NEWS IN JANUARY

Quite a few distractions have taken up my art time and on January 3, the first working day of the new year, I got a call in the middle of a family crisis from Kip, the AIR Ranger in charge! Dismissing myself from the ruckus, I spoke with him an he asked if I might wish to share the month of May with another camper.  It seems the casita will be empty as the Artist for May has a great big travel trailer and only needs a hookup in a different area of the park... so if I did not mind sharing my month, I could come in the spring.

I JUMPED on it!
I was there last year in May and found the wildlife reference I was hunting in Colorado - pronghorn and bighorn sheep - wandering around, taunting me!! I used a couple of them on my rock art.

The chilly months elsewhere are wonderful here in the Valley of the Sun - Phoenix AZ, but the summers are hell.  And our summers tend to start about March in the 90s.  YES I would love to come in spring.  TODAY it is in the high 90s and I am feeling it.

So the blog went live on March 16.  

45 days out from the month I get to move in!

I hope to update it regularly during the residency, but I understand I may have to set up camp in the visitor center with my laptop during business hours.  This will be a major upheaval!  I turn to the internet at home in town for solace and companionship with human beings.  I am a private painter but love doing demos and talking to people.  I will have NO PROBLEM interacting and enjoying my time with the public, but look forward with dread and anticipation to the isolation.  It will not be hard to fill my time making pictures.   They bounce in my mind all the time, but the purpose of my residency is to experience it.  But I tend to be a night owl and this is going to be a project about ravens....they fly all day!

The theme I presented dealt with following the ravens where they lead.

I was kept company last spring by any number of black birds that were watching me and the other visitors as we watched them.  Somewhat like useless tour guides who simply shepherded us.

Long before humans realized this was a special place, the animals just watched.....

I firmly have vowed to let the experience as a visitor - simply being there - fill me.
I want to meet other visitors, and the people working there, visiting the park for their livelihood, coming to explore, and dig into visitors of the past.  It will be trying to subjectively celebrate the experience.  Not a hiker or an outdoors-woman, I am a visitor.  I expect to connect with the nature that we all need to recharge, but as an artist I have a give that will help me make permanent those moments to share with others.....

Wish me luck!