Studio Visit and Art Auction

"Light on the Flats-Samish" (size 6.5x15") Original Watercolor by Michele Cooper

I had a delightful visit with friends from Bay View today. They came to pick up my donation for the upcoming auction to benefit the Padilla Bay Reserve. After a visit in the garden and free reign to prowl the studio, this is the painting they chose. This is the landscape you experience as you take the back roads toward the estuary. 

Visit the Breazeale Interpretive Center for a wonderful day out this summer. Padilla Bay is one of 29 sites in the National Estuarine Research Reserve System (NERRS) established to protect coastal areas for long-term research, monitoring and education, and stewardship.

It's beautifully done with so many ways to learn about and experience the estuary and enjoy exploring the intertidal mud flats or the exhibits indoors. 

The Interpretive Center is open to the public Wednesday through Sunday from 10:00 to 5:00, and closed on official State holidays.

Don't miss it! Saturday, August 19th, 2017
 About the fundraiser and auction, quoted from the flyer:

This is a benefit fundraiser to support our efforts to help the Reserve with the capital construction costs of adding a Touch Pool Experience to the existing aquarium room exhibits.

We will be serving a sumptuous summer buffet of tastes of Padilla Bay with elements of the cuisine of Maine as we feature an extra focus on our sister Reserve at the historic Laudholm Farm in Wells, Maine.

Our event will also feature both a silent & live auction. We will have live music by Jumbled Pie.

Pipefish, snake pricklebacks and eelgrass

A Snake Pipefish peeks around the eelgrass. 

I was drawn to the elegance of the Giant White Plumed Anemone, of course. And the flamboyant purple sea star and the delicate pink flowerlike sea urchin. They are all so dramatically beautiful. However, one of the most memorable moments of my visit to the aquariums inside the Breazeale Interpretive Center at Padilla Bay was when I discovered the elongated head of a seahorse on what looked like a strand of eelgrass. I learned that the pipefish isn't a type of seahorse but rather a sub family of small fish. They do belong to the same family though and the males carry their young much the same as seahorses do.  Can you see mine emerging at the left center of eelgrass, with his snout highlighted against the white anemone?

An enchanting little prickleback did his army crawl with his fins to investigate my mini palette.
I was with the Anacortes Sketchers on a sunny, 68 degree midwinter's day at Padilla Bay.