May 30, 2026 | Current & Upcoming Events, Water, Writing and Publications
Read my essay about Meditations of Geometries of Water: Summer Lake in ARTerrain.
The interplay of irregular, natural shapes and regular, human-imposed geometries reveals our values, desires, and priorities as expressed in how we manipulate the land. Water, left to its own devices, creates ever-changing curving shapes and forms. While humans, in order to maximize efficiency, create straight dikes and canals as well as the perfect circles you see in center-pivot irrigation…
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Jul 20, 2025 | Beauty, Creative Process, Klamath River Project Introduction, Patterns, Rivers
In July I finally finished these two little eddy muffin paintings. I had started them last fall but they were put on pause while I focused my attention on the marathon predawn painting sessions of Bloom to meet the deadline. These paintings, the fourth and fifth pieces of art in the Ode to the Eddy Muffin series, but the first two paintings, were made to look slowly and deeply at a particularly gross eddy on the Klamath River in Keno, Oregon and its ubiquitous thick foam. One of the things that fascinates me is that I can start with something that repulsive, but the more deeply I look at it,...
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Jul 1, 2025 | Color, Klamath River Project Introduction, Pigments, Studio Notebook
Have I mentioned I recently started making my paints? It’s a slow meditative process, and I am developing a sensitivity to the personality of each pigment and learning their fascinating histories. Especially after writing what I did above about the powerful combination of learning information and experiential knowledge at Newberry Volcano, essentially the way I move through life whenever possible, I am flabbergasted that it has taken me this long to make my paint. Now that I have started, I don’t want to use manufactured paint anymore. It’s all so homogenous and lacking personality. Blues...
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Jun 17, 2025 | Color, Light, Sunrise, Time
I took the first sunrise photo in December 2020. Why do I keep doing this? Because it is a simple act that gives me so much in return. Every morning I connect to what is happening on this planet where I am.
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Jun 16, 2025 | Color, Workshops
Come explore color with me! Dive into the vibrant world of color in Exploring Coloring, an engaging workshop designed for adult artists. This 5-day evening class invites participants to investigate how colors interact, behave, and affect one another through both intuitive and practical exercises.
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Mar 12, 2022 | Field Notebook, Klamath River Project, Water
Dams fascinate me. We build large walls to hold the water back. We try to tame the water so we can control how much and when it flows. This contradicts the nature of water which is to constantly flow. Dams make me uneasy.
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Aug 30, 2021 | Environmentalism, Stories Told by Water, Water
Louie is proud of this work at Three Sisters Irrigation District – it is a benefit to wildlife and he wants to spread the story. But there is more to it than that. This is a mutual and reciprocal healing: a story I want to spread.
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Aug 23, 2021 | Environmentalism, Stories Told by Water, Water
Environmental problems are not a dichotomy of problems with nature on one side and humans on the other. The dichotomy begins to crumble as soon as the concept of nature is removed. How will our relationship with our ecosystems change and how will our decisions be different if the distinction disintegrates altogether?
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Aug 16, 2021 | Environmentalism, Field Notebook, Stories Told by Water, Water
The creek has been stretched back in time, erasing not only the human created erosion and damage, but also eliminating any chiseling the creek had done on its own prior to human intervention. It’s like shaking a giant Etch A Sketch until all evidence of previous drawings have been eliminated and the raw material is reset to a flat smooth plane where a new drawing can start to take form.
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Aug 9, 2021 | Field Notebook, Stories Told by Water, Water
My relationship with Whychus Creek started tentatively. The milky glacial water was not inviting even though it was a hot day in July. The headwaters on Broken Top are not very far away. The water is cold.
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Aug 5, 2021 | Creative Process, Environmentalism, Rivers, Speaking Video Archive, Stories Told by Water, Time
In conjunction with my solo exhibition, Stories Told by Water, Umpqua Valley Arts hosted an artist talk on August 5. In this talk I give context to Stories Told by Water and I introduce work in progress the studio.
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Jul 31, 2021 | Environmentalism, Field Notebook, Stories Told by Water, Water, Work in Progress
This place is defined by water.
I came to Pine Meadow Ranch to listen to stories of the creek on this ranch in Sisters, Oregon. The ranch is idyllic with its unobstructed views of the mountains and Whychus Creek, its milky glacial melt waters originating from Broken Top and all Three Sisters, running through the ranch.
Little, if any land on the ranch is untouched. It is a fully constructed landscape dating back to the 1800s when settlers cleared fields for cattle and began diverting streams to irrigate their ranches. Some of the coveted water rights for this ranch date back to 1895, superseding the water rights of Three Sisters Irrigation District (TSID).
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Jul 5, 2021 | Beauty, Environmentalism, Musings on Art
Even if we are wary of beauty and its seductive qualities, it is still very difficult to avoid being seduced. Is there is a bias toward beautiful landscapes regarding scientific research?
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Jun 28, 2021 | Patterns, Rivers, Water
This is an ode to water, not as a resource, just as it is, with its own strange and beautiful qualities. It really is strange if you think about it.
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May 31, 2021 | Art & Science, Concepts, Creative Process, Patterns, Time
Art grants me certain liberties such as magic and intuition. Perhaps art offers scientists freedom and expansion to contemplate words like this. Expansions flow in both directions. I have gained freedoms and expansions from working with scientists.
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