{"id":149321,"date":"2026-02-09T21:48:51","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T21:48:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/149321\/"},"modified":"2026-02-09T21:48:51","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T21:48:51","slug":"wonders-of-weather-festival-of-the-creative-arts-showcases-meteorological-marvels-at-challenger-learning-center-of-tallahassee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/149321\/","title":{"rendered":"Wonders of weather: Festival of the Creative Arts showcases meteorological marvels at Challenger Learning Center of Tallahassee"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\"\"Meteorologists from the National Weather Service\u2019s Tallahassee office at \u201cIt\u2019s The Weather!\u201d (Bill Wellock\/Florida State University)\t\t<\/p>\n

Renaissance-era artist Albrecht D\u00fcrer and \u201cMission Impossible: The Final Reckoning\u201d director Christopher McQuarrie both knew that if you want an outdoor image that captivates audiences, you need the right sky.<\/p>\n

For D\u00fcrer, that meant fine lines to depict squalls, storms, lightning and other ephemeral atmospheric phenomena. For McQuarrie, that meant a background of cloudy skies to emphasize the action in a high-flying stunt scene.<\/p>\n

\"AA print of \u201cThe Four Angels Holding the Winds\u201d from \u2018The Apocalypse\u2019 by Albrecht D\u00fcrer. (Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art)<\/p>\n

In D\u00fcrer\u2019s engravings, Hollywood films and so many other works of art, \u201cthe weather is part of the story,\u201d said Stephanie Leitch<\/a>, a professor in the Florida State University College of Fine Arts<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Leitch was joined by National Weather Service meteorologists, FSU students and faculty, local artists and other presenters at \u201cIt\u2019s the Weather!,\u201d an exploration of the inspiring world of weather hosted Feb. 7 at the Challenger Learning Center of Tallahassee<\/a>. The event was part of the FSU Festival of the Creative Arts<\/a>, a monthlong celebration of the\u202fvoices, talents and creativity of FSU faculty and students.<\/p>\n

Leitch\u2019s presentation in the center\u2019s Fogg Planetarium took viewers on a whirlwind tour through 500 years of representations of the weather.<\/p>\n

After starting with icons of the winds from Renaissance etchings, she shared other examples throughout art history. In Giorgione\u2019s painting \u201cThe Tempest,\u201d the viewer\u2019s eye might first be drawn to the human subjects in the foreground before noticing the storm behind them. In Caspar David Friedrich\u2019s 1800s painting \u201cThe Monk by the Sea,\u201d the religious figure is dwarfed by a turbulent sea and sky. Studio Ghibli\u2019s 2013 film \u201cThe Wind Rises\u201d uses soft clouds as a frequent backdrop to tell the story of an engineer developing a new fighter plane.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe landscape and atmospheric effects inform what we think about the subject of the art,\u201d Leitch said.<\/p>\n

For local fiber artist Kate Taylor, weather was not just the inspiration behind her artwork \u2014 it was the subject itself.<\/p>\n

\"AFiber artist Kate Taylor shows off her work \u201cWhether you like it or not: Whether you like it or not: A weather report for 2022 from Dogtown, Florida\u201d at the Challenger Learning Center of Tallahassee. (Bill Wellock\/Florida State University)<\/p>\n

Her quilt \u201cWhether you like it or not: A weather report for 2022 from Dogtown, Florida,\u201d represents a year of weather data in a cozy medium.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve always had a relationship with weather, but because we have air conditioning and heating now, we don\u2019t connect to that need to understand weather as we used to,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhether you like it or not\u201d is Taylor\u2019s attempt to make a closer examination of the weather around her. For each day of the year, she quilted a small square documenting the conditions at her Gadsden County home. An arrow pointing up represented the high temperature, an arrow pointing down showed the low temperature, and the background reflected the sky that day.<\/p>\n

Another work depicted average high and low temperatures in Tallahassee for each decade of her life, starting in the 1950s.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith anything scientific, you have to keep good notes,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s also the way art works. I ran out of fabric that was pre-dyed before I completed the quilt. I had to go back to my notes and then to the dye pot to complete this.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AA close-up view of \u201cWhether you like it or not.\u201d The color of arrows pointing up or down in each square shows the high or low temperature, respectively, from each day of 2022. The background shows meteorological conditions; for example, the black square with white lines represents a rainy day. A square with a yellow background shows the average high and low temperatures for the preceding month. (Bill Wellock\/Florida State University)<\/p>\n

Tallahassee community member Zoila Curry brought her children, 4-year-old Sofy, 8-year-old Kosmo, and 10-year-old Aleena, to the center to learn about weather and practice making new artmaking methods.<\/p>\n

\u201cArt is big in our house,\u201d Curry said. \u201cThis event was a cool way to show that you can tie art into anything, any aspect of life, even something like the weather.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her husband, former FSU triple jumper and Olympian Rafeeq Curry, designed the medals for the World Athletics Cross Country Championships that were recently held in Tallahassee. Drawings, sketches, jewelry and food are just some of the ways they practice creativity at home.<\/p>\n

At the center, Sofy showed off a sparkly rainbow that she made at an activity station imitating the work of visual artist Robert Siedel. Other stations saw visitors creating pieces with pastels, weaving construction paper onto a visual representation of a day\u2019s weather, or cutting paper to mimic snowflakes in homage to the scientist Wilson Bentley, who captured the first photographs of individual snowflakes.<\/p>\n

Projects like these help students practice motor skills, observation, creativity and other skills, said Abbygail DeVore, a master\u2019s student in the FSU art therapy program<\/a>. For the FSU students volunteering, it was an opportunity to practice working with children on developmentally appropriate artwork.<\/p>\n

The science behind the weather was also on display. Employees from the National Weather Service\u2019s (NWS) Tallahassee office brought the tools of their trade, such as a temperature sensor and a weather balloon.<\/p>\n

At ground level, a weather balloon is about six feet in diameter. After it is released into the atmosphere, it grows to about 30 feet in diameter because of changes in atmospheric pressure before it bursts. Even at just six feet wide, it was a striking prop in the Challenger Learning Center lobby, drawing visitors to the NWS booth for information about how meteorologists work and ways for Floridians to be safe in storms.<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t take a meteorologist to appreciate a sunset or marvel at the power of a storm. But some artistic principles from graphic design and communications are at work when sharing weather information with the public.<\/p>\n

The Festival of the Creative Arts continues Tuesday, Feb. 10 with Arts-Health-Humanities Symposium VI from 12-2:30 p.m. at the Claude Pepper Center, 636 W. Call St.<\/p>\n

Visit the Festival of the Creative Arts website<\/a> for a full schedule of events.<\/p>\n

\"ArtVisitors at \u201cIt\u2019s the Weather!\u201d enjoyed weather-based art activities. (Alan Hanstein\/Challenger Learning Center of Tallahassee)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Meteorologists from the National Weather Service\u2019s Tallahassee office at \u201cIt\u2019s The Weather!\u201d (Bill Wellock\/Florida State University) Renaissance-era artist…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":149322,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[58512,56744,58515,232,234,233],"class_list":{"0":"post-149321","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tallahassee","8":"tag-challenger-learning-center","9":"tag-college-of-fine-arts","10":"tag-festival-of-the-creative-arts","11":"tag-tallahassee","12":"tag-tallahassee-headlines","13":"tag-tallahassee-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149321\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}