Obi Kaufmann & The State of Water

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PLEASE NOTE: We’ve had requests from some of you who would like to walk in the canyon with Obi in the morning but can’t stay for the afternoon indoor session. Conversely, there are those who aren’t able to make the trek but would like to meet Obi in the afternoon to learn about the making of The State of Water, see a spontaneous painting demonstration, and have their book signed. So we’re offering morning and afternoon registration in addition to the full day experience. See the options in the PayPal link below.

Author of the bestselling and award winning California Field Atlas, Obi Kaufmann will make a return appearance in Ojai on Saturday, June 29, on the statewide book tour for his next published work, The State of Water, Understanding California’s Most Precious Resource (HEYDAY, June 2019). Obi’s February 2018 visit here included a nature walk, painting demonstration, and book signing. It was a sold-out event. This time we are stretching our legs to get to a free-flowing stream in Matilija Canyon, the fitting place to learn about his latest book. The hike will be a fairly easy walk of one mile each way with one creek crossing.

As we did last time, we will return to a downtown Ojai lecture space for the afternoon. The indoor session will include an on-the-spot, live painting in the watercolor-and-calligraphy style of the book’s illustrations. Obi will have copies of his brand new, just published The State of Water for sale and signing.

This event will go on rain or shine with an added indoor morning session in case of rain. Registrants will receive confirmation and updates by email.

About The State of Water:
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’s lively presentation about how science and art can work together to deliver a powerful message of hope comes as an antidote to the miasma of despair that seems to pervade most popular discourse regarding the natural world of California and beyond. Full of local and data-driven insight, backed by empirical and accessible system-theory models, Obi presents his exhaustive work based on decades of packing and studying California’s rugged backcountry, with all its nuance and majesty. The culmination is an integrated vision of how we, as individuals and as a society, can more positively work towards a future that functions in alignment with the rhythms of nature, regardless of the fits of politics, the crush of human population or the chaos of climate change.

About The California Field Atlas:
The California Field Atlas is the winner of the 2016 Phelan Award for California literature by the San Francisco Foundation, insuring the Atlas will be include in the California Historical Society’s Bancroft Library archives at the University of California at Berkeley. In the few months after The California Field Atlas hit stores across California and beyond in 2017, it enjoyed four weeks at the number one spot for non-fiction paperbacks in Northern California and ranked in Southern California’s top ten.  Other honors:

• #1 San Francisco Chronicle Best Seller
• Winner, 2017 California Book Award Gold Medal (Notable Contribution to Publishing)
• Winner, 2017 NCIBA Book of the Year Award (Regional Interest)
• Finalist, 2018 Northern California Book Awards

About Obi Kaufmann:
An avid conservationist, Obi Kaufmann regularly travels around the state, speaking on issues of ecological restoration and preservation to such groups as the Klamath-Siskiyou Wildland Center, the Mojave Desert Land Trust, the Anza Borrego Foundation, the Mono Lake Committee, the Peninsula Open Space Trust and Friends of the River in Coloma. He is an illustrator for Bay Nature Magazine, the Berkeley Times, and Premium Arts, as well as a long-term collaborator with the men’s apparel brand INDIGOFERA. A life-long resident of California, Obi Kaufmann makes his home base in Oakland and is currently working on Field Atlases to come.

Books to come by Obi Kaufmann:

1. The State of Water, Understanding California’s Most Precious Resource (HEYDAY, June 2019)
2. The Forests of California, the California Lands Trilogy, Vol 1 (HEYDAY, spring 2020)
3. The Coasts of California, the California Lands Trilogy, Vol 2 (HEYDAY, fall 2020)
4. The Deserts of California, the California Lands Trilogy, Vol 3 (HEYDAY, spring 2021)
5. The State of Fire, Understanding Why, Where and How California Burns (HEYDAY, fall 2021)

“Obi Kaufmann dives fearlessly and joyfully into the maelstrom that is The State of Water in California. Luscious illustrations reveal that joy, accompanied by text that faces historic challenges and a troubled future head on.” – David Carle, author of Introduction to Water in California

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