By Jason Sweeney

Paleontologist-artist Paul Jamison, who grew up in Los Altos, exhibits his work at this year’s San Francisco Flower and Garden Show. The event is open through Sunday.

Paleontologist-artist Paul Jamison is exhibiting his fossil art at the 20th annual San Francisco Flower and Garden Show, through Sunday at the Cow Palace, San Francisco.

The event is one of the world’s largest and most celebrated gardening events, according to Dawn Stranne, a public relations consultant for the PR Consultants Group.

Jamison hopes his fossil art will be of interest to local collectors because many in the Bay Area have a strong connection with the ocean.

Jamison, formerly of Los Altos, attended Los Altos High School and Foothill College and earned a bachelor’s degree in geology at Utah State University.

He did a year of graduate study at the university. He now lives in Logan, Utah, where he transforms 50-million-year-old fossil fish into wall art, sculpture, tables and tile panels.

Jamison said he spends four months a year digging in the wilds of Wyoming and eight months cleaning the stone and creating his art.

Jamison’s parents, who reside in Los Altos, have a display of their son’s unusual artwork in their home.

“As a little guy he was always interested in reptiles,” said Jamison’s mother, Rita. “He would catch rattlesnakes and milk them just to see if he could do it. Sometimes he would kill the rattlesnake and skin it and bring it home and admire the patterns.”

Although Jamison is not proud of his rattlesnake-hunting past, the lessons he learned as a child hunting snakes around the Bay Area have helped him in his work today.

“I spent a lot of time hunting snakes as a kid, and that taught me to be a good observer,” he said. “I use those same observation skills looking for fossils.”

When asked how he made the jump from science to art, Rita said, “It was his muse. He thought they (fossils) were beautiful. He realized he could polish them and reveal the beauty of the stone beneath the fossil.”

“The paleontology came first,” Jamison said. “And then one thing led to the next.”

Jamison remains very much dedicated to the scientific side of paleontology.

He has donated fossil specimens to museums around the country and abroad.

When asked what her son’s fossil art adds to her home, Rita said, “For a person who feels a connection with nature, fossil art offers a sense of timelessness, a continuity with the past. It is an aspect of nature that existed millions of years ago.”

Why does Jamison do what he does? “I love digging fossils,” he said.

For more information on the San Francisco Flower and Garden Show, log on to www.gardenshow.com.