KLCC is celebrating the arrival of BirdNote to our airwaves. The beloved short-form series tells rich, sound-driven stories about birds, science, and the natural world.
As part of our launch, we’re bringing you a conversation with someone who helped bring these stories to life in a different, and deeply visual, way.
Emily Poole is a local illustrator based in Eugene. She’s the artist behind the 2018 BirdNote book, which features stunning illustrations of birds from around the world.
Her work has a way of making you stop, look closer, and feel more connected to the creatures we share our skies and neighborhoods with.
KLCC's Love Cross invited Emily to KLCC to talk about her artistic journey. She began by asking her about how she got started.
Emily Poole: I grew up in nature around nature and that was always a huge inspiration for me and initially I really wanted to be a scientist but I don't really have the math brain for it. I went into art because that was what I loved the most. And then I kind of started this science art track because I did a travel course to South America in college and we got to follow the scientists around and look at the studies they were doing and make artwork interpreting the studies. I kind of locked on to how important our science connection is as far as communicating what's going on in the natural world to the public, and sort of being the the mouthpiece of scientists in that sort of way, and I think that's a really important job. And also, it gives me an in into that world of science and nature exploration where I can work to my strengths.
Love Cross: In 2018 you get this BirdNote project. How did that come about?
Poole: I was brand new to trying to make it professionally. It was kind of my first big job.
That was a big experience for me and it's been so fun to see what kind of staying power it still has.
Cross: The BirdNote stories themselves are so vivid and involve so much of our senses when we hear them. How did you approach illustrating those for that book? Did you listen to any BirdNote episodes while you worked?
Poole: There are 100 spotlights in the book, so they gave me a list of 100 species and links to all of the episodes. And so I listened to all 100 back to back to back.
Cross: That's amazing!
Poole: Like I was having dreams with a little jingle at the beginning (chuckle).
Cross: And how did that help inform your artwork?
Poole: I really wanted each illustration to have some sort of indicator about what exactly that episode was about because, they say, 'oh this is about gulls,' but the spotlight is really about how gulls stomp at the edge of water to stir up creatures underwater. And so I wanted an illustration of a gull stomping, not just a static illustration of a gull.
Cross: I imagine there were some moments during that project that it might be memorable, especially because it was your first big project. Was there a particular bird or story that really stayed with you when you were working on that?
Poole: For some reason, the one that always jumps back to my mind is the one about why birds poop on red cars.
Cross: (Laughing) Well, of course, that would be memorable! How did you approach that one?
Poole: I did this illustration of a bird's eye view of a car hood, and there are birds looking down and the car. It's like this dappled light on this car hood and there's bird poop on the car hood. And it was one of those instances where I was looking at this painting and I was like, wow, this is a beautiful painting and I'm really proud of it. But I could never put this in a gallery or sell it to someone. This is very representative of the illustrator's experience where I've made a painting of a thing that's just for the illustration purpose. It's not like a painting on its own. I mean it is, but...
Cross: But how fun to be able to use your artistic expression to bring that thing we can visualize to life.
Poole: Yeah.
Cross: All right, well, we're here talking about this BirdNote project that you completed back in 2018, but you've also been the illustrator for the Mount Pisgah Arboretum Mushroom Festival, and that is coming right up. Why don't you tell us about that?
Poole: I've been doing the festival illustrations since 2018. I started with the Mushroom Festival- they pick out by committee a mushroom species and an animal species for the Mushroom Festival. And then for the Wildflower Festival, it's a flower species and an animal species.
Cross: OK, so tell us about this year's illustration.
Poole: So this year's illustration is a red tree vole and a lilac Inocybe mushroom, and it was actually really tricky because red tree voles, first of all, they're endangered. So there are very little photos and footage of them that I had to work from and I've, of course, never seen one in person. And also they live way up in the canopy of old growth Doug fir trees. And then the mushroom, it lives off of the mycelium that lives around the roots of the Doug fir tree, and it lives all the way at the base of the tree. So I had this challenge of figuring out how to put this mushroom and this animal that live about 50 feet apart at any given time and never meet, into the same illustration. So I focused on the connection they had with Douglas fir. And I use this illustration of a sprig of Douglas fir with the vole sort of climbing it and then the roots, intertwining with the mycelium of the mushroom to just illustrate how they're connected by habitat in a little bit more of an abstract way.
Cross: Well, Emily Poole, thank you so much for coming in. It's been a pleasure chatting with you, and we really enjoy your art, and we're really excited that we have this local connection to BirdNote. So thank you so much.
Poole: Thank you for having me.
You can see more of Emily's work at this weekend’s Mount Pisgah Arboretum Mushroom Festival and at her website. Her work is also displayed in many business in Eugene, including Tsunami Books where the original painting of the cover art for the 2018 BirdNote book hangs.
And you can now hear BirdNote on KLCC each Wednesday during the 7:00 a.m. hour of Morning Edition.
