Jewel-Beetle Wing Dress

Charlize Theron wears a dress made from discarded jewel-beetle wings in Snow White and the Huntsmen.  Costume designer Coleen Atwood wanted to create the image of the Queen Ravenna's own physical and psychological deterioration by using these fragile and decaying wings.  Quite a striking turquoise dress if you ask me.

Nature Calls- Moon

Not only is Bjork playing her music amongst the constellations in this video, I believe she is also representing the moon.  On her 2011 released album, Biophillia, she describes how she writes music by walking in nature and singing with the mountains.  She's always been a lover of electronics in music referring to the format as circles and with her time in alternative rock ban The Sugarcubes as square.  In this recent album she was able to use sound bites in nature and save it in electronic form.  A fully organic process. You can listen to a very interesting interview with Bjork on CBC radio progam the Q here. 

Greening the Desert

This is one amazing piece of film.  I first watched this over a year ago and have felt inspired ever since.  Australian Permaculture expert, Jeff Lawton, travelled to the middle east and tackled the challenging problem of desertification.  Using Permaculture practices, Lawton incorporated a simple irrigation system to a desert area and planted native draught tolerant plants to the area.  The result of his work in this arid desert is amazingly a strip of edible forest and eventually the growth of mushrooms.  As Lawton said "You can solve all the worlds problems in a garden. "  I think he's right. 

Nature Calls- Phantom Island

Phantom Island is by Bartel.  A local Vancouver artist and my friend Emily's boyfriend.  She told me stories of how he collected the sounds for these tracks from their trips to Galiano Island.  Sounds were used from them dropping rocks into a well, or layers of waves.  I think if you listen to it you can see how nature is used to create and inspire this song. 

Forest Artist and Nature Photographer Melanie Bonajo

My friend Sarah picked up a book in Portland of Melanie Bonajo's nature photography.  Check out Sarah's  blog for more of Bonajo's work.

Nature Calls - Curse Your Branches

I saw a living room show with David Bazan a couple of years ago in my friend Lars's living room. It was an amazingly intimate and awe inspiring show.  Bazan is from a small town not to far from me- Everett, Washington. Curse Your Branches from the album of the same name was released in 2009.  It was a controversial song that uses nature as a metaphor depicting his view of Christianity.  Especially controversial because Bazan was previously touted as a Christian artist.     

Nature Calls- Blue Ridge Mountains

The Fleet Foxes are an Indie Folk band from Seattle, Washington.  There music has a very grass-roots feeling to it.  Blue Ridge Mountain was written by Robin Pecknold and he explains in this interview with the Daily Mail in 2009 why this song has a natural incarnation.    "The music was already sounding very rural so it didn't make sense to start adding lyrics about receiving emails and watching TV."