Engaging Curiosity through Art and Story Telling with Patricia Paladines, photographer and Carl Safina, author: This program is for adults and teens
Program Presenters: Patricia Paladines and Carl Safina
We are born curious creatures. At birth, as soon as we open our eyes and all our senses kick in, we begin to question, what are we seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, tasting? Somewhere along our life’s journey we start to narrow our interests and begin to move through our world like racehorses wearing blinders; reducing our field of vision to stay focused on our tasks. We hear the songs of birds as we walk from our cars to the shops but how many of us realize the great diversity of birds that can be seen on Long Island?
Art, whether visual or auditory, holds the power to take our minds back to that primitive sense of wonder. Patricia Paladines and Carl Safina will discuss how they approach their work in photography and writing for engaging the buried sense of curiosity we all have. It can, and should, be considered our sixth sense. It’s a sense that sparks imagination, and imagination sparks action.
Patricia Paladines is a visual storyteller who uses photography to share stories about the natural world. Images from her photographic series, Teaching Baby About the Wonders of the World, along with a personal narrative of her development as a photographer, are featured in the winter edition of the South Fork Natural History Museum quarterly, the SOFO Naturalist. She frequently refers to famed photographer Elliot Erwitt’s statement; “To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place… I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.” You can find out how Patricia “sees” by going to her website –https://photographically.me – and opening Playing with Light and Other Reflections─A journal in the language of photography. Here you can see how her photographs take you from her backyard to some of the world’s wildest places.
Patricia’s photographs from the series Teaching Baby About the Wonders of the World are on view now until January 31, 2023 at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the South Fork in Bridgehampton, New York. A reception for the photographer will take place at the Congregation in Bridgehampton on Sunday, January 15,2023.
Patricia and her husband, Carl Safina, live on Long Island with their dogs and feathered friends.
Carl Safina, is the first Endowed Professor for Nature and Humanity at Stony Brook University and founding president of the not-for-profit Safina Center, a unique group of creative thought-leaders who make a case for life on Earth. His work fuses scientific understanding, emotional connection, and a moral call to action
On his website Carl states, “In my writing I explore our relationship with the living world—and how it could be better. My more recent work also probes how free-living animals experience life. What drives my work is a devotion to free-living things and wild places. And what drives that devotion is my deep love and wonder for the living world.
Carl’s books include Song for the Blue Ocean; The View From Lazy Point: A Natural Year in an Unnatural World; A Sea in Flames: The Deepwater Horizon Oil Blowout; Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel, and others. His most recent book is Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace. He hosted the 10-part PBS television series “Saving the Ocean” (which can be viewed at PBS.org). Carl contributes frequently to CNN.com, “National Geographic”, “The New York Times”, “Audubon”, “The Huffington Post”and others.
“Audubon “magazine named Carl Safina among its 100 Notable Conservationists of the 20th Century. “Utne Reader” listed him among 25 Visionaries Changing the World.
His bestselling book, Beyond Words; What Animals Think and Feel, affirms his role as one of today’s leading voices for nature. In “The New York Review of Books,” Tim Flannery wrote: Beyond Words is gloriously written… Along with Darwin’s Origin and Richard Dawkins’s Selfish Gene, Beyond Words has the potential to change our relationship with the natural world.”
Carl is a SOFO Executive Board Member.
There is a $15 fee for Adults and $10 fee for children for this program. This program fee will also provide non-members with free admission to the museum on a day of their choice. Members are free.
Advanced reservations are required for all events. To register for this program, please contact us at info@sofo.org or call 631-537-9735.
