted by a federal jury in Salt Lake City on March 3, 2011, will be sentenced today. The Utah environmental activist who disrupted a federal auction when he bought almost $1.8 million of oil and gas leases (with no intent to pay) in 2008, was found guilty of disrupting a government […]

State of the Ocean

State of the Ocean

A high-level international workshop convened by IPSO met at the University of Oxford earlier this year. It was the first inter-disciplinary international meeting of marine scientists of its kind and was designed to consider the cumulative impact of multiple stressors on the ocean, including warming, acidification, and overfishing. The 27 participants from 18 organisations in […]


Vija Celmins, Untitled (Big Sea #1)

Vija Celmins, Untitled (Big Sea #1)

“It is about the huge, lonely patience that is fundamental to art that is not based upon the parading of self. Miss Celmins does not wish to present herself as  ‘amusing’ or ‘brilliant’ or ‘inventive.’ ” She can do all those things, and she did them to great effect when she first came to notice […]

Walking on Water

Walking on Water

The Harmony Blog sits down with Spencer Klein, paddleboarder, surfer and founder of adventure outfitter Experience Nosara.

Sea Turtle Tours

Sea Turtle Tours

A few miles and a few river crossings north of Nosara lies the small beach town of Playa Ostional. Here you will discover the legendary “arribada” or arrival, when tens of thousands of Olive Ridley sea turtles flood a single beach to nest. Or you may choose to visit six weeks after an arribada to […]


Key Facts: Sea Turtle

Key Facts: Sea Turtle

Sea Turtle (Information from The Field Guide to the Wildlife of Costa Rica.)Total Length: 60.2 inches ( shell length averages 39.3 inches)Weight : 130 to 440 pounds.Range : Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans in tropical  regions.

Robert Rauschenberg's Art for Sustainability

Robert Rauschenberg’s Art for Sustainability

Robert Rauschenberg is … surprise … an artist who has done a lot of pro-environment art, including the first Earth Day poster in 1970. There’s a show in New York City that opened yesterday, which displays art he’s made that deals with issues of global warming. If you happen to be in the Big Apple, […]

Watch Your Step! Baby Turtles Hatching

Watch Your Step! Baby Turtles Hatching

yes! we do have marine turtles in Guiones beach, and this baby one was born right in front of the Harmony.


"Shocking" Coral Reefs Back to Life

“Shocking” Coral Reefs Back to Life

Did anyone else read the news on Bali’s coral reefs? They’ve suffered incredible damage from “rising temperatures and destructive fishing methods.” Now scientists are trying to send low-voltage electricity through the corals, to “jolt” them back alive. Let’s hope this won’t become an experiment gone awry.

Female Iguana

Female Iguana

Laying down under the sun at Harmony parking lot, a beautiful iguana is calling the male attention standing up in the tree.

Light Blue Line

Light Blue Line

There was this cool project planned in Santa Barbara that would show the increasing water levels in the city if Greenland turned into slush.