Issac, Sloughs, and Studio Assistants! Slough in the Glades daily painting by Everglades artist Jo-Ann Sanborn

Slough in the Glades, 2012, Jo-Ann Sanborn

 acrylic on linen board, 8"x10"

 

Sloughs are filling up as the summer rains drench the Everglades landscape.  If we get storm Issac next week, the winds will help blow out debris and clean the land, in additon to adding much needed water to the environment.   Huricanes are a little less helpful to people, so pay attention and be prepared!  You'll find good information on the NOAA site, here. 

 

My  get-a-kid plan is working well.  My new studio assistant has been a great help already.  She's a busy teenager, but having her available even a couple of hours a week has already proved a good decision.  

 

Her first job was to take a huge shopping bag of clippings and make sense of it.  I've been stuffing stuff into that pile for years, thinking "someday....."  She returned the mess to me in two three-ring binders.  Every show, postcard, newspaper article, award, and note, all sleeved, and separated by year and date.  Even more impressive that she just DID it, without even a single phone call or question.  Wow! 

 

When you have everything ready, it's easy to start to paint.  Yesterday she unwrapped five boxes of new canvases, and broke up the cardboard that I'm not saving for shipping. In the next few weeks she'll to tone them in the warm dark I use for priming. These two simple chores will save me hours of work and I'll have exactly what I want all ready to go. 

 

If all is still going well, we'll move on to cataloguing the paintings.  This job has been on the top of my to-do list for at least three years.  I put it off over and over.  She loves a challenge.  Together maybe we can get it done.  

View of a Slough, painting by Everglades artist Jo-Ann Sanborn

View of a Slough, 2012, Jo-Ann Sanborn

acrylic on canvas, 20x24, Sold

A slough (pronounced "slew" or "sloo") is a deep water estuary in the Everglades. The wet season renews the dry Everglades prairies and fills the deep sloughs with rainwater.  

The sloughs stay wet for most of the year providing a water for plants and animals as the prairies dry in the wet season. Because of the gently slope of the land south of Lake Okeechobee, the water will work it's way slowly to the south and into the gulf.

The slow movement of large amounts of shallow water, based on a ridge and slough design, is important to a multitude of Everglade ecosystems.  Yet Everglades systems have often been altered detrimentally by humans, changing historic patterns and affecting life in the glades with little public study or outcry. 

You can learn more about the importance of the ridge and flow system of Everglades water movement here.