Back to Colorado, back to work!

It's been about a week since I returned from Maine to Colorado. The journey itself was epic, as I ended up being awake and in motion for about 36 hours straight. Ooph. My last flight reached Denver just before 1:00am local time (so 3:00 am by my east-coast-regulated internal clock) and there was still the 3-plus-hour drive through the mountains to go!

Luckily I had a friend willing to drive my car from Salida to Denver at that hour and we made the trip back through the mountains without mishap. My one consolation for all this late-night travel? We made the drive accompanied by the peak of the Perseid meteor showers! Once we cleared the light pollution of the Front Range, the sky was clear and the moon had set.  We stopped for about 20 minutes or so at the top of 10,000-foot Kenosha Pass... amused to find almost two dozen cars already there. (You have to understand that Kenosha Pass is probably 90 minutes from Denver and at the top of South Park... the gateway to a whole lot o' nothin'. It took some effort for folks to get up there.)

I wish I had some nice photos to show you... but hey! It was DARK!

We pulled in to Salida and I unloaded the car just as the sun came up, and then of course I found myself unable to go to sleep. So I just stayed up. Went to the grocery store at 6:00 am. Refueled the car. Started the laundry. Tackled all the little things that need to be done when you've been away for a long time.

And then it was back to the studio STAT! I had another workshop to prep for AND the deadline for Project Postcard at the Woodson Art Museum was fast approaching. Linoleum crumbs were hitting the table almost before my socks were out of the dryer.

I finished two small hand-painted linos and got them shipped to Wisconsin, but since the images for Project Postcard (which takes place during the opening weekend of the Birds in Art exhibition) are supposed to be secret, this is all I can show you until mid-September:

With that task accomplished I tackled the prep for a day-long Illustrated Journal workshop at the Rocky Mountain Land Library's Buffalo Peaks Ranch. It seemed reasonable that preparations for such a workshop should include doing my own journal entry, so I spent some time with all the "weeds" that are blooming in the construction site next door. I haven't managed to sort out their names yet, but here are the brave flora holding their ground amidst chaos:

Embiggenable with a click

The workshop was yesterday, starting with a chilly and overcast morning that quickly gave way to blue skies and perfect temps. By the time I headed home the wind was up and the rain began just as I pulled back in to Salida. In all it was a perfect Colorado summer day: A little bit of many kinds of weather... and sketchbooks.

Clouds and cloud shadows over Buffalo Peaks Ranch

This week it's back to work on the snow scene linocut that I started in June, a show application, a show DEADLINE, and hopefully a day afield with the Land Trust of the Upper Arkansas. (More sketchbook... yay!) I need to balance my urge to cram as much summer as possible into these last days of August with my need to address the looming deadlines... not so easy when I want to be everywhere at once.