Additions

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Where the heck have I been? You know what I have been up to and you are not at all surprised that I am working at preparing for this show as though Heaven and Earth depended upon it. I figure if I am going to do it, I may as well go all out.

Meanwhile, the rest of life has not stood still. The Husband's quest for answers regarding the gray gelding's back has yielded little results. The man can't be faulted for not trying. Near the end of his imagination, resources, and patience, he got a phone call a couple of days ago that added a bit more chaos to our lives.

A fellow farrier called, while we were on the road, and said he had a lead for Jim on a great prospect of a horse. To make a long story short, the fellow above arrived at our place Saturday afternoon. Lancer and Night were terribly excited about the stranger on their property. The animal was touching their things and eating their carrots! What an insult. But, they were deeply curious. Naturally, the gelding's arrival had to be documented.

There will be more information about our new addition in the weeks to come and I will probably steal a few minutes here and there for some more photos. His registered name is Ground Zero. It seems he was born on September 11, five years ago. The name is appropriate, but neither of us can handle the sound of it—too many unpleasant memories. So far, the young gelding is simply "The Black". We didn't think Walter Farley would mind.  

Blue Horse and Other Dreams

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These days, I am not only dreaming about blue horses, but all the art show deadlines on my calendar.  A framed print of the blue horse above sold in October and will be part of the next show on the horizon.

At the end of this month, I will be part of the Bear Valley Springs Cultural Arts Spring Show. Of course, any sane person would simply have filled in the entry form with names of pieces currently hanging on the walls in our house and that would have completed my preparation. However, that sane part would describe someone else. Certainly not me. Instead of taking the easy path, I am working on something new for this show that has raised a whole bucket-load of questions and new challenges. I won't get into details until I know that it either has worked or turned into a flop. I am sane enough to have provided myself with a backup in case this experiment fails. You can bet that I will eventually let you know how the experiment goes.

Each artist is limited to five pieces and for this show I have decided to go with all equine prints. With the publishing of this post, you will have seen all the images to be used for the show. When I get closer to the show, I will publish a link to the five pieces and let you see my portion of the big annual show and social event here in Bear Valley Springs.

You can get more background on the horse above, how this piece evolved, and how it is displayed at Anita Jesse.

Gremlins, Surprise Sales, and Such

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The guest who arrived the day family departed was one of my ex-students. She is an absolute delight and we were so pleased that she took time out of her busy trip to California to spend some of it with us. As noon last Wednesday approached—her scheduled time to hit the road, she announced that she needed a few minutes to browse through my prints once again. I was thrilled that she wanted to spend a few more minutes with my work and I encouraged her take her time with her final tour. After all, her energy was a tonic for us and I hated to see her leave.

She moved slowly from one viewing section to another, hall to room to another hallway, then said, "I brought one blank check with me just on a whim." I didn't grasp the meaning of the sentence and how it connected with her tour of the prints. It turned out she wanted to buy a framed print. I was taken aback, but obviously pleased at the turn of events.

After considerable deliberation, she returned again to the image above (repeated posting here), and said that she couldn't resist the one with the gremlin on his back. I chuckled because when I completed that piece, I hadn't a single thought about gremlins. Then Steve Weeks (Steve doesn't have a blog to link to. Wish he did) posted a comment and asked about the creature on the horse's back. Well, of course, since that time, I can't not see the beast. How I ever missed it is now beyond me.

After Steve's comment,  my first impulse, frankly, was to fix it. I seriously considered reworking the piece immediately, reprinting, and ridding the  horse of his gremlin burden. But, the more I thought about it the more I knew it wasn't the right thing to do. That gelding has had a demon on his back for years. He was, apparently, mistreated as a youngster and never fully regained his trust in humans. He was a one-woman horse. You could easily sense the wildness in him. Since I have often talked about allowing my subconscious mind to play its role in my creative life, it seemed quite hypocritical to deny all that by throwing out something that made it all the way to print and show without my conscious mind ever catching on. To deny my work philosophy along with the horse's story and erase these influences after the fact didn't ring true. Ultimately, I let the work stand.

It seemed fitting that there was surprise to complete the strange story of this image. The last thing on my mind while our charming guest was with us was art sales. Her purchase was a delicious surprise and I shouldn't have been shocked that she chose a piece that had already offered some surprises.

Update: The material in this post (with slight revisions) is currently posted at my Fine Art Prints blog.

Happier Times

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Update: Blogger is playing nasty, this afternoon. I am going to roll over and play dead. If you click on the link you can see the image.

(I trust that by now most people are noticing that clicking on some of the thumbnails here will not accomplish much. There is still a link to a larger version, but that link is in the text below the thumbnail. This new workflow is giving me headaches to get used to, as well; but when it comes to using images at the new website, it makes for a much smoother workflow.)

If you would prefer to skip the sad sack, personal, post below, link to the much more upbeat post at the new blog.

I haven't exactly been Miss Sunshine for the early days of 2012. The hard work on my new site paid off, I think. Before long, I will get to some more tweaking. But, I can live with it as is for now.  The bad cold I am fighting was almost certainly triggered by lack of sleep which came courtesy of the long hours working far outside my expertise as well as some losses and major disappointments that I haven't handled well. Another of those periods where life serves up lemons and it's up to us to make lemonade. Clearly, I have misplaced the sugar or I got rotten lemons, because the taste in my mouth is still sour.

One of the disappointments comes from having learned that someone in whom I had placed great faith and for whom I had enormous affection is a fraud. This is a person who has been living a lie for years, now, and I was one of the suckers. Only, I didn't have to be reeled in. Heck, I jumped into the net. 

This person I loved—from a relatively safe distance, granted—was deeply flawed from top to bottom and now I am reeling. Reeling from shock, disbelief, and that awful aftermath of betrayal.  This is one of life's most bitter lessons. Learning that we really know so few people. We are attracted to the public persona, to the personality these people perfect for the public. We have all known them and by the time you have lived many years, you have been taken in by a few. Still, it is never painless.

Like all of life's wounds, this one will scab over and eventually heal. It just takes time. I still have a lot of good memories thanks to this person and, soon, those memories will overpower this sour feeling. I am focusing on those good times, now, and waiting for the weight to shift.

Dortel, El Caballo Negro

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There are horses everywhere you turn at Silent Knights Farms. And, to top it off, Spring was in full swing when we arrived there April 16—balmy temperatures, sunshine, flowers, horses, seven dogs. For me, it was a little bit of Heaven. Since we drove down on Friday and returned Monday, I had two full days there to soak up all the goodness.

Don’t get me wrong, life here in Bear Valley Springs is mighty sweet; but I had grown quite weary repeating, “Goodbye, Winter. It was nice knowing you. See you next year. Don’t hurry back,” only to have Mr. Winter come roaring back for an unwelcome encore. (It snowed here last night—two days before May.) A weekend of uninterrupted Spring was a lovely gift. And, of course, there is no such thing as too many horses about.

Naturally, I fell in love with a couple of horses that were new to me. That's typical of me, I'm afraid. I’m a sucker for great looks and spirit. But, two of my sweetest treats came in the form of reunions of sorts with old crushes of mine.

One of the sweetest reunions was with the black gelding, Dortel. Dortel, the wild man. Dortel, who puts on the tough guy, I-will-eat-you-alive act one minute, but in another stands peacefully while I croon to him in my nonsensical and butchered Spanish. I whisper “Beunos dias,mi Querida. Usted es muy dulce . Mi caballo negro es muy hermoso. El Caballo es muy grande, muy elegante.” (Good day, my love. You are very sweet .) Okay, laying it on a bit thick, but I’m kinda crazy about the beast; and, as for the next part, he certainly is black, black as coal, and very beautiful. Then, the horse is very large (That’s a lie. He’s an Arabian and far from huge.) Very smart. (Yes, maybe too smart for his own good.) Dortel doesn’t know what I’m babbling on about and certainly doesn’t care that I am close to exhausting my miniscule Spanish vocabulary. I would feel even sillier talking to him about el gato (the cat) or telling him that el rio es rojo (the river is red). Therefore, the next stage usually ends up being “El caballo es muy loco y El Diablo, Si, uno caballo malo . Muy, muy loco en la cabeza.” Dortel isn’t fazed by being informed that he is crazy, a devil, bad, and even very crazy in the head. He just seems to like the sound of the Spanish language. Well, I think it sounds nice, as well, so we visit that way for a while.
Years ago, I met my friend at Silent Knight Farms, because of Dortel. She was walking him out after an endurance ride in Malibu and the moment I spotted them, I was smitten. She looked friendly and I asked the stranger if I might take some photos of her horse. She smiled, said sure, and that’s how it began. She became a client first, then a dear friend. And all because of this muy loco caballo. It was grand seeing him, this weekend, at liberty in one of the larger turnouts. What a joy he is to watch. Like the wind.

Making Photo Books—Lots of Them

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Last night, I fell into bed exhausted and realized that I have made four photo books in four months. If I didn’t know better, I might think that sounded impressive—but, I know better.

After all, the first photo book was just a test book thrown together in March. It was a rush job to catch a free Shutterfly offer and it’s extremely simplistic. I wanted to see a sample book including the type of images I planned to shoot for the SoFoBoMo project. The virtual book I made in April for the SoFoBoMo challenge, was a product of many hours of work and much unnecessary—but typical of me—angst and completed as a PDF, not printed at all.

The May book was a special gift for a friend and contained photos taken over many years rather than any new work. This friend is from the endurance racing world and I have had the distinct pleasure of photographing many of Liz’s horses. When I got the invitation to one of the big barbecues she and her guy throw at their horse-haven a few miles south of us, I decided to make a photo book for her. (That was the secret project I worked on last month and, fortunately, it was a hit.) Naturally, I couldn’t just deal with the profile/gamut nightmare for Blurb. I had to get fancy. I created a map, wrote a dedication along with a fairy-tale type opening to the pictures, and I just had to include some photos I had never processed.

When I finished the book for Liz, I had no intention whatsoever of making another book for quite a while, having already confessed that I felt drained by facing all the self-imposed deadlines one after another. Alas, it was not meant to be. Yesterday after receiving some encouragement from another friend who has seen Liz’s book, I began to noodle the idea of making a similar book for myself. After all, I had barely had time to glance at the gift book and some of my personal favorites of all the equine images I had made were in that book. So, I casually popped into the Shutterfly site to remind myself how much money an out-of-work no-prospects person looking at two mortgages that threaten to drain resources indefinitely would have to spend to actually pay this time for one of their photo books. Whoops! Why didn’t I get an e-mail? The photo books were discounted by 20% and the offer included free shipping. How could I pass up that invitation? There was only one rub: the deadline was June 5. Right, yesterday. Of course, I did it. I couldn’t directly use any of the Blurb work, because I had no idea what havoc that profile would produce at Shutterfly. Back to the drawing board. It was a long day—mostly because I brought in a number of additional images and edited out a few, but I did it. I know I will have some regrets, and it most assuredly is not the The Book I want to make with my equine images. But, it will be a book even though with a very small b, and it’s a start.

It would seem I am officially over the major anxiety produced by the challenge of producing a photo book. The thought no longer gives me a severe stomach ache and blurred vision. It’s not exactly a yawn, but it certainly isn’t overwhelming anymore.

Another Mustang Sighting

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I couldn't resist one more of handsome Walter. The title of this post is for my friend Paul Maxim who lives in Las Vegas and actually lives near an area where he will one day see mustangs in the wild . They are easy enough to spot if you have a friend who has adopted several. Paul has something else entirely in mind.

Walter, the Black Mustang

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This mustang, one of the herd at Silent Knight Farms, is having fun stretching his legs. I especially enjoy the fact that in this shot you get a good look at the distinctive brand that is often hidden under his mane. (Be sure to click on the photo for a closer look at the brand.)

BLM Mustangs are freeze-branded when they are captured. If you know how to read the markings, the brand identifies details such as the animal's age, registration number, and the area where it was gathered. I definitely don't know how to decipher the brands, but I think Walter is from a Nevada herd.