First post from the coast!

Whew! It's been several epic weeks since I last checked in with Brush and Baren. I hated to leave you all hanging, but all I had to show for a month of effort was a huge pile of boxes. Not terribly interesting.

But I'm finally here in Maine and my belongings are all more or less stowed until I can find a place to live and work. There's still a bit of shuffling to do, but I'm now fighting a wee bit of a cold so I've decided to just let things sit where they are for a few days. The press and my inventory are safe, and that's the biggest thing. Literally!

If any readers were following along on Instagram you probably saw a few photos from the journey, but here's a quick recap. In all we traveled 2,419 miles through 12 states in 4.5 days. We weren't trying to exhaust ourselves, but we weren't dawdling much, either.

My friend Sue flew out from Maine on October 30, and an intrepid crew of Salida helpers got everything loaded on October 31... both a trick AND a treat. I wouldn't have thought it possible, but we got absolutely everything I own, personally and professionally, into one 16-foot rental truck.

It took longer than expected to get on the road... we didn't leave Salida until early afternoon on November 1. But after a quick stop in Colorado Springs we were finally underway, and the view of Colorado in my rearview mirror took on a surreal quality.

I tried taking a few random shots of the sunset whilst driving... just aiming the phone over my shoulder and clicking. I got a lot of crooked horizons, but you get the idea...

The next day we crossed in to Nebraska, where we stopped for coffee with an old college friend and then visited the Rowe Audubon Sanctuary on the Platte River near Kearney. Rowe Sanctuary is the site of a huge sandhill crane spectacle during spring migration, but the fall season is quiet and a bit lonely. We made a quick sketching stop here and then got back on the road and into Iowa after dark.

Dinner that night was in the bowling alley on the back of the motel where we stayed. Definitely a small town Iowa adventure.

We crossed the mighty Mississippi River at lunch time the next day, and made a sketch-and-sandwich stop on the Illinois side. In this photo Sue is looking at interesting fossils in the shoreline rocks.

So let's see... where are we now? Illinois. Then Indiana. Then Ohio. We spent the night in Montpelier, Ohio... former home to Sue's grandparents and a place she visited often during her childhood. We of COURSE made the pilgrimage to her grandparents' former house and did some drive-by photography.

From Ohio we cut through a corner of Pennsylvania and then crossed into New York. My biggest memory of that stretch is that the road went down and down and down for what seemed like hundreds of miles. All I could think of was how happy I was that we weren't on the west-bound side having to go up and up and up with a heavy truck.

Autumn color was past peak, but there was still enough to make the drive a pretty one. Just before dark we made a stop in Allegany State Park. No sketching this time, but a much-needed stretch and a short hike.

Embiggenable with a click

I am really looking forward to learning all these new deciduous trees! Beech was prevalent in this area, and some maples. And something I couldn't identify with leaves the size of my head. Not an aspen leaf to be found.

We stayed that night with former Puffineers in Binghamton, NY... a town whose name made me think of old McHale's Navy episodes. (It was a TV sitcom in the US in the 1960s.)

And then it was the final push. New York, Massachusetts, a wee chunk of New Hampshire, and then Maine! It had been a smooth, if long, journey, with only a few sprinkles of rain the entire trip. We arrived at my temporary digs after dark, unloaded some of the truck into a friend's garage, and collapsed into bed, intending to empty the rest into a storage unit the next day.

Or not.

Sue had gone home overnight (where they'd been without power for a week already, but that's another story). When she came back in the morning we discovered this! The front driver's side tire had gone completely flat! How lucky were we that this didn't happen on the road? And how lucky was I that I had taken the advice of the rental agent in Colorado Springs and paid the extra fee for roadside assistance?

I made the call and waited for the repair truck.

And waited.

And waited.

In the end it was 27 hours before anyone got to me. The clock was ticking... I had to have the truck unloaded and returned by the end of the day Tuesday... and by Tuesday morning at 10 I still had no technician. The dispatch service assigned 3 different vendors before we finally got one to show up... three cheers for Bob of B & B Truck Repair in Saco (about 100 miles away). He made the long drive to Bristol and had the tire fixed in less than 20 minutes. We got the truck unloaded at the storage place in Edgecomb and returned to the rental company in Brunswick with 45 minutes to spare.

After which we drove an hour north and went to ukulele practice. Because that's what you do at the end of an epic week.

Tomorrow night I make my first official appearance as a Mainer... I'll be a presenter at the Midcoast PechaKucha Night at the Camden Opera House. If you're anywhere on the coast, come on out! It looks like a great evening, with 7 or 8 presenters and a reception after. Doors open at 6:30, program starts at 7:00.

Whew.

Linos and road trips and shows, oh my!

I've been on the road a LOT the last few weeks, a circumstance that will continue right up until I leave for my annual trek to Maine in early July. Yesterday I talked a friend in to joining me on a delivery run to Oh Be Joyful Gallery in Crested Butte, just over the Continental Divide from Salida. Well, maybe it's not just over the Divide. It's about a 90-minute drive via Highway 50 over Monarch Pass... but the even-more-beautiful trip over Cottonwood Pass is longer and slower. Guess which way we came home?

Afternoon clouds gathering over Crested Butte South

Crested Butte is famous for its amazing wildflowers (and wildflower festival in July), but of course it's early June, so the bloom has barely started. We did see lots of fields of fading larkspur surrounded by more dandelions than I've ever encountered. They were really quite beautiful.

Dandelions and larkspur, aspen and the edge of the Crested Butte

Cottonwood Pass has only recently opened for the season, as snow lingers long and deep at its 12,126-foot summit. The road is dirt for the last 14 miles of the approach from the west side, which is why I was so happy that the rain held off until we were maybe 3 or 4 miles from the top. It can get really slippery really fast up there.

Looking back towards Taylor Reservoir on the Cottonwood Pass climb.
Rain is definitely coming.

Plenty of snow left on the top, although the rain will melt it quickly.

On the east side of the pass ("my" side) the road is paved, so the rainy descent was no problem.

Whew! Another trip checked off the list. But in just two days I'll be off AGAIN... to......

"Shower with a Friend," reduction linocut, @Sherrie York

The opening of the exhibition Animalia, at the Loveland Museum in Loveland, Colorado. I'll be there both for the museum's Member Preview on June 9 and for the public opening on June 10. I have two linocuts in this show, including an old favorite: the last remaining "Shower with a Friend." (If you have "always wanted one" this could be your last chance!)

From Loveland I'll head to Estes Park for a couple of days, in part to give a short workshop for the Bird Conservancy of the Rockies. After that I'll return home for a couple of days and then leave AGAIN... but thinking about that too far ahead just makes me more tired.

Believe it or not, there IS a linocut on the carving table. This afternoon I'll get paper set up for it, and maybe print the first color tomorrow before I'm on the road again.

Shifting gears... again

The Writer's Cottage at the Bingham Cottage residency, Hog Island, Maine

August. Hard to believe that I left Colorado in May and am still away. I've changed hats yet again... from Program Manager to Euro-traveler to Instructor... and now Artist-in-Residence.

I'm still on Hog Island, but I've moved from the camp peninsula on to the main part of the island. I've made my own camp in two historic buildings, known jointly as the Bingham Cottages.

Millicent Todd Bingham gave Hog Island to the National Audubon Society in 1936, naming the Todd Wildlife Sanctuary for her mother and establishing the camp's mission as a teaching facility. What we today call "the Binghams" are the last two remaining buildings of the original 8 that were the summer compound of Millicent's parents, David Todd and Mabel Loomis Todd. Mabel's story is long and complex (and a bit scandalous), but she is probably best known as the woman who first edited and brought to publication the poetry of Emily Dickinson.

The cottages were restored in 2012 through the efforts of the Friends of Hog Island volunteer association. In 2014 both a writer and a playwright spent time working in these cottages, and the Bingham Cottage Artist Residency program came to an informal start.

Part of my tenure here is to help formalize the residency program, which we hope to launch and  begin taking applications for this fall. I'm staying in the cottages with one eye to potential residents who won't necessarily already have a connection to this place and its wonders (or quirks). A sort of shakedown cruise to iron out the wrinkles. If you're in to mixed metaphors. Which apparently I am.

The Main Lodge porch

Main Lodge interior. Photos of the interior as it looked during the
early 1900s are on the wall in the back.

The cottages are "rustic," which means no water and no power. Well... there's a small solar panel which provides enough juice to power a laptop or cell phone and a small light in the Lodge, but the Writer's cabin is strictly off-off grid. And yes, there's an outhouse.

But I have my own beach (when the tide is out), my own red squirrels, and from time to time my own bald eagles perched in the "yard."

What I don't have is a lot of success yet with drawing. Mostly I keep trying to tackle things that are entirely too ambitious, too complex. When I sit down and draw the things I've been carting around in my pockets, no problem. But what I love most about this landscape is the intricacies of ferns and mosses and the ridiculous shades of green. When it comes to drawing, this landscape does NOT love me back.

Seed cones of white pine and red spruce, spruce branch with lichen

At least not yet.

Remains of an old rock wall

Of course part of the "problem" is that I've set myself up to try to accomplish entirely too many things while I'm here. The project I arrived wanting to do has already morphed into something else. And there's the residency to hash out. And some interp displays to get started on. And a couple of little sessions to do at Family Camp next week. And of course there's still a social schedule. ;-) So I'm constantly distracted. And while I'm seeing a zillion potential linocuts, that's not what I thought I would be doing, so of course I didn't outfit myself for it. Ah, well. I'll figure it out.

Until then, I'm enjoying many beautiful sunsets (doesn't this look like a good potential lino to you?) and the companionship of waves and seabirds. Not a bad way to spend my time.

The Epic of Presston

Mission accomplished! After an epic journey that despite flawless execution somehow took two days longer than expected, Presston is settled in his new home.

I had intended to take loads of photos, but there are only so many view-out-the-front-of-the-moving-truck shots that one can tolerate. My picture-taking started out well enough:

I so rarely fly west, it was a surprise to find myself over
my own valley. That's Twin Lakes and the Forebay
in the center, and I think the controlled burn at O'Haver Lake
in the background. And yeah. Snow.

My intrepid companion in adventure and I left Salida at oh-dark-hundred last Monday and drove to Woodland Park to leave my car and catch a ride to the Denver airport. From Denver we took a bare bones flight to Las Vegas ($57!), where we were met by the indomitable Suzanne Hackett-Morgan of the Goldwell Open Air Museum.

Suzanne and the Barbie Jeep drove us to Pahrump, Nevada to pick up a very large rental truck, and then we were off in to the Mohave desert to collect Presston and some other equipment. At this point I think G started to wonder just what he'd agreed to.

The schlepping team: Suzanne, David, Greg, oh SHOOT, 
I forgot his name, Dane, and Richard.

In Beatty Suzanne rounded up some help and we moved Presston, two tables, a cabinet, a drying rack, a hot plate, and other miscellaneous stuff into the truck. This is a far simpler statement than it was an activity. Presston alone weighs over 400 pounds and it was 90 degrees in Beatty... a cooling-off for the locals, but an abrupt return to summer for someone who had just left snowy peaks.

Last light from the Barn, click to embiggen

 But we managed to finish up and to get some other items schlepped out to the Goldwell Barn, just as the last light disappeared from Death Valley.

Suzanne treated us to dinner at the Sourdough Saloon, where we met some local characters and where I found the coolest door latch in a women's restroom in a bar ever. Well, maybe not ever. But certainly in a long time. Not that I spend much time in bars. Or in bathrooms in bars. Oh, nevermind.

We stumbled to bed (from fatigue, not bar offerings), and the next morning saw oh-dark-hundred AGAIN. Gas station coffee and breakfast sandwiches in hand we headed east. It looked like this:

And a little while later, it looked like this:

The good news is that those thin clouds became thicker clouds and we had overcast skies for the next two days of driving. Not so picturesque for photography, but certainly nice and cool for desert travel.

We ended up driving for almost 15 hours on Tuesday, arriving in Albuquerque, New Mexico well after dark and unfortunately also after they closed northbound I-25 for construction. Tired and cranky AND having to find a new route across town in a 16-foot truck? Definitely a trip low point. But we made it, found a place to stay, and were satisfied to only have a 4.5-hour drive the next day.

Wednesday we were in Colorado in time for lunch in Alamosa, and then the final push for home. G and I unloaded the tables and made some decisions about how to set up the living-room-now-studio-space, and then gave up for the day. (I had a plan, but of course it completely changed once we had the actual equipment.) Thursday it rained all day, but we finished sorting equipment and studio, put some items (like a huge drying rack that I can't fit in my space just now) in to storage, and welcomed a cadre of young men from the Salida High School cross-country team to help schlep Presston into place. (The scariest moment for me.)

Definitely NOT the hot, dry Mohave. Headed to Colorado Springs
for the last steps of the journey.

We were not quite finished yet, though. Yesterday (Friday) I had to pick up my car on the way to returning the truck in Colorado Springs and a piece of equipment that we brought with us for Colorado College had to be delivered. And of course I had to go cheer for the cross country team at their District meet in Cañon City on the way home. I owed them that, at least.

So now it's Saturday, and although there are still some shelves to install and some lighting to sort out, the studio space is looking good. Presston dominates the scene, of course, as he should.

click to embiggen these funky phone-camera panoramas

Presston!

For me the rest of today will be about post-trip bookkeeping, email triage, and a desperate trip to the grocery store. (And probably a nap.) But from time to time I'll get up and wander to the studio... find a little more dust to clean off of Presston... and start to find my way to a new working method. It's a new era for this printmaker!

OOPS! I almost forgot to mention that Presston made at least part of his journey on the infamous Route 66. The one photo I have from the trip that isn't from the window of the truck! (It's from the gift shop of our stop for Second Breakfast, but hey...)

P*-minus 48 hours and counting! (*Press)

An older field drawing to keep you company.

By the time this posts on Monday morning, my friend G and I will be on our way to the airport and our rendezvous with Presston.

It's a complicated journey: drive to Colorado Springs to leave a vehicle (2 hrs), catch a ride to DIA (2 hrs), fly to Vegas (2 hrs), catch a ride to pick up the rental truck (1  hr), drive another hour to Presston's current location to load up. Hopefully we will sleep like logs and then begin the 1,000-mile drive back to Salida Tuesday morning. We'll unload here, then continue back to Colorado Springs to drop off additional equipment and return the truck. And THEN back to the car and home to settle back in to my space and try to figure out how to work a whole new way!

In theory we'll be back in Salida just about 48 hours after we leave, but it's hard to say. This sort of epic road trip seemed a lot easier 20 years ago. I already want more sleep. But...ooooooh! I'm getting a PRESS!

Fieldwork Friday: Mesa Verde road trip

The view from Park Point, Mesa Verde National Park

Summer almost always escapes before I get a chance to appreciate it. Exhibitions, workshops, and contract projects fill the calendar May through September, and when October arrives I feel like a kid who spent their summer vacation with a fever and only got better when school started.

Thank goodness, then, that we managed to squeak in a quick camping trip earlier this week. Mesa Verde National Park is about 4.5 hours from Salida, and centuries away from my busy daily life. I hadn't been there in at least 15 years, so it was time to get acquainted again.

Everywhere!

Spring has been slow to arrive there, too, although leaf-out and bloom seemed to accelerate through the three days we were in the park. I love Mesa Verde for its dramatic landscape and wildlife (we saw snakes and lizards and bats, lots of birds, and heard coyotes) and for the opportunity to contemplate the long history of our continent's native peoples.

Cliff Palace. Guided tours take visitors through the remains of this
spectacular construction. Let's just say one begins the tour on the mesa top
on the left side, climbs down to explore the ruins, and climbs out via
ladders and narrow stone steps on the right. How do I always end up
in places that challenge my discomfort with heights?

Centuries before Europeans arrived in North America, the ancestors of today's pueblo peoples settled in the Four Corners region, where Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Arizona meet. Around 550 CE the Ancestral Puebloans lived and farmed on the area's mesa tops, eventually moving into the alcoves of the canyon walls below around 1200. By 1300 they had abandoned all of it and the area was deserted. Why they moved from the mesas to the cliffs and then dispersed is a matter of mystery, study, and speculation.

Coming into Cliff Palace.

Exploring the site.

I enjoy turning puzzles like this around in my head, coming away with questions rather than answers, and with a renewed sense of awe. A few days of watching and wondering are my kind of reality check.

Of course really good sunsets help, too.

Home again.. and exhibition news!

Whew! What an amazing couple of weeks I've had! It's going to take a while to process the adventure, but there's no room for omphaloskepsisizing just now. It's show time!

With barely 24 hours of home time under my belt (and a huge pile of things still to be sorted on my desk) we headed out yesterday for the opening of the 12th Annual National Small Print Show in Creede, Colorado. High wind and a huge fire in New Mexico made for eerie driving... nothing like getting battered around in dust and smoke to make you wish you were back on a train in the Netherlands or something.

The show was, as usual, very well attended, and lots of pieces found new homes. Print-focused exhibitions are always a delight (to me, anyway). Where else is one able to see so many printmaking techniques displayed all at once?

Of course I was honored to have one of my linocuts awarded First Prize! Would you look at that cute blue ribbon? On the wall opposite my pieces were works by Dan Welden (of solar etching fame) and Stephen Quiller (watermedia painter and hometown Creede favorite son). Good company, eh?

The National Small Print Show runs through June 25 at the Creede Repertory Theatre, and then portions of the exhibition will head to the Center for the Arts in Evergreen, Colorado in July.

But that's not all! This week I'll host a reception for my solo exhibition "Familiars" at the Paquette Gallery here in Salida. The show was installed just before I left for Holland and continues through June 10. The reception is from 5-7pm this Friday, June 1. If you're in the neighborhood, come on by!

Exhibition News Update

It's been a tad chaotic here the last week or so... still stumbling along in Admin mode. I shipped some work off to a show, ticked the last of the current jury deadlines off my to-do list, and THEN... responses to the last batch of applications started to come in. So far everyone's saying YES! Eek!

First: I was accepted to the Crested Butte Arts Festival in August. I haven't ever participated in an art festival before, but some friends have been encouraging (read: arm-twisting) me to give it a try so I sent off an application. It's a nice show, exhibiting typically strong work and enjoying good crowds. I'm delighted with the acceptance, but a tad overwhelmed about the logistics of it all.

Then: Because of a little scheduling hiccup at the Paquette Gallery in Salida, my October show has been moved to MAY! Thankfully I've got plenty of work on hand at the moment, although you can bet my framer's not going to be happy with me this week.

And then, (drumroll please) the biggest news of all:

Way back in 1994, I was invited to participate in an art and conservation project in the Extremadura region of Spain. The project was the brainchild of the recently-launched, Netherlands-based, Artists for Nature Foundation (ANF), and through it I met remarkable international artists who have become not only respected colleagues but some of my dearest friends.

So here we are in 2012... and it's ANF's 20th anniversary! To celebrate, ANF will hold an exhibition and Jubilee weekend in De Bilt, Netherlands in May.... and I'm going to be there! The trip was not on my radar at all, but everything seemed to happen all at once and off I go. Can't. Wait.

Of course this means that I have to cram April AND May's tasks in to April... but it's a small price to pay to connect with an organization and people who mean so much to me. Sheesh. What am I doing dinking around online? Gotta get to work!

Where I spent last Fieldwork Friday

Hint: A long way from home.

A fire in the west as we headed north through Wyoming and...

... the new growth after a previous fire in our destination.
Yellowstone National Park!

Yep. We went to Yellowstone for the annual gathering of the Journal-Keepers... a fabulous group of women who keep illustrated field journals. We meet for about four days once each year in some spectacular place, and this year the circumstances were such that the DM could join the Men's Auxiliary and share the adventure.

Of course, having David along meant I was more inclined to be a tourist than to get a lot of drawing done. I did make a couple of sketches I like, so once I finish sorting through the piles of stuff that came out of the car and get the scanner running again, I'll share them. In the meantime, a few photos from the park, where we saw almost all of the Park's "charismatic megafauna" the very first morning. (Bison, grizzly bears, elk, coyote, deer, and WOLVES! Black bear we saw a couple of days later.)

It's an early morning bison jam. Again.

Who knew bison were such willing and capable swimmers?

Pre-swim dust bath. Yes, it was that close and No, I didn't
approach it. It approached US from behind.
Who knew bison were also sneaky?

Bison in the foreground, but at the far edge of the valley,
where the forest comes down to the valley floor,
we saw the wolves of the Canyon pack cavorting.
We could see the white-colored alpha female with the naked eye,
but good looks required a spotting scope.

Yup. Grizzly bears in the lower right. Click to embiggen.

Plenty of birds, too. We saw sandhill cranes and pelicans,
bald eagles and tons of osprey. Here on a nest in the Grand 
Canyon of the Yellowstone.
I think I left this image biggish and clickable, too.

And then, of course, there were the thermal features!
My family visited here when I was a child and I remember well
that my brother's favorites were the fountain paint pots.
I like them, too... Erupting mud!

Great Prismatic Spring. 'Nuf said.

Great Fountain Geyser making a great fountain.

Sketching waterlilies on the Continental Divide.
It was so hot that watercolors evaporated before I finished
each stroke. Palette puddles of color were no longer puddles
every time I reached to fill my brush.

Hm. I don't remember the name of this spring, but it gives a good
sense of the overall landscape.

With the DM at Artist Point.
 

1700+ miles later we are happy to have gone and happy to be home. We returned to Salida via all the back roads we could manage... obliged to spend only 30 total miles on interstate highways. Now to the oh-so-familiar routine of shoveling out the car and wading through correspondence. This afternoon I have to go take down my show at Cafe Dawn, so it's right back in to the swing of things for us!