Hi Everybody,

My third installment is about a day in the life at the Grotto after an incredible snow. During my short stay over the weekend, we were blessed with a very unusual snow storm (two locals said they hadn’t seen anything like this for 15-30 years!) You can imagine how excited Dennis was to have this kind of visual opportunity. Here are a few shots of Dennis “gathering” material…

 Taking a few shots in front of the lodge

 Road shots just past Lady Mt.

  More Lady Mt. shots

 Court of the Patriarchs

 More Court of the Patriarchs

 The arch

 East side of park

 Detail of his shot

 Happy campers

All in all it was an absolutely incredible experience. Believe it or not, what is equally impressive to the scenery are the people that made this possible. These folks have worked hard to put this program into place and make it successful. It’s breathtaking to see the amount of support the arts receives in this tight knit community.  How fortunate we are to be a part of this.

Zion Day 20

 

Well as usual after a snowy day, the photo opportunities are good. This morning promised to be the same. I looked out and the mountains were clouded and I could not see the tops.

 

I looked out at 7:20 (when the sun hits the top of the mountain) and the cloud shrouding Lady Mountain was glowing a warm orange-ish gray, the sun was definitely shining above the low clouds.

 

I looked over towards Angels Landing and the bowl around it had a nice shaft of light creating some unusual effects. This mountain had this great little warm halo around it, and the clouds behind it were very blue-gray.

 

 Small roadblock. What a Turkey!

I painted all day on the “East Temple” painting, as you can see by the FX feature on the blog, it’s like you’re watching me paint. (for instructions on the time-lapse feature, see yesterday’s blog)

I feel confident I will get this finished for the Saturday presentation at the Lodge, and therefore have a bonafide visual-aid.

  

Tonight looks like the only opportunity I will have to shoot moonlight pics. It is very clear tonight and it’s supposed to rain/snow for the next couple of days. So, I will experiment tonight and let you see how it turns out.

 
This afternoon I stepped outside to take break and drink my coffee and looked to the top of Angels Landing. It had snowed last night so getting to the top would have proven difficult because the tricky part is on the north face and keeps it's snow a while. I looked up and saw a white pole at the top, which didn't used to be there. I took a pic and then zoomed in on the photo and lo and behold, it's a snowman! Somebody went to the top and built snowman atop Angels Landing , Awesome! 1500ft up. I'll keep track of how long he stays up there, or if he jumps, eeech, what a mess that would be.
 

I found out through the grapevine(e-mail) that my painting I entered into the Oil Painters of America National Show, was accepted and now I will be going to Scottsdale Arizona for the show. Yipppeeee!

James Tennison also made it in the show, so hopefully he will go out for the show (hint, hint, if you’re reading this James) and collect his prize money. (Prizes haven’t been awarded yet but James’ painting is flippin’ awesome.)

 

Now, off to shoot the moon!

Zion Day 19

 

Today started early and wasn’t going great, as far as quality painting goes. I mixed up the colors needed for the canvas #1, that I started over a week ago, and was painting on it but nothing was looking very good. Some days are like that, and this looked to be one.

 

However, by mid-morning I decided to trick myself and I switched canvases and worked on a different image. It went very well after that. I could “see” this one better today and so it turned out to be a good painting day.

  
Here is what I was working on, a time lapse.(to activate the "time-lapse" feature of the blog, move your eyes back and forth quickly between the two photos. It's almost like "Avatar")

It was overcast all day and by 2pm it started snowing again and is still snowing as I write this at 7pm. It has covered the ground in a nice little sprinkle of white. I don’t think it will be the six inch snow that dumped the other day but there is usually a good photo day that follows a snow. It seems to clear out the sky and is crystal clear. We’ll see what happens in the next couple of days.

 

I really want a clear night with all this snow so I can get some moonlight pics. I have been waiting all month and so far it has been cloudy the past two nights.

 

Each day I am here gets more precious, and I am trying to get at least one good bigger painting finished for my upcoming presentations. I have the trial run here in the Park at the Lodge this Saturday. Hopefully someone other than Leslie and her husband shows up.

 

Tuesday of next week is the big talk at Southern Utah University and that could be a lot of people, I think they force the students to attend and listen, I’m thinking of doing the entire talk as Carl from ”Slingblade”, I’m sure that would cut down on the questions from the audience.

 

Here are the other larger paintings I have gotten the under-painting finished, and I am waiting for them to dry. I should be able to get a lot done if things go smoothly. Like I said, each day here is more special as they dwindle down. I know once I go back home it will take a few days to get back to painting, just attending to “stuff” that has been neglected for a month. So it is extremely important to get as much done here as possible.

  These are all 24 x30, it's like HD eh?

Hi Everybody,

I’ve had several folks ask about the inside of the Grotto where Dennis paints so I thought I’d give you a “virtual tour” of the place. The Grotto is a one bed room/one bath cabin that has been lovingly restored by the park folks for the artist in residence program.  It was originally built in 1924 and was the museum for the park. They’ve just celebrated its restoration and reopening as a part of their Centennial celebration. Very cool!

Here is the bedroom complete with a nice sized closet and alarm clock

Bathroom

Kitchen (complete with coffee maker, microwave, stove, refrigerator, pots/pans – the works!)

˝ of the living room complete with a Dennis (no phone, TV, internet or cell service- he’s just looking at pictures)

Other ˝ of the living room where Dennis paints (they supplied the desk where his monitor sits, but he brought the easel, paint caddy, and outside pack stuff)

Here’s what his paint caddy looks like close up

Melvin, resident lizard and, as I understand it, the reason all the chocolate chip cookies Liz sent are missing

Dennis at "work"

I’ll write part three tomorrow. Aunt Judy, as to your question, the park is amazing after everyone is gone. There’s a little woodpecker that lets you know that industrious creatures are about to get off their “day shift”, but it seems like the mountains sleep at night. He’s right back at it at the crack of dawn… the woodland creatures sure don’t slack around here.

Hi Everyone,

I’m ViVi, Dennis’ wife. It’s very hard to put into words what a privilege it was to see Zion from the perspective of the artist in residence. I thought it might be best I just show you what Dennis sees outside his window every day…

I included the Grotto’s roofline in this last photo as a reminder of how close you are to everything staying there. What an amazing opportunity!

More later!

 Yesterday, at sunset. The Watchman.

 ViVi tests her new raincoat in a waterfall over the trail.

Today was a gorgeous but cold day. Lots of snow up high and most of it melted down here in the canyon.
I put on the underpainting from one of the scenes from yesterday. It was hard to choose an image because there were so many unusual. awesome scenes we got images of.
I will try to catch up tomorrow on the past weekend. I drove ViVi to Vegas for her flight back to DFW so that took six hours of the day.
Here are some views of today
. Lady Mountain this morning.

 Coming into the Park this evening, after Vegas.

ViVi is going to blog about her experience this weekend so she will have some photos she took.

It's been a busy couple of days and here are a few photos of the weather. I will fill in the details when I can sit down and write.
Yesterday was like this all day so I painted inside.



Today was like this so I took pics ALL day outside. Here is a sample.

Zion Day 15

 

ViVi and I stayed at the Stratosphere hotel in Vegas last night, it was a good thing we had booked a room because her flight was 2 ˝ hours late and it was 10pm before she finally got on the ground. That pretty much foiled our plans of a nice dinner, most the restaurants close up at 10:30pm so we were left with a pizza stand and overpriced pizza, 11 bucks for two slices; you really have to look for the bargains in Vegas anymore.

 

We didn’t spend much time in the city; I wanted to get some photos of a billboard project I worked on for Springs Preserve here in Sin City. We found it but it is just about impossible to get good shots of it because it sits on a wall of a major highway. We got these at 60 mph down the highway.

 

 I carved these out of Styrofoam and painted them. The Gila monster is 60 ft nose to tail. The roadrunner is 30 feet beak to tail, and there is fox I didn’t get a good shot of but he is 25 ft tall. 

I sculpted these with Jerry Small of Small Creations, who ironically creates very large 3D

Billboards for a living; he creates all the cows for the Chick-fil-a’ billboards. These are the only shots we could get since we never saw it put together and installed, they were too big to set up in his workshop.

 

On the return to Zion the clouds were clearing from a rainstorm and the sun was giving us a tremendous welcome on the cliffs as we neared the Park.

I hope to hike to the Top of Angels Landing tomorrow, but right now it’s raining, hopefully it will clear up.

PS- I've had quite a few comments from friends and family about their not being able to post comments. I have contacted the website folks and they've made a correction to the code. If you try again and have issues, can you please use the website contact feature to let me know? Thanks!

Zion Day 14

 

I went through my photos this morning and picked out the ones I thought are painting worthy and made a list. From that list I picked one I wanted to paint next and drew it onto a canvas board.

I cut the board down to a 19x30. This will make a decent size but I really wish it could be bigger. If it turns out nice, I may make a much bigger piece.

 

I left the canyon and headed down to St George, a town on the way to Vegas. I met Roland Lee at the Mission Gallery and he gave me a tour of the Galleries there in St. George as well as a show at the college and at a museum. It was a great art-filled day.

I was using the opportunity to see some art while on the way to pick up Vivi at the airport in Vegas. Unfortunately her flight was delayed for 2-1/2 hours out of DFW, so I have some time to kill. That’s where the Vegas shots come from.

 

Palazzo Hotel

 The Venetian

Inside the Venetian.

 Inside The Palazzo

What a contrast to where I just came from, total darkness and solitude in the canyon, to a blitz of neon and humanity. What a great country!

That’s all for today.

Zion Day 13

 

Wow, today was a wonderful day for me. It started simply enough with several of the deer grazing outside the Grotto
.

I painted on the detail of the “lady” mountain I have been working on. (I found out today the names of many of the peaks around here so I will try to call them by their proper titles.)

I was first visited by “Barry”, a hiker whom had just hiked up to Emerald Pools and returned via the Grotto trail, the same little hike I did last week. Barry was taking a pic of the Grotto and was looking at what I was painting, so I invited him in. It turns out he was an Olympic refugee, from British Columbia. He had skeedaddled out of Canada to escape the deluge of the Olympics. The Canadian army had invaded his little town some time ago and it had finally got too much for him so he left. (it used to be people went to Canada to flee the Army, my how times have changed)

Barry from BC

 He said the Army even brought in tanks for security, (who knew they even had tanks?)

and that helicopters were flying over head so much it was just a zoo. (He should have been here last Saturday.)

 

Shortly after Barry left, I was expecting Roland Lee, a tremendous watercolor artist that has been painting Zion for over thirty years. He was also a big inspiration for my blog, I had read travel sketchbook and it inspired me to do this for my little adventure.

See his website here www.rolandlee.com , you can get to his blog through there also.

He is also the Board Vice-Chairman of the Zion Natural History Association which is the Non-profit that works in conjunction with the park in merchandising , raising funds and awareness for the Parks in this region. I visited with Roland about the program and about art and his experiences and background here in Zion.

 

Roland went to get another person with the Zion Natural History Association, Lyman Hafen, whose title I am not sure of but I think he represents the ZNHA for the park and is the point person for their business side of things, because he has a corner office with a window overlooking the West Temple, The Altar of Sacrifice, and the Towers of the Virgin, I could just paint from there.

 Roland and Lyman, outside Lyman's office.

Roland and Lyman gave me a wealth of information on the history of the park and the program and the art in region, giving me further knowledge that adds depth to my experience here. They also took me to lunch, which for those who know me, I will work for food.

Leslie was bringing the students involved with the program and Reece Summers the Director of Braithwaite Fine Arts Gallery to the Grotto shortly after 1pm to talk about my experience and if I had any thoughts to improve it. So far I can’t see much to improve on. I think just keep doing the residency program and let it grow naturally, because I think it will grow very, very quickly with the seven people now following along my blog. Thank you, Jon.

Next was another all important activity, laundry. Clean clothes were getting rare so it was good to hit “refresh”. I was able to use the washer /dryer the Park Emergencies Services Center have for their fire and emergency personnel.

 Waiting for the washer to finish,

I used the time while waiting to go to the Zion Visitors Center and bookstore and whoa-boy, I loaded up with some great books on the history, the art, the people, the geology, and the tunnel, of this awesome place. I ended up with ten new books today, a wealth of info I am pouring through as thoroughly and quickly as I can.

  Waiting for the dryer to finish.

As I said it was just a wonderful day, probably the most enriching of my time here. The visual imagery is just amazing, but when you add the layers of history and people and art and all the people who have had a part in me getting to be here, well it’s just overwhelming and very inspiring. Each day the magnitude of this opportunity is more evident, and the scale of responsibility comes into focus, the challenge is to live up to it artistically.

I can’t wait. This is what life is all about!