Lisa Call

 
My mom has been visiting this week so we spent the last few days vacationing at a friend’s mountain home in Grand Lake, Colorado, which is located at the south entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park. On monday we took a drive up Trail Ridge Road through the Park. As expected it was beautiful.

I love the colors of the dried grasses.
 

 
There wasn’t much snow, even at the top of the pass where they had the road closed for winter, just a few piles from the snow plows, which was all the kids needed. They have mastered making something from nothing.

 
I took the above pictures in Ohio in May at sunrise.

I love this barn. Lines, shapes, history, colors.

 
I’m happy to report I got my work photographed, images processed and my entry form for the juried show ready to mail as I set for my goal for today. Now I’m off to my studio for an hour. It’s been a productive but relaxed day. Very nice.

We are having a blizzard in Denver! Hurray! A day (or 2) off of work. Finally.

Actually we are supposed to be working from home but I sadly had to leave my laptop at work yesterday as it was busy doing something important. So I’m stuck at home unable to really work. How sad (almost).

I was going to take a picture of the snow but it just looks like snow. So instead here is a picture I took last fall at Cherry Creek State Park. I love the color of wild grass and seem to take pictures of it often. I’m not sure it is all that interesting to others but I love it. I think it’s complex and colorful and beautiful.

Yesterday it was near 70 and sunny. Today I woke up to this:

I love Colorado in the fall.

Although Denver proper only got an inch of snow and our tiny 4"-6" isn’t even enough for a delayed start at school . Which is really quite depressing, along with all the school kids in town, I was hoping for a day off work to spend in my studio.

But I did plan ahead and brought my work laptop home and I plan on working from home today to avoid the nasty commute.

Which, of course, means my kids can’t go to school either as I have to drive them in, no buses for our special school. They aren’t sad. Everyone deserves a day off once in a while.

Woke up to our second snow of the year here in Denver. A perfect day to stay inside and work in the studio all day long. Although it is beautiful out there.

My new dyes:

62 yards of fabric curing in the sun after a 4 hour dye session this afternoon:

Fall color and sunset at Cherry Creek State Park (photos taken on Wednesday evening):

First, thanks to all of you for the supportive comments about my grandmother. She will be missed but I have some good memories.

It’s been a pretty unsettling month between my 2 week vacation, getting sick the day we got home, going to my grandmothers funeral 2 weeks later and then last week I got sick again (caught a nasty cold while at the funeral). So I have little to report on the art front. I only managed 7 hours in the studio last week. This week is going better, only 2 days into the week and I’m already at 5 1/2 hours.

I set aside the summer to really focus on my artwork and I accomplished quite a bit. But starting next week (I’m fudging the official start of fall coming this thursday) I’m going to get back to work on the business side of my art in addition to keeping up with 20 hours a week in my studio. I’m going to work on my business goals this weekend and will post my thoughts on that topic later next week.

In the meantime, these photos were taken just outside my front door early one morning last week.

Colorado Sunrise:

I just realized I haven’t posted all week. I’m busy still catching up with life after vacation and trying to stay ahead of the garden.

And now it’s chile season and even though Hatch, New Mexico flooded this year it didn’t hurt the chile crop. Hurray. My local garden shop brings in hatch chiles and roasts them so later this week I’ll go buy a bushel and freeze them.

I grew up in New Mexico so chiles aren’t optional - they are a basic neccesity of life. We had smothered green chile burritos last night with the last of the chiles from last year to make way for a new batch.

I don’t have much to report from my studio. So here is another picture from Hermit Island in Maine where we camped for 5 nights.

We spent 5 of our 11 nights of vacation tent camping on Hermit Island in Maine. This island is technically a peninsula as it is attached to but it sounds more exotic to say we were camping on an island.

Our campsite was very secluded up on Joe’s Head, not right on a beach but right on the cliffs over looking it.

The original thought was that we might do some sight seeing from this base (maybe a trip up to Bar Harbor) but once we got there we only left to find food each evening. What a beautiful place.

Turns out I took 400+ photos over the 12 days. Gotta love digital.

It’ll take a while for me to sort them out. I normally take raw format images (mine are .NEF files as I have a nikon slr camera) but most of these are large jpgs as I didn’t want to buy a bunch of new flash cards before leaving. As usual as soon as I pull up the jpgs in photoshop I’m frustrated they aren’t raw format. It never pays to be cheap. Next time I’m investing a more gigabytes before I go.

Photos taken in Philadelphia in March 2006.

In addition to fences and walls I find bridgework to be extremely fascinating. My newest Structures pieces with the long thin lines spanning long distances are brought to mind.