Winter 2005

Diane Aoki: Woman with the Sketchbook

By Lori Rotenberk
Photo of Diane Aoki at Bunker Hill Forest Preserve by Pat Wadecki

Some 50 journals fill the shelves in Diane Aoki's Chicago apartment. Amid her written thoughts on life in general are hundreds of vivid pencil-and-watercolor illustrations of nature, a record of more than 20 years of exploration.

Sandhill Crane Migration, Jasper-Pulaski Fish & Wildlife Area, Indiana, by Diane Aoki

"There were lots of forest preserves around where I grew up, and I always found the things in them fascinating," the 44-year-old Aoki recalls. Her family lived in the Edgebrook neighborhood on Chicago's northwest side, so she romped in Bunker Hill Forest Preserve, Caldwell Woods, and other open areas along the Chicago River.

Yet it wasn't until the early 1980s, as a recent graduate of The School of The Art Institute of Chicago, that Aoki began recording what she saw. At first, she painted to preserve the images of plants she saw until she could look them up in a field guide. But soon sunflowers, bursting milkweed pods, and trout lilies began to pour onto the page just for fun. Aoki painted the flocks of sandhill cranes at Jasper-Pulaski Fish & Wildlife Area in Indiana and fields of shooting star flowers at Chiwaukee Prairie, along the Illinois-Wisconsin border. The more she saw of the region, the more she became concerned with its preservation.

"I began taking part in the butterfly and dragonfly monitoring programs," Aoki says. "And as that interest developed, I wanted to learn the names of all of the plants, so I became a Master Gardener." She later completed the Naturalist Certificate Program at The Morton Arboretum. Today she's at work on a degree in environmental science at Northwestern University and monitors butterflies, dragonflies, and frogs for the Chicago Wilderness Habitat Project.

Tree study along the bike path at Bunker Hill in Chicago, by Diane Aoki

"When I first began sketching plants and spring ephemerals, I never thought I'd be one to go to the local alderman begging for something to be done about preservation," Aoki says. "I was the woman with the sketchbook. Now all that has changed. Eventually, I would like to manage a wilderness area here."

From Bunker Hill Woods, by Diane Aoki