They're Comin' to Town

Wildflower Garden
Originally uploaded by Kate Hamilton.

On Saturday morning my parents embark on their first trip in a plane together since their honeymoon. They're coming to visit us in Winter Park! Yay!

This week marks the 2 year anniversary of Andrew's move to Colorado--my anniversary is September 12. It doesn't seem like it's been that long, and yet it seems like forever since we packed up our life and moved 1500 miles west. What a journey it has been.

So I can not wait to share some bits of our life with my Mom and Dad, whose travels have never taken them this far away from life as they know it. I hope that they will be moved by the beauty as much as I have. I want them to love it enough to come back again in the future. I don't see how anyone can visit Colorado just once and never come back. Does it happen?

The summer days are waning as the days shorten and nights dip into the low 40's. Tonight's projected low is 38. It is bittersweet, this change in season. On one hand I wish summer was just a few weeks longer, and yet certain smells and sights put the anticipation in my bones that snow will be here soon, and with that, six months of heavenly skiing. Can you tell how excited I am for winter? Even the locals in this mountain town, aptly named "Winter Park," find me a bit insane. There is a strong contingency for longer summers. Oddly enough, they don't get any longer with global warming--they just get hotter and therefore more difficult for the local flora and fauna to bear.

Speaking of bears, I saw one last week. Just his rump. It seems to be the trend with me to never see their faces. I suppose I should consider myself lucky. Being face-to-face with a 400 lb wild carnivorous animal anywhere other than a zoo is less than ideal.

Still, we'll do our best to produce abundant wildlife for the folks while they're here, with a day trip to Rocky Mountain National Park, and Grand Lake, and assorted wild wooded places.

I can't wait.

I am sorry, I'm trying to fix it!

Ok, so this weekend we went camping and I didn't check my email (or web site) until yesterday. Then I discovered that my web site was down, due to expiration of my domain name registration. I spent half of yesterday trying to fix it, but had problems because Network Solutions had an old email address of mine on file. All kinds of measures are taken to ensure that domain names are not stolen or hijacked by undeserving hackers, so this was more complicated than it sounds like it should be.

In the meantime, I set up an email address with Gmail with the intention of making it my primary address. Having owned and used penguinart.com for 9 years now, I am on a multitude of spammers' favorites lists and receive 100 or so a day at my penguinart.com email addresses. Using Gmail seemed like a good resolution to the problem. Then, by the afternoon my domain name had been renewed and I began receiving my beloved spam again. I set up a "rule" in my Mail preferences that would send an email back to anyone of my contacts who tried to send a new email to kate(at)penguinart(dot)com, asking them to use my new Gmail address. Seemed harmless enough.

But I apparently did something wrong, something very wrong. Because this morning Andrew called me to let me know that half of Winter Park Resort was receiving bounced emails from me, he received over a hundred and others 30+. It seems that my rule was not specific enough, and that every email sitting in my inbox received an auto-response overnight, and continues to receive more, in multiples. I immediately removed the offending rule, and made all my email accounts inactive. I'm hoping this will solve the problem, but I don't know for sure.

So to all of you who have emailed me in the past few weeks, whose emails are sitting in my inbox, and who are receiving a plethora of bounced email messages--

I am sorry!

I am sorry!

I am sorry!

I am sorry!

I am sorry!

Ok maybe that's not funny to you right now. But I am sorry! Please don't block me from your life! It should stop, soon...

August Musings

It's funny how in my town, there is a flip-switch that turns Summer on and off almost instantly. Or as Cartman once said, "There are two seasons in [Winter] Park... Winter and July." August mornings feel like late September. When I took Butters outside at 7:30 this morning, I could see my breath. By 9 am the chill "burns off," and low-lying clouds linger in the trees like cotton stuck on Velcro. The cool air that fell from the peaks the night before begins to warm and rise. By noon the sun is hot, but the shade still chills the bones.

As 3 pm approaches, clouds roll in from the west and accumulate against the wall of the Continental Divide. There they coagulate, thicken, become volatile. Lightning flashes and a deep rumble of thunder echoes through the valley. Inside my cabin it feels like the sun has set for the night. We receive a quick, loud rain or endure an extended storm. It may clear by 7 pm, or it may linger until the morning. Those nights that it clears one may see a single, double, or even triple rainbow over the divide.

The storms that linger through leave a musty pine scent and one of those chills like we had this morning, when I could see my breath in early August. Visions of snowflakes dance through my head.

Arts Week in Winter Park

Rendez-View
Originally uploaded by Kate Hamilton.

This week is my favorite of the summer--Arts Week. In town we have 67 nationally and internationally renowned plein air artists for the Rocky Mountain Plein Air Painters paint-out and show. All week my county has been the subject of their paintings. All week there have been artists perched precariously along roadsides, on mountainsides, and waterside doing landscape paintings in under two hours. It is a delight.

I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to take two painting workshops in the midst of all this, practically in my own back yard. Last weekend I did three days in the field with Jeanne Mackenzie of Fort Collins, Colorado. In that span I started/completed/messed with 7 little oil paintings. I'm planning on finishing one or two that I feel have strong foundations. I hope to take more classes with Jeanne in the future.

Then yesterday I took a one-day workshop with Karol Mack. I took two classes with Karol last summer (on the other side of the Continental Divide) and fell in love with her easy-going teaching style. So of course I was ecstatic that she had a workshop planned in my town this year. And in that class yesterday, I painted the little (5x7") study above. It's the first piece I've completed start-to-finish in plein air, and that I'm consequently very happy with. I definitely learned something this week, something clicked that was elusive to me before. I am starting to understand the properties, strengths and idiosyncrasies of oil paint.

My goal is to become a member of RMPAP eventually, or be invited to participate as an artist in this event next year. This will require a lot more successful little paintings between now and then. I think it's reachable...

A big highlight of the week happened last night--the artists and sponsors were invited to an "Artist Patrons" dinner at Rendezvous (a development in Winter Park). Since our friend George lives at Rendezvous he was invited and could bring guests. So Andrew and I accompanied him to the dinner/auction, and I got to talk again to Jeanne and Karol, say a quick hi to local Karen Vance, have a wine-induced-rambling conversation with pastelistClive Tyler, and give a spontaneous hug to charismatic Teresa Vito.

During all of this, Karol very kindly introduced me to another artist as, "Kate Hamilton, an up-and-coming artist." I had a tummy-butterfly moment.

The Memory Portrait Project

HANNINGTON Bukenya
Originally uploaded by Kate Hamilton.

This is Hannington Bukenya. His portrait is my contribution to the Memory Portrait project for the (no name) Art Group.

I sent this off today to be exhibited in Philadelphia, and then eventually delivered to Hannington in Uganda. Hannington lives at an orphanage named El Shadai. Here is a bit about him.

And here is my friend Sherry's personal account in her amazing Travel Blog. Sherry is a true humanitarian and also the founder of the (no name) Art Group. And I can say, "I knew her in high school," but I had no idea she'd go on and teach art to children living in poverty and famine. But she did.