briangooding's Journal

I was recently asked by a local shop to do a display for their art wall. They asked me because previously I had done one that went over pretty well...and I think it's actually harder than you'd expect to find people to put up halfway-cool stuff. My previous display had a large nature component but it was mostly atmospheric scenes featuring plants that were dead or dying during winter.

Why does this have anything to do with iNaturalist?

Good questions.

Well, I just finished hanging the display this evening. It is entirely on Odonata (dragonflies) found in Tarrant County, Texas. Many of the prints are from observations I have posted here and some of the reason I ended up going with this educational/aesthetic display over a "purely artistic" and more abstract display have to do with people I have met here on iNaturalist.

Observing and studying dragonflies has always been a personal, almost meditative hobby of mine but recently I've come to enjoy the educational/outreach aspect of it as I have often witnessed @sambiology while hanging on bioblitzes or other events. Also I recently received some of @scottking's books which are at heart deeply-personal but obviously valuable as shared works. In addition earlier this month I spent some time hanging out with @greglasley, @ericisley and @gpstewart (and others) where I shot a few photos for this display (only dragonflies that co-occur in Tarrant County) and enjoyed getting to know them a bit and hanging out, the initial gateway only being our shared interest in dragonflies.

Though the majority of the work I used was shot before getting into iNaturalist I seriously doubt had I not joined iNaturalist and met many of these people and also come to value spending time in nature enjoying teaching friends' kids about dragonflies, that I would have pursued this as a display topic. But, with inspiration from these people and events, I did, and I am happy with the results.

Anyway, here is an overview of the display and a pre-cursor I wrote on how I became interested in dragonflies, if you are for some reason interested.

I am going to have a reception night for the display in a few weeks. I will post the details for it once I finalize the date. At the reception I'll probably have prints from dragonflies from around the world (mostly Asia, some South America) and some specimens from my collection.

Thanks to all of you for your support and inspiration. I have really enjoyed putting together this display an I look forward to sharing it.