The Golden Compass

I'm not even sure how I stumbled upon this website... but WAH! New Line's making a movie of The Golden Compass...

I've been trying to embed the trailer, but can't seem to get it right... so you'll have to go there on your own.

Another week o' workshops

I'm off today for a week of workshops at the Crested Butte Wildflower Festival. (A little field sketching, a little journal-making.) This is the fourth or fifth summer that I've taught classes for the Festival, but it's the first time the schedule actually gives me a "down day" on site. I'm not entirely sure what I'll do with an actual day off... it's been such a long time since I've had one.

Not sure if I'll have internet access, so full report upon return.

I can see clearly now...

Opening the window blinds this morning sent me dashing out the door so fast that I left without my binoculars! Last night's rain and this morning's sun combined to create a lovely and rare "temporary fog event" in the valley, and I wanted to be out in it.

The binnies were sorely missed, as the morning was far "birdier" than it's been of late, but I did have my little camera in my pocket.

Part of the reason I nearly sprinted down to the lake was that the back of my mind has been occupied for several weeks with images made by my friend Michael. He caught the valley on a fog-bound morning last autumn and took a series of photos that I just love. The thing was, I couldn't quite describe why. Yes, yes... nice atmosphere. Yes, yes, striking compositions. "Something I might paint." But why?

Eureka! This morning the haze made it all clear. (No, really. I'm serious.)

There before me was a familiar landscape transformed and simplified. The fog isolated a single hill in a complex piñon-juniper slope and suddenly I saw the shape of THAT hill for the first time. Those pesky, attention-demanding mountain peaks? Gone! Rubbed out by a cloud. The mind-boggling profusion of leaves? Smeared to a lovely soft green shape.

Of course, the fog also created a charming soft and subtle color palette. The kind I can appreciate but never, ever pull off successfully either in paint or in ink.

I scribbled the words "isolated landforms" on the back of my hand, and later on a little piece of paper I found in my jacket pocket. (Along with the cryptic notes: BUOR FY, choco rio, catalyst, foreign air, stillborn fawn, no bins.) Make of all that what you will, there is something about pared down, stripped down, fogged down, even desolate landscapes that drops me every single time.

But, as with most atmospheric weather events here in the 300-days-of-sunshine-a-year Center of the Universe, the magic was short-lived. A short climb up from the river to the mesa and I was eliminating the middle ground instead of the background, squinting into crystalline light, and wishing I'd eaten some breakfast before I bolted from the house.

In all, a satisfying walk... bins or no bins.

Eight Random Facts

A Snail's Eye View has tagged me with my first-ever meme! I feel like Steve Martin in The Jerk, shouting "I AM somebody!"when his name appears in the phone book for the very first time.

Here are the rules for Eight Random Facts:

• Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
• People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
• At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
• Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

And here are the eight random facts:

1) Despite my obviously European blonde-and-hazel aspect, I am in fact one-fourth Mexican.

2) Someone, somewhere, has a photo of me with a bloody knife in my teeth whilst I was learning to castrate bulls. A friend who was present at The Big Event snapped it with what she thought was my camera. Nope.

3) Hanging in my studio are two arrows, one impaled precisely through the nock by the other. I shot them myself on the very first day I owned them. (I bought my bow just last year.) Robin Hood, eat your heart out. (And yes, smarties, they were relatively close to the center of the target when I did it.)

4) I am still in contact with the boy who left a note in my desk when we were eight years old that said, "I love you, I think you are beautiful." (And I still have the ring he gave me when we were 10.)

5) Staedtler-Mars Lumograph pencils. Period.

6) The ratio of edible foods to museum-bound specimens in my freezer is approximately 1:5.

7) Sure, I have the usual childhood bangups, but I also sport scars bestowed by two species of eagle, three species of hawk, one owl, and a Mexican gray wolf. Cool, eh?

8) I can't bring myself to eat things that can't decide if they're solid or liquid: Jell-o, pudding, custard creme. *shudder* Ew.

Perhaps Number Nine will be that I'm not sure I know 8 other bloggers well enough to tag them, but I'll do what I can. Willy, Karine, Debby, Katherine, Susan, Carla... tag, you're it!

Time off IS good behavior

Took a walk this morning for the first time in a week. (Ack!) The trail welcomed me back with little treasures.... which I then had to carry home in my outstretched flat palm for almost 2 miles. I wonder what the neighbors thought.

(Note to self: perhaps a small plastic box in your pocket would be a good idea.)

This former monarch looked pretty good for having been stepped on (presumably). Not TOO tattered.

TEN

I spent most of last week herding cats.

It was Upper Arkansas TEN week, a week-long outdoor education workshop that I help organize and present for area teachers. Wrangling 30 teachers in a class during their summer recess can be great fun or a great trial, but this year it was sheer delight. We had a fabulous group of enthusiastic, engaged, thoughtful, and oh-so-flexible participants and it was a great week. I didn't get any sleep, mind you. But we had a good time. Here's the gang... thanks again to all of you!

You can't go home again...

... Unless, perhaps, you go by a different route.

The last month has been absurdly busy, and in the past two weeks it all took on the quality of an uncontrolled steep descent on greased rollerblades. (Yes, that shrieking, flailing blur that shot past you might have been me.)

Strangely enough, a lot of this running around has taken me back to territories and people I haven't seen in 5, 7, even 10 years. Despite being tied to a local workshop this entire week, I made the run to Golden and back one evening (5 hours driving round-trip) to attend an event at the Foothills Art Center. (Organized for CultureHaus by my friend Michael.) I lived in Golden for 10 years, but hadn't set foot there in the last seven.

It was the third time in as many weeks that I had gone into once-familiar-but-long-abandoned territory. All of the places I have lately revisited have changed, of course-- some subtly and some startlingly. But going back has made it very clear that I have changed, too.

I'm not sure how to describe the feeling. In a strange way I felt as though I was in disguise. I recognized the places, but I was never certain that the places recognized me.

Is this how Rip Van Winkle felt when he came down from the mountain? It seems silly to be brought up short by the realization that life went on without me in places where I once belonged. But somehow the trajectories of these old stomping grounds seem to have been so linear, while my own path has been more like a stumbling drunk wearing one high heeled shoe in the dark on gravel near a cliff. (That I found my way back at all seems like proof of chaos theory.)

Still, there was something exciting about coming back to these places as a different person, via a different road. The view is different, the perspective is different, and the possibilities are endless. It's like the ultimate "do-over." I can build new relationships with old landscapes.

But they won't be home again. That's here. And now. Where I'm still wearing those skates and laughing maniacally as I rocket up and over the next hill.

A quick catching up

Ooph. Crazy few days. Have just returned from two days of teaching on the Front Range, where it was hot, hot, hot. I guess it IS about to be summer. We spent the morning at the Paint Mines Interpretive Park in El Paso County... one of the great hidden secrets of Colorado's eastern plains. Here's a little shot of some of our workshop participants making sketches of the "hoodoos."

And for Karine, because she wasn't here to see the carnage for herself, a few pics from the Hooligan Race. I actually don't know if they ever finished the race, since after the first 4 heats we got a crazy thunderstorm with big lightning and lots of water and I high-tailed it on home. The Mountain Mail's website seems to be down at the moment, so I can't check.

More when I've recovered from the last couple of days. (And sorry, Snail... no karaoke happened. Well, maybe as I sang loudly whilst trying to stay awake on the drive home.)

What's to come...

I am off this afternoon to the opening reception for the Business of Art Center show in Manitou Springs, after putting the final touches to the Salida Café show just a bit ago. The 59th (I think) Annual FIBArk is underway... every square foot of space downtown is littered with kayaks and their pilots. Whitewater racers from everywhere are in our little town, and it's pandemonium.

The pro races are fun to watch, but the REAL entertainment is tomorrow night at the Hooligan Race. Entry requirements? "If it floats and isn't a boat, it's an entry." You have to wear a PFD. They encourage helmets. And if you're too drunk, too bad-- no race for you. (Although I think for some of the "craft" I've seen, one would have to be a least a LITTLE drunk to think about riding down the river.) I'll try to get down there tomorrow night to watch, but in the meantime, here are a couple of shots from... hmmm... 2005, looks like.

Yikes, here it comes!

Annual FIBark craziness is looming.

We're a town of (depending on who you ask) about 6,000. Yesterday's paper says they're expecting 30,000 for the festival. Seems like a good time to stay home and get work done.

That, or leave town for a week.

Linos, linos everywhere

Painting, Prints, and Drawings
at
Bongo Billy's Salida Café
June 14-August 14

Salida Art Walk
June 22-24

Linocut Demo at the Salida Café
Saturday, June 23
1:00pm