Imaging The Peale’s Biomes

Join artist Stephen Bradley and collaborators for a two-hour art and science workshop exploring BioBuggy tools in order to observe, collect, and identify, various critters and organisms that live inside The Peale, outside in the garden, and around the building. 

We will also identify places where the organisms thrive due to the “right” conditions for them to live and reproduce – near sources of water where biomes tend to congregate – and create a snapshot of a micro-environment.

Inspired by Dr. Rob Dunn’s Never Home Alone: From Microbes to Millipedes, Camel Crickets, and Honeybees, the Natural History of Where We Live, and a current biodiversity project at the Inner Harbor, participants will learn different techniques in collecting, documenting, and identifying the organisms. We will use the free ISO app iNaturalist as a tool for identifying the critters in and around The Peale. Art materials will be available for drawing, as well as a color printer for hard copies of the images we photograph from under the microscope as reference points in the workshop.

Some questions we will address during the workshop include:

• What is biodiversity?
• Does species diversity follow any patterns?
• Can learning about the critters that live in our midst strengthen our relationship with our environment?
• Why do critters want to live where we live?
• What does water quality mean to us and the critters that depend on the water?

SPARK programming is presented by Towson University and UMBC in partnership with PNC Bank.