Museum Hosts Living Earth Family Day
Bring the whole family to the Westmont Ridley-Tree Museum of Art for a day of fun, free activities with food, crafts, games, music and storytelling focused on our environment. Living Earth: A Family Day of Exploration on Saturday, March 1, from 11 a.m.-4 p.m. focuses on the immersive exhibition “WILDLAND: Ethan Turpin’s Collaborations on Fire and Water,” which combines science and art. For more information, please visit westmont.edu/living-earth.
Activities at Living Earth include a birdwatching walk; a scavenger hunt exploring nature; a Junkyard Jammin’ Jamboree of instruments made from recycled materials; storytelling with Ernestine Ygnacio-De Soto, a Chumash elder; a petting zoo with a Shetland pony/therapy horse and sheep; a snail hunt; cat adoptions with Animal Shelter Assistance Program; Santa Barbara Audubon Society will bring a kestrel for families to see; the campus garden will be open with tours and activities with Janell Balmaceda, Westmont sustainability coordinator and garden manager; turtle and fish feeding at the duck pond; nature film documentaries; and hiking on a campus nature trail that cuts through a eucalyptus grove to learn about a project replacing the trees with fire-hearty California coast live oaks.
Family crafts include creating an imagination garden to take home; making leaf-print bags; experimenting with watercolors alongside artist Ethan Turpin; and making a bug hotel to lure pollinating insects to your garden. Giveaways include wildflower seed bombs, milkweed seeds to attract monarch butterflies, and California poppies donated by S&S Seeds.
Santa Barbara’s environmental groups will host information tables, including Montecito Fire Department; Santa Barbara Fire Safe Council; Santa Barbara Channelkeeper; CalFire and many others.
Participants may buy refreshments. Campus caterer Bon Appetit will sell hamburgers, veggie burgers, salad and lemonade. Rori’s Artisanal Creamery will offer ice cream cups. Claudia Coffee Bar will serve coffees and organic smoothies from their truck, and SolWave Water will provide water.
Our special thanks to S&S Seeds, SolWave Water, Santa Barbara County Fire Safe Council, the Montecito Fire Department, and the University of California, Santa Barbara. We also thank friends of “WILDLAND”: Ken & Francie Jewesson, Sarah Anderson, Marvin and Annette Bellamy, Hilary Brace, Nina Dunbar, Linda and Paul Ekstrom, Nancy and Michael Gifford, Troy and Carla Harris, Judy L. Larson, David Litschel, Dean and Kim Pananides, Stan Ratzlaff, Marie Schoeff and Dane Goodman, Susan Tova, and Seyburn Zorthian.