Cloud enthusiasts Mana Cazalobos and Didier Brousee both contacted us to let us know about a new Cloud exhibition at the Galerie Camera Obscura in Paris. It will be running from 4th February to 2nd April 2022 and features work by cloud photographers and artists.

Member 38,409, Kristina Machanic Goslin tells us how cloudspotting for her is an ever-present way to connect with nature

For so many people, nature has become a luxury. A privilege. Something reserved for those who can afford to jet off to their villas in the tropics, heli-ski in the Canadian Rockies, or sail away on their yachts. Getting into nature for most now requires getting AWAY from something else. Our jobs, suburban developments, and our insanely over-scheduled lives. This disconnect and restriction feeds directly into the sense of having no control over one’s dreams and desires. That we MUST push away our need for nature and beauty and freedom, because our lives demand focus elsewhere. Nature, however, has provided us with a constant gift, if we’d only learn where to look for it.

I’d always noticed clouds, often because I would tilt my gaze upward when I was stuck in traffic or seeking escape from whatever mundane constructed environment I was in. I love to see beauty in what’s around me, and clouds know no boundaries. I can look up and see something spectacular whether I’m on top of a mountain, in a city, or the supermarket parking lot. I can be rich or poor, able bodied or wheelchair bound, and clouds are there so long as I remember to look up. As the CAS Manifesto states, clouds are nature’s egalitarian poetry.

When I first began actively cloud spotting, my family and friends were amused by my obsession and somewhat bewildered at times by the excitement that would overtake me when spotting a rare formation. Now, as they too take note of the sky’s display, they tell me that I have literally changed their lives. How they look up and see what otherwise was an unnoticed backdrop to their daily tasks, but now is alive and dramatic and beautiful and ever-evolving. Much like we are… or should strive to be.

Clouds form due to disturbances in the atmosphere, colliding weather patterns, moisture and wind and electricity mingling and mixing to form a plethora of varying shapes and configurations. Some are predictable and stable. Others shift before you can settle your gaze to fully see them. They are immense and heavy, undulating and churning leaden grays and greenish blacks… or delicate gossamer ribbons woven through azure silk. Yet they all can appear above the same horizon. The canvas remains constant. Above the clouds the sky is steadfast. Blue, deep, endless. The clouds express the earth’s mood and they can do so with as much volatility as a teenager. There is only one constant when it comes to clouds… they will always change.

I find myself smiling a lot more now that I always have an eye on the sky. Spotting a rare and fleeting horseshoe vortex will make me gasp with excitement. A grin appears that didn’t need anyone else to put it there. Not even a happy memory. It’s simply my spirit reacting to something that makes me feel… good. Looking for these Easter Eggs in the sky has made every humdrum drive to do errands an opportunity to be reminded that something beautiful, powerful, and natural could appear at any moment.

Artist photographer, Robert Ireland, recently contacted us with details of his online cloud photography exhibition – Where Earth Meets the Sky.

Miguel Angel Ruiz Nieto told us about the “Songs of the Sky” exhibition which is running at the C/O Berlin Foundation from 11th December 2021 until 21st April 2022.

Charlotte Aiken is an artist working in Milford, Surrey, UK. She has an exhibition which will be held tomorrow, Saturday, 27th November from 3pm to 8pm

Kenneth Farr, member 40,936, told us about the exhibition “Clouds, Ice, and Bounty: The Lee and Juliet Folger Fund Collection of Seventeenth-Century Dutch and Flemish Paintings” which is running at the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, until 27th February 2022.

In Cloud Collection, Diane Borsato, member 41,749 takes us on a cloud-watching journey through the Owens Art Gallery collection.

MADISON — Stand on the ocean’s shore and take a big whiff of the salt spray and you’ll smell the unmistakably pungent scent of the sea. That ripe, almost rotting smell? That’s sulfur.

Michael Erb, member 38,503, has written a weather-themed children’s book called “The Weather Detectives”. He told us “the book is for 9-14 year olds, and I hope to inspire young readers to learn more about the weather”.

“Ghostcloud” was written by Michael Mann (member, 56,714).  He told us, “it aims to make kids look up, to look with wonder at the sky, to look for shapes/figures/patterns up there. One of the themes is that people are so busy living, they never look up, when there’s a whole world up there waiting to be discovered”

Linda Bailey, member 54,891, recently came across this article on the Science News website about the effect of wildfire smoke on cumulus clouds.