<meta content="{filedir_5}christi_sobel-350pxl.jpg" property="og:image" />
<p>
	<img alt="" src="{filedir_5}christi_sobel-350pxl.jpg" style="width: 150px; height: 239px; float: right;" />&quot;Beholding,&quot; says Au Sable Director emeritus Cal DeWitt, &quot;means to look at something for a very long time.&quot; Scientific illustrators are beholders. Scientific renderings of flora and fauna require a high level of precision and detail to capture all of an organism&#39;s attributes, those common and those unique. You need to study it for a very long while.</p>
<p>
	Christi Sobel is a scientific illustrator, and a beholder. A graduate of Eastern University, she earned both biology and art degrees and spent one fruitful summer at Au Sable taking Field Botany and Aquatic Biology. She went on to receive a Master&#39;s degree in Scientific Illustration from the University of California, Santa Cruz and completed an internship at the Royal Botanical Gardens Kew in England. Over time, she discovered a passion for using her artistic skills to describe various practices in sustainable development to help communicate good, healthy agricultural development. She now offers her talents to environmental NGOs, local farmers, scientists, and customers who appreciate her artwork. The diversity of her work illustrates how the combination of artistic skill and biological knowledge can fuel creation care efforts. We caught up with Christi to learn more about her work and how her time at Au Sable shaped, and continues to shape, her.</p>
<p>
	<strong>What do you do in your current position?</strong></p>
<p>
	I freelance for a variety of clients in illustration and graphic design. Sometimes this means report designs, sometimes that means painting murals. I also have a business creating and selling notecards and other paper products made from my paintings. I sell them primarily at our local Farmers&rsquo; Market, but also wholesale and online. Of course, this means I also am constantly making new paintings and showing them in local venues. In the ecological principle of &ldquo;diversify or die,&rdquo; I also make hand-painted shoes and dabble in other creative ventures.</p>
<p>
	<strong>Why is this work important to creation care?&nbsp;&nbsp;</strong></p>
<p>
	<img alt="" src="{filedir_5}legume-plant-dissection.jpg" style="width: 200px; height: 261px; float: right;" />I try to work with groups and individuals who are somehow involved in environmental practices or education. &nbsp;For example, I worked for a long time with ECHO, illustrating their publications and technical notes. I knew that these illustrations would help people understand ecosystems and raise food in a sustainable way. When I was working at Kew Gardens, my illustrations helped to advance the study of new species. By creating detailed renderings of a new species, we could identify all of its characteristics and disseminate this new information to others (see an example of a leguminous plant dissection on right, &copy;Christi Sobel). It was exciting to see new biodiversity as it was discovered. I also have worked with Audubon, our local science center, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the International Sustainable Development Studies Institute in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and several other clients with educational missions. I realized early on that I wasn&rsquo;t cut out to be the scientist doing the &ldquo;save the planet&rdquo; work, but I could definitely be the artist who communicated that work. As much as I love sustainable development, my skills lie in drawing it, not doing it.</p>
<p>
	&nbsp;</p>
<p>
	Locally I have done a lot of work my local farmer colleagues at the Farmers&rsquo; Market, helping them with signage and promotional materials. These awesome farmers are working hard to grow food sustainably and locally, and it feels great to help them with that mission.</p>
<p>
	I also try to follow sustainable practices in my business, by using post-consumer recycled and fair-trade papers whenever possible for my notecards and journals. &nbsp;</p>
<p>
	My paintings tend to be about the natural world, and I hope that by painting what I find to be beautiful in the Creation, it will help people to stop and notice what&rsquo;s around them.</p>
<p>
	<strong>What about your work gives you hope?</strong></p>
<p>
	<img alt="" id="" src="{filedir_5}Christi-Sobel-mussel-and-star.jpg" style="width: 200px; height: 132px; float: right;" />Knowing that my artwork is increasing awareness of the world around us, to see the forest because of the trees. I wish to spread the beauty found in nature, in a human world that is increasingly distant from being outside, and is more and more afraid of bugs and snakes (see oyster and starfish on right, &copy;Christi Sobel). Whenever I hear that one of my paintings made someone look twice at a luna moth, I feel very hopeful.</p>
<p>
	I hope that my illustrations for organizations like ECHO and local farms are inspiring people to make sustainable choices. I hope that my educational illustrations are teaching about biodiversity and systems.</p>
<p>
	<strong>What was most memorable and important to you about your time at Au Sable?&nbsp;&nbsp;</strong></p>
<p>
	<img alt="" src="{filedir_5}au-sable-birch.jpg" style="width: 200px; height: 178px; float: right;" />The chance to fully immerse in being outside, in being safe and comfortable to walk around in the woods at night, to be really aware of everything around us. &nbsp;I love the forests on the Au Sable campus. On a different level, I really learned the scriptures behind Creation care, and that has really stuck with me. &nbsp;Thanks to Al Gebben, I can still spout scientific names for a wide variety of plants and trees without a second thought. I laughed a lot, and frolicked in the woods and lake with my awesome friends. &nbsp;I still make paintings based on the beautiful Michigan forests (see birch tree on right, &copy;Christi Sobel).</p>
<p>
	<strong>How does your faith in Jesus Christ affect the work you do today?&nbsp;&nbsp;</strong></p>
<p>
	&ldquo;Do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with your God.&rdquo;</p>
<p>
	<strong>How did your time at Au Sable help prepare you for what you are doing now?&nbsp;&nbsp;</strong></p>
<p>
	Practically speaking, I learned a lot working on the hallways murals. &nbsp;Since then I&rsquo;ve done other murals, and having this experience made me more confident in the whole process. Working in the kitchen was great too, it&rsquo;s always good to have the perspective of cooking for a crowd of diverse tastes. &nbsp;So those are some practical things.</p>
<p>
	I made connections at Au Sable that became very important. &nbsp;The first time I heard of ECHO was when Martin Price came to speak to us at an integrative session, and that started me down the path of sustainable development. &nbsp;I met Sir Ghillian Prance, who was the director of Kew Gardens at the time and on the Au Sable board, the summer I was a cook at Au Sable and that led to my internship at Kew, which was a big part of my professional development and helped me with graduate school. &nbsp;And of course I made great friends with my fellow students and the staff that I count today as important and dear.</p>
<p>
	<strong>Why do you think people should continue to study at Au Sable today?&nbsp;&nbsp;</strong></p>
<p>
	I think Au Sable provides a very unique and immersive environment for learning about and loving the natural world. &nbsp;It&rsquo;s not just about the information and quizzes and papers, but about the network and common goals we have as Christians working in environmental fields. &nbsp;It&rsquo;s about taking care of the planet because that&rsquo;s our job. &nbsp;As the world faces more pressures from climate change and population and economic stress, it&rsquo;s important to continue raising the voices speaking for the rest of the planet. &nbsp;It is especially important for there to be sane and smart Christian voices.</p>
<hr />
<p>
	You can see more of Christi&#39;s artwork on her website, www.christisobel.com.</p>
