Gavin Pretor-Pinney wants you to look up

Thursday, September 12, 2019

Clouds are one of the first things we learn to draw, but how often do we really think about them? Realistically speaking, not unless we want to check on the weather. Gavin Pretor-Pinney wants to change that. The cloud enthusiast will speak at the Georgia Museum of Art at the University of Georgia on Thursday, October 17, at 5:30 p.m. His lecture “Cloudspotting for Beginners” will inspire people to see the sky anew. Pretor-Pinney, born in 1968 in London, didn’t always have his head in the clouds. Before founding the Cloud Appreciation Society in 2005, he co-founded The Idler, a magazine that argues for the importance of downtime in creative thinking. One day, he decided to take his own advice and left for a seven-month sabbatical in Rome, which ended up changing his life forever. There was hardly ever a cloud in sight, which was unusual for someone from London. This experience made him realize that he had a deep appreciation for clouds, and once he returned to London he started the Cloud Appreciation Society. He even garnered enough support to convince the W.M.O (World Meteorological Organization) to add a new cloud, the Asperitas cloud, to the International Cloud Atlas, which hadn’t had a new cloud type since 1953. Pretor-Pinney’s talk will include images of the sky by members of the society to show and explain the stunning variety of cloud formations, as well as clouds from works in the museum’s collection. In this enlightening and entertaining talk, you will understand why clouds are an evocative and poetic aspect of nature, you’ll learn how cloudspotting is the perfect antidote to the pressures of the digital world and you’ll discover that spending a few moments each day with your head in the clouds will help you keep your feet on the ground. You will also have a chance to buy “A Cloud A Day,” an exclusive early release for this event. This new book showcases 365 skies that include clouds in art alongside member photographs, NASA images of clouds in space and more. Taking a few moments each day to engage with the sky requires an effortless mindfulness, unlike any other form of meditation. “I really like [Pretor-Pinney’s] message that seemingly ‘mindless’ pursuits such as gazing at clouds and daydreaming are not mindless at all — and in fact can produce fruitful creative connections and meaningful insights about ourselves and the world around us,” says Callan Steinmann, curator of education at the museum. Maureen Lomasney, member of the Sonoma Land Trust in Santa Rosa, California, says that “evangelizing on behalf of the air we breathe and the atmosphere in which we live is a very worthy pursuit.” Originally, not many people gave Pretor-Pinney credit for his interests, but it seems that more people agree with him than anyone would’ve thought. The Cloud Appreciation Society has grown from 2,000 members to over 47,000 members in 120 countries. Pretor-Pinney is a TED Global speaker with over 1.2 million views and has even shared a Google Zeitgeist line-up with Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter and Snoop Dogg. He has presented television documentaries for the BBC and Channel 4, is a visiting fellow at the Meteorology Department of Reading University and has won numerous prestigious awards. He is the author of internationally best-selling “Cloudspotter’s Guide” and “Cloud Collector’s Handbook” as well as “The Wavewatcher’s Companion,” which won the prestigious Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books. His work will change the way you look at the sky and clouds, even if it doesn’t change your life. Nevertheless, looking up will never be the same again.