What started as an idea five months prior became real on a beautiful spring day in April 2015. The inaugural 6&6 cohort gathered together for the first time at the Stone House on the Yetman Trail in the Tucson Mountains. Over a delicious potluck picnic and amidst the calls of the cactus wrens each of us shared our story of how we arrived to the desert and what we aim to accomplish in our work. We took a day to describe our inspiration and how we manifest that in our science or art.

The following themes that cross the science-art boundary emerged:

• Provide a sense of narrative with work. Tell stories.
• Encounter. Work that captures a moment. Transports a person to that place of wow.
• Connection to something larger
• Stage a moment, the moment
• Distort Time
  • Capture a moment in time and extend it or slow it down
  • Make that which is hard to see apparent (past, present, or future)
• Observation as beginning. The more you look, the more you see and more questions emerge
• Juxtaposition. Contrasts. one illuminates the other
  • Desert–Sea
  • Art–Science
  • Mystery–Answers
  • Playful–Serious
  • Hope–Despair
• Finding and showing patterns
• Connect people to place
• Slow down
  • observe
  • quiet
  • pay attention