UH System News Image of the Week: Photo of nene by UH Hilo environmental studies major Saxony Charlot
As an environmental studies major and gifted artist, Saxony Charlot is passionate about raising awareness for Hawaiʻi’s endangered and threatened species.
This week’s UH News Image of the Week is from Saxony Charlot, an undergraduate student in environmental studies at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo.
“As we’re getting ready to head home after a few days of camping and collecting bioacoustics data at Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge, my team and I stop to appreciate a pair of nene, who occasionally perk up to exchange a few calls to another pair several meters away,” says Charlot.
As an environmental studies major and gifted artist, Charlot is passionate about raising awareness for Hawaiʻi’s endangered and threatened species. As she pursues her scientific studies at UH Hilo, her stunning artwork is flourishing.
“Hawaiian ecosystems are my passion,” she says. “It’s always just called to me. Since I was a kid, I’ve had a keen interest in Hawaiʻi’s native species and their conservation.”
Charlot was born and raised on Oʻahu and grew up on a small family farm in Waimānalo to a family of artists. She is the great-granddaughter of Jean Charlot, a muralist and painter of great fame, born 1898 in Paris, France, and who died in 1979 in Honolulu. (Jean Charlot came to the University of Hawaiʻi to create his first UH Mānoa mural in 1949. He liked Hawaiʻi so much that he decided to make it his home, becoming a part of the UH Mānoa art department. There are three additional murals of Jean Charlot’s on the UH Mānoa campus.)
Charlot’s art is featured on her website Autochthonous Hawaiʻi and on her Instagram, where she posts the pictures along with a short write-up about each species featured in her artwork.
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