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Come to downtown Grand Rapids from 4 – 7 pm for a free, family-friendly community celebration of art and creativity. 

I am excited to announce that I am participating in my hometown’s
First Friday Art Walk (for the first time!), October 4th from 4-7 pm
at Project Care (100 NW 3rd Street).

The Grand Rapids Art Walk is going to be active and full with an additional 200-300 people expected in the area for the Rural Arts and Culture Summit. Stop in at Project Care Free Clinic of Grand Rapids, MN​ at 100 NW 3rd Street (across from the Herald-Review office) to meet me and fellow artist Larissa True.

If the weather is clear – there will be pop-up sales out front with a bonfire and more fun. Light refreshments will be served. I hear smore’s are in the works!

For a full list of venues and artists, check out Grand Rapids Arts. There are 15 venues to choose from and a variety of art from paintings, murals, and photography to live music and wood carvings. The event is free, family friendly and open to the public.

We are #6 on the map.

See you there!

Three weeks ago, I packed my Prius and headed north on I-25, rolling over the hills and plains of Wyoming, South Dakota and North Dakota, traveling 500 miles.  Just before I reached Canada, I turned east and drove another 500 miles. Gradually the prairie gave way to clusters of trees, and I found myself passing through familiar territory of my hometown.  There, I visited my family before continuing the final 75 miles to Duluth, MN.

Today, we finished our first week of class, and I’m exhausted.  Standing in front of an easel for 7 hours a day, copying drawings, measuring angles, distance, space, and line, we search for errors of millimeters, all in preparation for working with a model in October, where fractions of inches and angles make a difference.

Maintaining Focus

One of the greatest challenges is maintaining focus for lengthy periods of time.  Luckily, the time is punctuated with short lectures and critiques.  We generally slip on our headphones and get lost in a world of line and shape, coming up for air at lunchtime.  Occasionally there’s a mutter as we talk to ourselves, or a sigh of frustration as we miss our mark.

Slowly, we are developing our ability to see and enable our hands and pencils create the mark we want. Paper, pencil, eraser.  The simplest of tools that provide the foundation for great works of art.  What will we do with those tools?  Where will this path lead? 

Much like learning to play the piano, we start with the basic notes, finding our own version of middle C with a plumb line.  From there, we practice scales and small melodies of abstract shapes.  To move into chords, we must first master the basic notes.  And to do that, we must practice, and practice, and practice.

First, I will sleep.  Have a great weekend, friends.

PS: It’s been raining all week.  Waves of water and wind.  Definitely not sunny Colorado. Thank goodness for Amazon delivery.  My vitamin D arrived Tuesday.

Sitting in a grain truck, ten feet off the ground, I watch the sun set though a bank of storm clouds. Dust drifts through the air, kicked up by two combines moving in tandem across a field of wheat. A feeling of gratitude washes over me, while I simultaneously sense all that we take for granted.

My uncle, cousin, and their three hired hands work their synchronized dance of harvesting wheat, and I have the privilege of looking into their world for a moment. An average family farm on the plains of North Dakota, they grow wheat, soybeans, and canola. Having already already cleared a field to the north, they moved the equipment to the south field, and hope the impending storm continues to move north.

While I ride along, pestering him with questions, my cousin drives the grain truck and collects wheat from the combines as they work their way across the field. From there it is transferred to the waiting semi-truck trailer and hauled back to the farm. Eventually it will make its way to market.

From the outsiders view the process seems easy. The view from the driver’s seat is another story. As the dust flies through the air and I marvel at the computer screen and the size of the tires, I ask my cousin, “Do you maintain all of this equipment too?” He shrugs his shoulders as if to say, of course we do. How else would it get done? “Yep,” he says as he checks the rear camera on the console and sets the GPS to auto-drive.

The machinations of the farm, from preparing food for the workers to maintaining equipment, deciding what to plant, where to plant, when to plant, when to harvest, when to sell. And the thousands of decisions and actions that goes into this one operation swirls through my mind like a movie in fast forward.

And yet, people across the country do this very day. People run businesses that make the materials, that make the things that we need and use every day. It’s easy to forget what goes into a loaf of bread and assume it will be on the shelf.

And we know this is true for everything. When I left the house Saturday morning to drive a thousand miles across the great expanses of Wyoming, South Dakota and North Dakota to the northwoods of Minnesota with tears leaking out of my eyes, seeking one more embrace, telling my beloved, “I’ll see you soon. I love you,” I took it all for granted. My car, the gas stations, the quality of the road, the beauty of the rolling hills, fields of hay, wheat, sunflowers, grass, open space, even the oil fields were taken for granted.

It’s easy to assume that each of these things will be there when we need them, running in the background of our lives. That the farmers and oil workers, the construction crews and emergency responders will be there when we need them. We take for granted that each day, across our country and our world, people will get up, go to work in the morning, and do their jobs that make the world go round, just as regularly as the sun rises and sets.

Just as easily, it’s easy to take for granted that I will walk back into my home a couple of months from now and feel as if I never left. To believe that my loved one will be waiting for me, and we will pick up where we left off.

In mid July, I was gathering my things for another yurt trip. After a fun adventure in June, I booked a second trip. This time, Andrea Gabel and I were planning a three night getaway to paint in the wilderness of State Forest State Park. We were excited about the trip and ready for some serious painting time.

The night before I was to leave, the phone rang. First of all, I rarely have the ringer volume on. Secondly, the few phone calls I get are usually robo calls. I looked down at the phone. It was my Dad. While my Dad and I get along great. He’s not one to call and ‘shoot the breeze’. Phone calls are generally limited to my birthday and bad news. Needless to say, my first thought was, “what’s wrong?” Please don’t be bad news, please don’t be bad news.

It was bad news. My cousin Jon and his wife Cara had been killed in a car accident. They were only in their late 20s. It was just a normal day. A normal drive. Good weather. A truck crossed the line, and the end was instant. Their little girl survived. Devastating news.

As you can well imagine, I was heartbroken. On the one hand, I felt relieved that my parents were ok, as well as my siblings and their families. On the other hand, I felt devastated for my aunt and uncle and the friends and family of Jon and Cara. The loss welled up and spilled over. Shocked at the news, time crawled to a near standstill.

The next day, I decided to go on our trip anyway. Time in the woods soothes my soul and quiet time felt right. And sure enough, I felt a sense of peace and calm. Especially when we came across a stand of old growth aspens rising up to the sky surrounded by wild columbine, and vistas for miles.

I sat with a tree trunk, drawing for hours. We returned the next day and I did an oil sketch of the scene. Weeks later, after the Celebration of Life and a return to the every day, I revisited the idea and decided to start a fresh piece. From my studies and memory, the painting Aspen Forest developed. After finishing the painting, I realized the prominence of the small aspen tree growing next to the old, rotted trunk. Death and life. Rebirth.

Now available.