Lisa Call

Photos taken October 2002 during a week long backpacking trip in the Grand Canyon. I became obsessed with the rock cairns. The proportions and balance and colors were stunning.

I think I need to go back some time and take pictures of all of them and write a coffee table book The Rock Cairns of the Grand Canyon. I’m sure everyone would want one.

 
I enjoy the organic patterns of the water juxtaposed with the straight lines of the deck and the reflection of the rail posts.

I’m also really happy to see the water beading on the deck instead of soaking into the wood and ruining it. Yahoo - I got my deck restained before it rained again.

Last night I overdyed some fabric from last week and added in a few more yards. I think between the 2 dye sessions I dyed about 70 yards of fabric. It’s all pressed and folded and ready to make some new work.

I love having a pile of brand new colors waiting for me. I find I have a million ideas about how I can use them. Every dye session is different because I don’t use recipes. I do control what colors I make but not with exact precision and a lot of time when I mix some of my dyes the results are rather unexpected. Pulling the newly washed fabric out of the dryer is like getting a wonderful gift.

I have today and tomorrow off work so I’ll have lots of time in my studio to make new work and finish up old stuff. I’m most excited. I finished up the dyeing and cleaned up my studio this morning so now I’m ready to start designing and piecing new work with all those yummy new colors.

 
Some color from my gardens this morning…

It’s been a busy day and evening with no time for email or replies to comments. Tomorrow morning! Thanks everyone for the positive comments on the fridge drawing and other posts.

So this post is worth reading, I’ll include a picture I took in the summer of 2003. I went on a hike to the top of Crystal Peak, one of the high 13,000 foot peaks in Colorado. The cool thing to do is to climb the “14ers” but there are usually hundreds of people climbing them. Crystal is 13,852 so as far as the work it’s basically the same thing but it doesn’t sound nearly as cool to the “in” crowd. So in other words it’s a lot more fun. We saw only 2 other groups hiking the entire day.

The way we went we had to climb to 12,400 feet on Peak 10 and then traverse across to Crystal. For the skiers out there Peak 10 might sound familiar, it is part of the Breckenridge Ski Area. This picture was taken as we were assending Crystal and it shows an access road to the top of Peak 10 (there were a bunch of anteneas up there). I’ve always though the road was very cool. It would make a great quilt design!

I’ve been doing a bit of organizing of my digital photos today. Not exactly the cleaning of my office I was going to do this weekend, but maybe kind of, in a virtual sort of way. I came across these images I had intended to post someday.

While at the Western Pleasure Guest Ranch for the Nancy Crow workshop in October, several of us went on a carriage ride around the ranch.

It was a beautiful fall day and the horses were magnificently huge animals.

 
They have huge feet.

 
Do they look happy? This is a brother and sister team - I can’t recall their names, but they were very horse sounding names.

 
Love the colors - lots of browns to set off the bright blue and red.

 
Great lines!

 
They also have really really big back sides.


 
I’ll post some pictures I took on the ride later.

Although I’m not done fixing up my blog I probably should stop posting about it for a while or I might lose all my readers. So time for a change of pace.

I had intended to post these pictures of Santa Fe when I took them back in July but they were trapped on my work laptop. Last month I finally got high speed internet at home (the geek joins the 21st century) and was able to transfer them onto my main computer.

I grew up about a half hour from Santa Fe and when I go back to visit it sure doesn’t feel like the same place I remember visiting as a kid. But there are some things that hopefully will never change. I love the colors and the architecture. And who couldn’t love the New Mexico blue sky?

In mid October I drove out to northwestern Kansas to celebrate my grandma’s 90th birthday with my extended family.

Grandma now lives in town but when I was growing up I would spend a few weeks each summer out on their farm with my siblings while our parents escaped back home for some peaceful kid-free moments.

The house and barn and farm animals are now gone but the land is still being farmed. Or at least trying to be farmed, the weather hasn’t been very cooperative the past few years.

This is definitely some serious big open space:

Remains of one of my dad’s one room school houses:

Failed wheat crop:

My kids were fascinated by the old silos:

On my way to Idaho I spent a few hours at Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument in Montana. This is the location of “Custer’s Last Stand”. It was well done and gave me plenty to think about in terms of American history.

But it was also incredibly beautiful. I love the open prairie - the rolling hills and brown grasses. It is so stark and solitary and stunningly gorgeous. I suspect I’ll see many of these colors in the artwork I will be making over the next few weeks while in Idaho.

I’m not sure how well these images will look as I don’t have photoshop on this laptop to do adjustments, and the screen on this laptop is less than ideal. Hopefully they look okay for everyone.

Last week my critique group, Material Evolution, and I flew to Burbank, California for the taping of the TV show “Uncommon Threads”. We had a blast playing tv stars for a couple days. It was a lot more fun than I had anticipated. The show will air next spring on the channel DIY. When I have specific information on the date and time I’ll let everyone know.

Instead of flying back to Denver I hitched a ride with a friend that was in California and we drove back. The drive was spectacular and incredibly inspiring and I won’t soon forget the experience. I took over 80 photos of the desert landscape of California, Nevada and Utah. I’ve included a few here from the section of I-70 that I absolutely loved.

These black cliffs are incredible.

This rock looks like a submarine and the valley it overlooks is beautiful. The colors of this area are amazing.

It may not be the Grand Canyon but it is still amazing.

Close up view of a gorgeous canyon wall. I took this photo at 70 mph through the front windshield. I love my Nikon D-70!

A very cool rock formation just as we were dropping out of the high canyons.

I use a lot of brown in my work, probably an influence of growing up in Northern New Mexico. Or maybe I just like mixing all the colors together when dyeing fabric and it all comes out muddied so I have no choice. Either way I love the dry desert scruffy landscape and canyon walls of my home state. They just feel like home.

Here are a few pictures from my trip last week of
Bandelier National Monument. I love the patterning of the holes of the long house on the canyon wall.

And of course, what trip to Bandelier would be complete without a ladder picture: