For poet, painter and naturalist Obi Kaufmann, California is a magic network of living systems that connect in a grand, quilted array of ecology and beauty. Obi says about his tome, The California Field Atlas, “It’s my love story to California. I’ve been walking California my whole life, and this book represents years of exploring and painting, organizing it and putting it all down on paper.”
Description
We love how The California Field Atlas harkens back to a time when we used to sit on the couch, thumbing through the Encyclopedia, learning about the world...
This lavishly illustrated atlas takes readers off the beaten path and outside normal conceptions of California, revealing its myriad ecologies, topographies, and histories in exquisite maps and trail paintings. Obi Kaufmann blends science and art to illuminate the multifaceted array of living, connected systems like no book has done before.
The effect is staggeringly beautiful: presented alongside California divvied into its fifty-eight counties, for example, we consider California made up of dancing tectonic plates, of watersheds, of wildflower gardens. Maps are enhanced by spirited illustrations of wildlife, keys that explain natural phenomena, and a clear-sighted but reverential text. Full of character and color, a bit larger than life, The California Field Atlas is the ultimate road trip companion and love letter to a place.