NCalSBA ACTIVITIES

Visit To The Foster Museum

September 12, 2026 at 11:45 AM

The Foster Museum

940 Commercial Street in Palo Alto

Join us on September 12, 2026 for a visit to The Foster Museum in Palo Alto. The Foster Museum is a public space created to share the work of artist Tony Foster. He has traveled around the world creating works of art that go beyond mere watercolor paintings. Please take a look at the website: thefoster.org to get a preview of the type of artwork that Tony has created. 

We will arrive at the museum at 11:45 a.m. to be ready for a tour at 12pm. After that, you are free to spend as much time as you like at the museum.  

Lara Call Gastinger is an artist and botanical illustrator from Charlottesville, Virginia, and was the chief illustrator of Flora of Virginia, a botanical reference. She has an undergraduate degree in biology from the University of Virginia and a master’s degree in plant ecology from Virginia Tech. She has been awarded two gold medals (2007, 2018) at the Royal Horticultural Society Botanical Art Show in London and her work is in the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation. Her art appears in Peterson Field Guide to Mushrooms of North America and the American Society of Botanical Artists’s Botanical Art Techniques. She teaches online and in person (occasionally as a lecturer at UVA) and has traveled to Japan, Romania, and France to lead workshops.

Gastinger is renowned on Instagram for teaching her perpetual journal process and is excited to publish her book, A Perpetual Journal Practice this June 2026. She can be found at: www.instagram.com/laragastinger, www.laracallgastinger.com, www.perpetualjournal.com, and www.patreon.com/laragastinger.

Lara's book A Perpetual Journal Practice will be available for purchase.

On Friday, June 12, nine NCalSBA chapter members from Sonoma County, Marin County, and San Francisco met at the Luther Burbank Garden for a personal tour by Amber Turner. She was the perfect guide, as she knows the garden intimately through her work documenting the garden through her botanical art, culminating with her book, “Eye Spy A Tree”, with funding through an ASBA educational grant.

She led us through the garden’s plantings with stories of how Burbank came to live in Santa Rosa from Massachusetts and developed an amazing body of genetically improved plants. She also gave us strategies from her own drawing of the trees: how to draw an entire tree using a hand drawn grid.

It took Amber two solid years to complete this project, during the pandemic: 26 trees drawn in pen and ink. Luther Burbank’s garden came alive for us through this lovely, personal tour. Many thanks to Amber.

As a continued theme of sketching in northern California’s beautiful gardens, artists are invited to come to Santa Rosa, home of Luther Burbank, and tour the grounds of his personal garden in the heart of “the city designed for living.” We are especially excited to be led on a personal stroll of the garden by Amber Turner. Amber received an ASBA educational grant to document the trees growing in Burbank’s garden and to convey their quiet magic to garden visitors.

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Amber Turner Bio: I live, teach, and garden in Northern California. As illustrating trees is my favorite thing to do, I wrote and illustrated a book called Eye Spy a Tree, Welcome to the Arboretum. It is the story of the trees at Luther Burbank Home & Gardens in Santa Rosa, CA. This 3-year ASBA Grant project consisted of 104 separate plant structure drawings of 26 tree species in pen and ink. The scope of my work extends to multiple mediums from watercolor, pen and ink, and gouache, most often with botanical subjects. Additionally, I work commercially as a surface designer creating patterns for textiles. I have a love of both science and art so that the botany is just as important as the art in my work. I just finished illustrating in watercolor, a children of all ages book celebrating the Point Reyes Peninsula based on a poem written by a friend. It illustrates not only the plants but the animals, insects in the environment as well.

NCalSBA Annual Meeting

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2026 Plants Illustrated "In Bloom"

Artists Reception