March 5, 2017

I had a great time at the reception for my exhibit at the Maturango Museum on Friday. I knew it was going to be a good day when I was sitting at an intersection waiting for the light to change and saw my name up in lights across the street. That’s a first for me! (Click on the video below to see a short video clip of the scrolling message on the display.)

A very engaged group of about 35 people showed up for the reception and I enjoyed the conversations and discussion, especially those following my artist’s talk titled “The Importance of Vision, Inspiration, and Theft in the Creative Process.” Here’s a photo of some of the audience. They are all smiling either because they enjoyed the talk or because it was finally over!

All in all it was a great evening and I’m thankful to Andrea Pelcher and the other staff at the museum for providing the opportunity to exhibit and all the work they did for the reception, and of course to everyone who showed up.

Ubehebe #1
Death Valley National Park, California
2017

Early one morning, I spent a couple of hours hiking the rim of the Ubehebe Crater in the northern part of Death Valley. I only walked about two miles total but the mostly dark volcanic ground combined with various contrasting plants and soils, aided with the long shadows from the low morning sun, made for some great photography. It seems like I often only walked a few steps before I saw something else worthy of pointing my camera at. That slowed my progress on the hike considerably.

This particular image shows the interior slope of the 600′ deep crater where it meets the flat, dried crater floor. The very light color of the crater floor was, I presume, alkaline material left on the ground after rainwater runoff collected there and then evaporated.