<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>
