Lee Gass, Scientist and Artist
In 2010, I worked with a group of scientists and a professional dance company to produce Experiments, which expressed the essence of scientific discovery in dance. Ea...
World Water Day Interview
On World Water Day, I was interviewed by Cortes Cooperative Radio about the work of the Quadra Island Water Security Team. You can listen to that interview here....
A Short Course on Groundwater and Aquifers
Drawing by Bernie Amell A Short Course on Groundwater and Aquifers Lee Gass We've all heard of groundwater and aquifers. Here I fill out those concepts and explore ho...
Never Wish for a Forest Fire
Nobody but a fool would wish for a forest fire if he lived in a forest of fuel. Because of a wildfire near here yesterday, I got to do something other than sit i...
The Wind Hoverer
The Wind Hoverer I was a kestrel, hovering in the North Sea wind, inside the last dike in the Netherlands, looking for voles. If the wind had been calm or stead...
Jorstad’s for breakfast: animal stories
The morning I went to Jorstad’s for breakfast, I rolled out of my sleeping bag in the dark. It’s always cold then at Grizzly Lake, but I suffered it gladly in T...
Teaching for Creativity in Science
In my first year of teaching high school biology, 1966, I found a large pile of scientific magazines in my prep room. I hired work-study students to examine,...
The meanest, nastiest territorial squabblers of them all
This 3-minute clip is from a Knowledge Network "Leading Edge" program on hummingbirds, broadcast in 2006. It features an interview about hummingbirds and shows me ca...
The Volvo environment prize: a video about Buzz Holling
In 2008, Buzz Holling won the prestigious Volvo Environment Prize, awarded each year to researchers across a broad spectrum of environmental studies. Winners have s...
Grizzly Lake story
 Grizzly Lake, where I studied hummingbirds. Frames of a video by Clancy Doheny. Photo by Lee Gass. Choreographer and dancer Gail Lotenberg worked with se...
Integration, interaction, and community
For a Special Feature of the scientific journal Ecology and Society, which anyone can read, Julyet Benbasat and I wrote about creating, teaching in, and administering...
Educating for sustainability
Sometime in the late '90s, after a talk I gave at the University of Florida about experiments we were doing with interdisciplinary undergraduate science programs at ...
Think & Eat Green
Elena Orrego and Alejandro Rojas. In summer 2009 my old friend Alejandro Rojas contacted me about an exciting project. Based on a decade of work with UBC students to...
Walking on Water
A Eureka Experience in my Development as a Teacher In 1968 I became Assistant Director of an Academic Year Institute for high school biology teachers from across th...
The Notion of Creativity
The Notion of Creativity In my work as a university professor, questions about where ideas come from were central to everything I did in research and teaching. Now a...
Nature’s Little Squeegees
Nature's Little Squeegees If you’ve spent hours sanding rocks or furniture without gloves, you may have noticed something that fascinates me every time it happens.Â...
The deep meaning of creativity
Some number of nestling, almost fledgling robins. The exact number is below. The Deep Meaning of Creativity This year, for the first time since my studio ...
On the Diaper-changing Behaviour of Robins
On the Diaper-changing Behaviour of Robins What is going on in this picture? One of the great truths of physics is that what goes up must come down again. A truth...
The Last of the Caran d’Ache
At risk of telling you more about sculpting than you ever wanted to know or giving you too much information about my personal life, I’ll tell you a story. Itâ...
The Case of Gerhard Herzberg
The only way to make new ideas happen, I think, the only method of creation, is to go into our studios and make stuff, as I argued in Methods of Creation? Just do it...
What a relief!
In making a crate for my stone sculpture Looking Up, I noticed a strong contrast between two sets of growth rings in this 2 x 2 milled from a tree. A western he...
Thank you Twyla Bella
 Hummingbird on handmade felt. Art by Twyla Bella. Photo by Lee Gass Last week I posted five stories in this space, each in some way inspired by Experiments, a d...
Kids, Hummingbirds, and the RCMP
What I want to tell you here is not as much about humming- birds as about kids learning about hummingbirds, and learning about themselves and other things at...
Brief Reflections on Experiments
To a scientist like me, Experiments, a dance production that premiered at the Scotiabank Dance Centre at the end of November, was special. It is rare for a work of ...
Graphing in Science and Sculpting
Computer model of Heart of Anima. This is a 3D graph with its front faces removed to reveal internal structure. Model and sculpture by Lee Gass. Gail Lotenb...
Repetition, precision and chaos
Sometime in the late '70s, MSc student Dave Marmorek, now Lead Scientist and Director of ESSA Technologies Ltd, an ecological and social systems consulting company...
Lactate Burn
Forearms feel lactate burn sanding Red Recursion. Photo by David Shackleton. Lactate Burn We got our TV at Christmas when I was almost 10 years old and ther...
A small matter of maternity
I backed our riding mower out of its tent-shelter the other day to do some repairs, and as the mower came into the light I noticed hundreds of tiny spiders dispersin...
What does it take to be a deer?
Bucky the deer eating leaves from a freshly felled alder tree. Photos by Lee Gass. Our neighbor Diane was working in her garden one autumn when she heard an ...
Creative natives in Clayoquot Sound
Gisele Martin, owner of Tla-ook Cultural Adventures in Tofino, leading a nature walk at Tofino Botanical Gardens. Photo by Lee Gass. Creativity is an indivi...