Erica Fielder Studio Information

Erica Fielder Studio (EFS) and team create interpretive signage, or wayside panels and displays, with precise science writing, cultural and historic text, and illustrations that are accurate, engaging and trigger feelings and memory. Erica Fielder is know as both naturalist and eco-artist and is a founder of the eco-art movement in the United States. She belongs to an international group of eco-artists who create art that teaches aspects of ecology, science and our relationship to nature so it is understandable and accessible to the general public. Her background includes creating nature walks along both city trails and wild pathways that lead participants to a sensory experience of their environment. Erica Fielder Studio began projects in 1983 with funding from the California State Coastal Conservancy (SCC). EFS researched and made illustrations with text for 26 themes that can be identified along California's entire coastal wetlands. Research for coastal dunes included such open space sites as MacKerricher State Park and Dune Preserve and Talawa Dunes State Park. Then, the topic of coastal wetlands became the guiding light for most of the early interpretive panels for the SCC. For this theme, research was conducted around what is now called Humboldt Lagoons State Park. Themes, text and images were also prepared from research done in and around Salt Point State Park, Sonoma Coast State Beaches and Point Reyes National Seashore. Farther south, our team spent time investigating many of the beaches and lagoons found along the California Coast from Point Reyes National Seashore to Tijuana Marsh and wetlands at the Mexican border. Once the research was complete, EFS chose specific materials to use for creating the original artwork. Erica Fielder is a pastel painter and watercolorist, so these media, as well as charcoal and gouache were used, and still are used to day for the panel illustrations. Once the illustrations and text were finalized, images in ink were screened onto Plexiglas. Fortunately, Pannier ...