Finally back to the studio yesterday. Started work on Saturday at the Cave Visitors Center and they have revamped everything. New paint on the walls, new area for my bookstore and displays. New cabinets for my stock. All in all a very nice redo. Already had the EMTs up twice this weekend. A woman had a terrible headache and her blood pressure shot up about 1/4 of the way up the trail. She came down and the EMTs were called and they took her to the local hospital. Another man with Parkinsens almost made it up but then could not breathe. he was stubborn but finally was wheeled down in the gurney. Apparently all are fine. The trail starts at the visitors center and is 1.5 miles up to the cave entrance. 1100 feet vertical gain..rather relentless. It is paved but a few years ago a maintenance worker was on his motorcycle on the trail and went off the edge and died. That started a big safety program. No wheels on the trail, no strollers etc. Too easy for them to get away from you and the drop off is scary!! The trail is wide, but there are occasional rock falls so the rangers try really hard to inform all the visitors of the dangers and what to do and mostly they don't listen. So the only "vehicles" allowed on the trail are the 2 wheeled gurneys one that stays at the bottom and one at the top and these strange motorized... well for lack of the real term..wheelbarrows. So there is a way to get heavy equipment up and down but no one can ride in them so the danger is lessened. This is the 90th anniversary of the Timpanogos Cave National Monument. They are even Tweeting now...something I have never done! So if you are interested in seeing more about the cave..go to www.nps.gov/tica, or follow on Facebook at www.facebook.com/timpanogoscavenps . Yesterday I met up with Will my "student". He is my son Shane's girlfriends son! He is 13 and a super laid back sweet kid. I hadn't felt well for a few weeks so I had not seen him for 2 weeks. I have been remiss as a teacher as I have no "plan". So we have just been playing. While we play I have talked about contrasting colors, warm and cool colors, some perspective..just whatever comes up. We have looked at other artists and so a bit of art history. Yesterday as usual I had no idea what we should do...so I showed him some of the things I have done. We decided to "marble" paper by dropping oil paint in a pan of water and printing paper. That was messy and fun and we had a great time doing that. So then we decided to walk a block and a half away to a new mural painted by The Univ. of Utah murals class. (I took this class and it was hard work but very cool). The mural is on a long low wall and has several famous paintings on it with the main characters missing. Then footprints are placed on the cement in front of the wall and you "Step Into Art"!

We are going to look these paintings up in my art books next week so he can see the real deal...fun . I had started 2 24"x24" paintings a week ago. They are what I am calling happy abstracts. Lots of drips and water, done with acrylics, sprays too. I left them to dry and now I am at a loss as to what to do with them! I took some wet pics last week with my phone so I will post them separately since I don't know if I can post them from the phone with this post!