Anderson Ranch - New Friends

One of the main goals of the Anderson Ranch staff is to make sure that people have a chance to be part of a community of artists. That was one of the most wonderful aspects of the week for me.


Here are a few of my classmates and our instructor. David is in the middle. He does wonderful work and is an equally wonderful instructor who is really quite dedicated to meeting each person where they are and helping them to the next level. Ginny (the one in white) is an elementary teacher from California. She teaches kids in the Gifted and Talented program. Sheila, in the front, was working on a few series of images for a show she will have in Aspen in August. You can see some of her work that we pinned up on the wall. One series involved pin-up girls, another deals with images of her beloved antique dolls and the third series centers around images of woman with children juxtaposed with images of fertility and lack there of.



This is Sarah, our teaching assistant. If you need a personal assistant photographer, she is your girl. She is a recent college graduate who has is very helpful and knowledgeable, but never in the way or pushy. She also knows just when to offer a suggestion.


These are the girls I spent the most time with. Erin will defend her thesis this August. She is an art history instructor, soon to be professor from Virginia. Next to her is Jeanette who is from Denver. She is a hoot. My part in this group started when Justice, the one in the brown shirt, liked the way I asked questions at the guest artist lectures. She also lives in Virginia and makes wonderful art in her barn studio where she mixes and pours paint over large canvases. The good ones end up looking like images of planet surfaces taken by a satellite. She says that in some places the paint can be a half in thick. She pours the paint in a special manner and then has to let it do its thing. She goes back to check on it and says that it changes for up to a couple of days as some colors receded and other rise to the surface, mixing in their own ways. Bonnie is an art teacher from Alaska. If I were an art teacher, I would want to be like her.

I ate most of my meals with this group of women. We celebrated each others accomplishments, listened and commiserated over frustrations, and learned about each other. Although our styles of art are so very different from each other, the impact and sentiment is not. I am thankful to have met such a wonderful set of new friends. I am hopeful that I may get to see some of them again.



I opted to stay in the dorm in a room with two bunks. Luck smiled on me and I had two wonderful room mates. Olivia is an art student from Buffalo, NY who is a talented young lady, so full of promise and potential. Jayne hails from California where she is working on her Masters degree. She took the personal geography class. She has a wonderfully calm and thoughtful demeanor about her.


Sean comes from Seattle and most recently was a project manager for a video game company. He took the personal geography class, too. His knowledge of working with code meant that he was a very valuable member in that class. His project centered around celebrating the life of his father. He created a very cool online application where photographs and videos float by on the screen. If you want to view any of them closer you simply touch the screen and it will enlarge.