Kathy Kleinsteiber has long been a proponent of environmental causes. She has spent many hours as a volunteer at local organizations that promote environmental stewardship and has provided funds and artwork to organizations dedicated to conservation causes. As a nature artist, and in her volunteer work, she hopes to inspire others to see the fragile beauty of the Earth and to see the need to actively protect it. Kathy is committed to environmental stewardship and would like to use her artwork to raise funds to help protect this beautiful planet we call home.
As a nature artist, Kathy likes to focus on the plants and animals she sees along the trail. She wants to bring attention to those elements of nature that everyone might be able to discover for themselves and that are often overlooked. She is also interested in painting images from threatened environments, such as the beautiful deserts of the Southwest United States and the bayous of the Gulf Coast.
The pandemic changed Kathy’s focus a bit - rather than wander far and wide in search for exciting discoveries, she has come to realize just how much nature can be found close to home. An online bird gardening class in the height of the pandemic started her on a journey of discovery where she has transformed not only her own yard, but also a nearby neighborhood park into an oasis of biodiversity with the help of many community volunteers.
For several years, Kathy volunteered at the Environmental Education Center at the Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge in Alviso, CA. As a volunteer, she has helped with field trips for school children, donated artwork for signage and for a bird guide, and developed and taught many nature drawing classes for families. She donated artwork to be sold for the benefit of the Environmental Education programs and helped organize and set up an art exhibit of several local artists to benefit environmental education. Kathy has also volunteered at the Santa Clara County Parks in San Jose, CA, where she taught numerous family nature drawing classes and volunteered in a park visitor center.
Until recently, Kathy has focused on wildlife she has encountered in the wild, but after participating in the AFC Silent Skies mural project, she has become excited about painting endangered species. In this world of ever-present threats to our beautiful planet and the species that reside here, Kathy wants her artwork to help create awareness to the need for providing solutions to these most pressing issues. With respect to the AFC Silent Skies mural project, Kathy is one of the largest contributors, having done 22 endangered bird species paintings for the mural that continues to tour to highlight the precarious state of birds.
This year, Kathy is honored to have been chosen as the Festival Artist for the Lodi Sandhill Crane Festival, which promotes conservation and awareness of the magnificent sandhill cranes that have been wintering in the California Delta for thousands of years. The festival will be held the first weekend in November in Lodi, CA, near a prime wintering location of the Greater Sandhill Cranes in the Central Valley of California.
