Zion Day 22

I realized this morning, my total lack of experience with a Powerpoint presentation; when I tried to set up a simple slide show for my speaking engagement at the Lodge tonight.

I had this great thought to put up a few slides of my previous art and maybe a title slide and get on with some painting. Well after a couple of hours of fiddling with trying to scale photos, I was ready to just go low-tech and simplify my day without stressing about fancy title slides, or just chuck the computer out the window.

I called my emergency IT specialist and she talked me off the ledge. ViVi had me email her the images I desired; she put together the slide-show, and e-mailed it back. Problem solved, stress level reduced and I have my fancy title slide, all before noon. She’s awesome and even commented how patience is a virtue.

  Fancy title slide.

I painted all afternoon with very good results. I am painting on the “Mountain of the Sun” piece. It is an afternoon scene after a rain and the storm clouds are breaking up and the sun is gleaming off the rock face. The view is from the parking lot of the Lodge so I have become very familiar with the setting.

  "Mountain of the Sun"

The Presentation at the Lodge went very well. There were just four of us Leslie, James (her husband) and Jock (Park Superintendent) with about ten minutes before the scheduled start. Then right at 7:30pm everybody showed up. I didn’t do an exact count but there were about 15 people in attendance.

It was a informal presentation, I explained my background and the string of events that allowed brought me to be the Artist-in-Residence.

I also brought every visual aid (paintings) I had worked on throughout the three weeks.

The small works were dry enough to pass around, so people could look at them up close.

The larger ones were still wet so I left them on the easel.

After answering a few questions we just mingled as they came up and looked at the larger pieces. It was a great evening and I was very pleased with the turn-out on a rainy night. The auditorium had a maximum of 100 people and we didn’t have to turn anyone away.