Jenny Kendler, Harmony Artist in Residence, created Green Zones Nosara as a community-sourced photography project that began this month. She describes below how she came up with the idea.

“I visited Nosara for the first time in July 2015, to begin to get a sense of the special nature of this region, and also to see the forests during the rainy season. I returned to Nosara for the in-depth portion of the artist residency in February and March 2016. It was a remarkable experience to have so much time dedicated just to understanding the ‘sense of place’ in Nosara and the unique aspects of the tropical dry forest. I explored and hiked almost every path in the Green Zones and spent hours researching, sketching, and writing about what a project could be that would both honor—and help protect—this special place.

“It took a long time to synthesize all the experiences we had in Nosara into a complete project, but what became most obvious to myself and others on our team was that, more than anything, we wanted people to experience the Green Zones for themselves. We hope and believe that when people have their own “moments of wonder” in the forests of Nosara, that they too will become advocates for the continuing preservation of these precious lands. This was the core of the project that everything else arose from.

“I was also keenly interested, especially since I am not a native of Nosara, in creating something that was a collaboration with the community. Rather than saying “this is what I think about the Green Zones,” I wanted to design a project that let everyone have a voice, and that evolved organically, in an open and generous way. Using photography, and creating a book that people could share, and that would become a fundraiser for the NCA (which protects and stewards the Green Zones) seemed to be the perfect way to collect and preserve this community-sourced project.”

To learn how you can be part of the project, visit www.Greenzonesnosara.com.