Heather Martinez shares her skills at the International Forum for Visual Practitioner conference in Honolulu, HI.

How can the ancient practice of making marks be so innovative? Did you know that 75% of what we learn is received visually? As visual learners, the best way to retain information is to make marks that represent what you hear. This mnemonic skill may be inherent in some artists, but has to be learned by others. Making marks stimulates the brain’s ability to think creatively and retain what is drawn. Thus, practicing sketchnoting can be a valuable resource — a technique you can utilize to actualize ideas.

For more information about interactive graphics and to find a practitioner for your next presentation, meeting, retreat, workshop or 1:1 coaching session, visit http://www.ifvp.org.

In 1944, Clyfford Still did something that no known painter appears to have done before him. Using thick, black pigment he troweled a large canvas (105 x 92 1/2 inches) with a palette knife, then cut that textured black field with a deep red wound forming the outline of an almost organic shape. Vivid yellow appears to be shining through from beneath a tear, while a drip of white appears to ooze atop the blackness. In the lower right corner, a crevasse of emerald green fights for attention. There is no place for the eye to rest and the red wound appears to extend beyond the edge of the canvas. It’s an impending work that stops viewers in their tracks at the Clyfford Still Museum in Denver where one views the artist’s work chronologically. About the cover: Clyfford Still  PH-129, 1949 Oil on canvas, 44 1/2 x 53″ Clyfford Still Museum Collection Photo: Peter Harholdt

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The directions read, “To visit Alpino Vino during the ski season, take Gold Hill Express (Lift 14) and turn left off the lift to ski down See Forever to our front door.” Uh, does that mean there’s no parking?

Perched at 11,966’, Telluride Ski Resort’s alpine jewel is coined “The Highest Restaurant in North America.” Modeled after the quaint “huttes” of the Dolomites in the Northern Italian Alps, it reflects the ski area’s distinct European charm distinguishing it from most North American luxury ski resorts.

With the increasing popularity of the area creating the need for more and varied dining options, Alpino Vino was born out of inspiration from CEO Dave Riley’s travels abroad. Throughout Europe, ski-in ski-out bistros and wine bars scatter the mountains. While indulging at these festive venues, it struck Riley that abroad, folks “ski to eat, rather than eat to ski.” And with so many fabulous options, why the heck not?

In 2009, the mountain-stylish wine bar opened its doors in the “Trommer House,” a home once owned privately atop the ski hill as part of a long standing mining claim. The venue offers skiers and riders a, literally, elevated dining experience where they can dine on Italian inspired goodies including gourmet cheeses, soups, paninis and a generous selection of antipasti. Oh yeah, and wine.

The real claim to fame, besides the unearthly daytime views of the Wilson Range from the expansive deck, is the selection of over 150 different wines hand selected by the restaurant’s resident sommelier. But not to worry if you want to sample several and still safely navigate the slopes. Alpino Vino has an entire menu page dedicated to three-taste wine flights, allowing enophiles to tantalize their palates while only downing the equivalent of one full glass.

If you’d like to totally indulge without testing your athletic skills, you can doll up in your après ski finery, jump on the free gondola, then whisk up in style via covered Snow-Coach to one of the most unique evening dining experiences imaginable. For the cost of the average upscale Telluride dinner, 26 lucky adult guests enjoy the time-tested European tradition of single-seating per table where they can linger as long as the sumptuous five-course menu, optional wine pairing and delighting in the day’s adventures takes them.

And linger you will. Whether lunch or dinner, visitors are warmed by a crackling wood burning fire in the rustically posh space adorned with exposed hand-hewn beams and furnishings crafted from, go figure, reclaimed wine barrels. And the views from the deck? Oh yeah, already mentioned ‘em but they sure are worthy of a little repetition. Plus, if the vistas get tiring, keep an eye on the skiers parading past on the aptly named “See Forever” trail traversing to the other side of the mountain.

So bundle up kiddies and swoosh, glide or ride up to the Southwest’s most uniquely accessible wine bar in the sky. It will put the momentum in what will truly be a momentous occasion.

“We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.” – The Buddha

Tara Mandala Retreat Center has been offering visitors a way to heal their bodies, minds and spirits from the stresses of daily life since 1993. Located on 700 acres of verdant land near Pagosa Springs, the Tibetan Buddhist center hosts group retreats as well as weekly yoga and meditation classes (weather permitting), and sells healing tinctures made from herbs grown and harvested on the property.

“When people come here on retreat, one of the most common things we hear is about the land, and how it has an effect on them,” says Cady Holtkamp, director of Tara Mandala. “The healing that it has to offer.”

At the heart of Tara Mandala is the three-story Tara Temple. The stunning architecture isn’t just for show – design elements are often symbolic and appeared in a dream to founder Lama Tsultrim Allione. For example, each entrance faces north, south, east or west and is painted a color that corresponds to the element associated with the direction, such as the blazing red western entrance for the element of fire.

“It can be used as architecture to the psyche with different doors or gateways to the center of their being, to enlightenment,” Holtkamp says. “It’s kind of that 3-D interactive experience of the mandala.”

Motion is a key element to what goes on within the temple walls – as well as lack of motion. On Saturdays in warmer months (when the road to Tara Mandala is much more accessible), Tara Robertson teaches a yoga class at Tara Mandala called “Yoga for the Inflexible” before a seated meditation. The goal is to enter a relaxed state of mind so that even in everyday moments, practitioners can find “that same stillness.” “’Inflexible’ is not just a physical state: it’s a mental state,” Robertson says. “The poses are designed to unlock the body so you can actually sit with ease and be able to dive deeper into the meditation process. They’re all forms of mental discipline.”

Robertson likes to engage her students with a practice she calls “flossing the joints,” which is moving in and out of several linked poses repeatedly.

“The motion itself is actually helping to get into the connective tissue, which can hold memories and information at a kinesthetic level,” Robertson says. “If you keep working with moving in and out of these poses, you can start to notice where you are physically holding emotions and any kind of physical trauma … being able to move in and out of poses fluidly creates new patterns of awareness and erases the slate of the mind.”

Director Holtkamp encourages newcomers to attend an open house to learn about what draws around 1,000 visitors to Tara Mandala Retreat Center each year. She is quick to clarify that Buddhism isn’t about worship, but about disciplining one’s mind and working to embody qualities like compassion.

“Anything that’s done is for the benefit of all beings,” she says.

For more information, visit www.taramandala.org.

“Colorado Art Ranch’s middle name is art,” executive director and nomadic Colorado wanderer Grant Pound proudly states. Yet he knows his five-year-old venture is confusing to some. “However, this may understate what we do. The arts are certainly involved, but we are promoting the arts as a catalyst for change. We want to see creative thinking brought into discussions and decisions about human and land issues.”

To wit, Colorado Art Ranch isn’t just about the arts; it’s about creativity, and the intersection of individuals, domains, and fields of study. This itinerant organization hosted their first residency in 2007 for visual and literary artists from around the world in Salida, Colo. followed that same year by a second residency in Durango. They have returned each year to Salida, but have also hosted residencies in  Steamboat Springs, Trinidad, at the Libre Community near Gardner, and the Carpenter Ranch near Hayden. Most residencies have been accompanied by an artposium focused on a theme inspired by the local landscape, history, and area concerns: water, transgender sexuality, agritourism, mapping, migration, dwellings, immigration, and this past summer: mine reclamation.

In August 2011, Colorado Art Ranch fostered collaboration between a poet, historian, videographer, architect, public artist, and two sculptors in Hinsdale County, called Hardrock Revision. But this residency had a very specific focus — the Ute-Ulay Silver Mine, four-and-a-half miles west of Lake City. The interdisciplinary think fest had a targeted goal to create an actionable vision for the county, because
the commissioners are considering whether or not to accept the donation from LKA International of the Ute-Ulay Mine. A donation that comes with environmental challenges.

Let’s go back in time to August 27, 1871, when silver was first discover along Henson Creek in veins called the Ute and Ule (later changed to Ulay). It is worth noting that Ulay is what Chief Ouray of the Tabaguache Utes was called. The land where the silver was found belonged to the Ute Indians until Congress ratified the Brunot Agreement on April 29, 1874, and the Utes were moved to a reservation near present-day Montrose. In August that year, toll-road builder Enos Hotchkiss discovered gold nearby. Yet the area remained largely inaccessible until 1889 when the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad completed a narrow gauge line to Lake City.

The railroad is long gone, though mining continues to shape current history. There are 50 inactive mines in Hinsdale County, which pose a slew of hazards and environmental problems, particularly when the current economic driver is outdoor recreation and tourism.

So the idea of revitalizing this location and making it inhabitable again is appealing to some, but it also brought to light a schism in the community between pro and anti-mining interests. The Lake City Downtown Improvement and Revitalization Team (DIRT) and Colorado Art Ranch worked together to bring an interdisciplinary team to Lake City and listen to all voices involved. The team, following guidelines drawn from research on the collaborative process, came up with a three-phased approach focused on five priorities: sustainability; community; a balance of preservation and innovation; feasibility and flexibility; and public education. The residency culminated in a two-day artposium and presentation of the vision divided into three stages: 1) Immediate preservation and stabilization of the site; 2) Retrofitting the town site; and 3) Mill site expansion.

“The first phase is triage,” Pound said. “The buildings are in trouble.”

The community has considered installing tarps to protect structures from further decay. The Hardrock Revision team envisions vinyl covering artistically printed with images of miners, or information related to future creative enhancements of the site, provided by the historical society, artists or students. Other ideas include: turning a redwood water tank into a camera obscura; extended trails for hiking into the area; and access to a nearby overhang for ice climbing. The team also proposed
experimental phyto-remediation using plants to draw heavy metals from the contaminated soil. It’s a process that hasn’t been scientifically proven to treat lead contamination, but scientists think it might be possible, proposing to use the site as a research center.

A significant portion of the vision includes art and educational programming including creative signage, historic tours, text and images embedded throughout the site, sourced from poetry, diaries, maps, history and science. In fact, the mine site borders an existing BLM remediation site and a BLM engineering evaluation and cost analysis in 2006 estimated clean up costs for the Ute-Ulay site to be $2.1 million.

“The BLM spent $1.2 million to remediate the [adjacent] site,” Pound said. “But they have done no interpreting of the remediation. We have an opportunity to talk about that history as well, to say something about us as a people. Mining is a very messy thing. This isn’t something you hide. This is part of the whole deal.”

Now that a vision has been realized, the first step in the process of making that vision reality is for the property to be transferred to the county. When that happens, Pound plans to propose that for the triage stage they raise $600,000. He will also recommend that Colorado Art Ranch be in charge of creative oversight “so that the vision doesn’t get lost in the translation.” He said the community needs money to create an overall plan. “What we did was called a vision. We’re not experts in mine reclamation or historical preservation,” he said.

The vision is only the beginning. This type of creative transdisciplinary collaboration between artists, scientists, and government has changed the coastline in Maine through bioremediation, and transformed an acid mine drainage into an educational park in Pennsylvania. There’s no reason an abandoned silver mine high in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado cannot be reclaimed and remade into a
habitable, educational, artistic addition to Hinsdale County. Follow the development of this project at http://hardrockrevision.blogspot.com/. Time will tell if the subtle shift in imagining what is possible will lead to motion and transformation.

Illustrations: David Long

As suddenly as the snow had started, it ceased. A swath of night sky, with a few pin points of light flickering in its void appeared on the horizon and silhouetted the ridge a short distance away.

Patreak pulled the gaiter away from his face and sucked a long, deep breath into his aching chest and headed for the knoll.

Reaching the crest and panting deeply, the frigid air seared his lungs and pinched his nostrils shut. Patreak fished in his pocket for the compass to take another reading. His stomach churned when he realized it was gone.

Scanning the distance he thought he saw the lights of Nungak, but they were just blinking stars. He dropped to the snow, pulled his knees up to his chest and pressed his chin against his parka. Hugging himself for warmth he wondered if he should dig a snow cave and crawl inside until daybreak. The aurora borealis reflected light on the snow around him, turning it a blue-green color, and it was then that he saw the paw prints. He tracked them for a few yards, thinking they might belong to the husky. The prints headed down the hill, then abruptly turned back, traversed the summit and stopped at a deep crater-like depression that looked as if something had fallen or dropped into it from above.

Perhaps an animal had been there, lay down and then left, but there weren’t any tracks leading away from the site. He checked around and then forged ahead, hoping he’d find the husky and reach town within the next hour. Finally, dim shapes in the distance revealed themselves to be Nungak and he moved as fast as he could to get to the safety of the village.

Most of the modest modulars and trailers that made up the town were dark, but a pale yellow light shown through the frosty windows of the combined saloon, post office and meeting hall. Only two men were inside. Koder stood by a pellet stove dressed in his Carhartt overalls, his backside almost touching the cast iron housing. Bonard, a scraggly, ruddy-faced man of indeterminate age, tilted back on a chair’s hind legs with his legs sprawled out in front of him, one hand grasping a bottle of Canadian Whisky. When Patreak swung the door open the chair legs hit the floor
with a thud.

“Jeezus Christmas, Patreak, you scared the hell outta me!”

Words tumbled from Patreak’s mouth, “Bonard, have you seen Sorkay?”

The man moved his head from side to side, “Hell no! Ain’t been outside since this morning. What’d he do run off again?”

The other fellow stepped away from the heater so Patreak could get to it and asked, “You look like you seen a ghost. What happened?”

Patreak removed his gloves and stumbled toward the stove, placed his curled fingers and bluish hands against the stove pipe and muttered, “I just maybe did. Y’know the White Ghost the Inuit are always talkin’ about? I think it’s out there. I mean…”

Koder glanced at Bonard and then back at Patreak. “Yeah, well,” he said, “I don’t believe that crap. Them eskee-moze are too superstitious. Ain’t no such thing as a whi-i-i-i-i-te ghost.” He stretched the word out and wiggled his fingers. “Ooooo, spooky.”

Patreak shook his head. “Believe what you want but I just saw a lot of things I never  saw before … and so did … Sorkay.”

Bonard tilted the chair backward again. “Like what? What kinda things?”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Patreak. “I need your help finding my dog.”

“Jeezus, Patreak,” exclaimed Bonard, “it’s thirty below out there. Don’t your dog always come home anyway?”

Koder stood, took a rifle from behind the bar and hesitantly put on his parka. Bonard shook his head, shrugged and grabbed his coat, “Ah, what the hell, let’s just go. I gotta see this here white ghost thing. That is if it really exists.”

They stomped across the plank floor, went outside and mounted Skidoos. Patreak sat behind Bonard and explained what had happened and which way to head. With engines roaring and headlights illuminating their way, the three of them sped off to
look for Sorkay and … the white ghost.

They had covered a lot of ground in a few minutes when Patreak told Bonard to stop. Koder pulled up alongside and cut his engine. They scanned the vastness and listened for sounds of any kind. At first only their breathing could be heard. Patreak got off the snow machine and took a few steps into the darkness and waited.

Koder shouted excitedly, “Hey! Look at this!”

He was pointing at dozens of deep indentations in the snow.

“What do you think these are? I ain’t never seen no paw prints like that.”

Patreak knelt to look at them.

“Those are like the ones I saw on the other side of the ridge.”

He moved around looking for more evidence. “See what I mean. They just stop. They disappear like something dropped from the sky, walked around a bit and then vanished.”

Bonard held up his hand. “Hold it…did you hear that?”

They fell silent. From a distance came the sound of feint growling, then a snarl, and finally an angry barrage of loud barking.

“That’s Sorkay!” cried Patreak. “I know that sound. He sees somethin’. C’mon!”

They raced toward the noise until they spotted two large figures grappling in upright positions. Patreak pointed a searchlight in the direction of the commotion.

“Bears!” shouted Koder, raising the rifle, but Bonard pushed the weapon downward. “Hold on, them ain’t no bears. One of ‘ems a wolf. I don’t know what the hell that other thing is.

Patreak strained to see in the darkness. “Fire a warning shot,” he said.

Koder pointed the rifle high above the brawling figures. There was a flash from the muzzle and a delayed cracking sound that echoed into the night. Then it was silent. A minute later Sorkay trotted toward them, no other creature in sight.

Patreak ran toward the dog and fell backward as they barreled into each other. The husky licked his companion’s face while they rolled around like children in the snow.

Koder and Bonard tramped over to where the clash had been and searched for evidence of a second animal, but only one set of prints was to be found and nothing to suggest a battle had taken place.

Koder rubbed at his chin, holding the rifle in the other hand.

“I coulda swored there were two of ‘em. I know I saw two of ‘em.” Bonard said nothing; he just stared at the spot in disbelief, then looked up to the night sky and shook his head.

Patreak examined Sorkay for bruises or signs of a struggle, saw nothing, and patted him loudly on the flank, “C’mon boy let’s go home.”

Illustrations: David Long

Half an hour into their trek home, Patreak sensed the old husky had stopped and he turned to look for him. A few yards back Sorkay stood transfixed; ears back, tail down, a low whimper coming from somewhere deep within.

“What is it, boy? What do you see?”

Sorkay’s nose twitched while he slowly backed up, keeping his snout to the wind. Patreak followed the dog’s gaze. There, only yards from where they stood was a four-legged figure, easily twice the size of Sorkay. It blended so well into the whiteness of the descending snow that he wasn’t sure if it was a wolf or a polar bear. One thing was obvious: Sorkay didn’t want any part of it. The dog had already
lowered himself to the ground and burrowed into a drift.

Patreak turned in the direction of the apparition and thought he saw it move, but then it vanished so quickly he wasn’t sure if it had been there at all. But Sorkay knew.

After staring into the void, squinting past flakes the size of his gloved fist, Patreak wondered if the presence they felt could be what the Inuit call Saupa Anernerk, the White Ghost. Apprehensive, but determined to keep moving, he urged the dog to get up. “Okay, boy, come on, it’s getting cold and we have a long way to go before we reach Nungak.”

Sorkay whimpered in dismay, but stood up when his master approached. He ambled toward the young man, nudged his leg, and then tentatively walked ahead a few paces, turning briefly to make sure his companion was following.

Patreak yanked his backpack higher onto his shoulders, pulled his fur hat down to cover his ears, and shoved off. The rapidly accumulating snow, almost knee-high, was wet and heavy and it made trudging onward as tough as he could ever remember it being. Trying to keep up with the powerful sled dog, he leaned into each step and focused on the paw prints in front of him and the course the Husky was taking.

From time to time, another set of tracks mysteriously appeared alongside Sorkay’s and then would vanish, only to reappear a few hundred yards later. They were as big as a polar bear’s, but not the same shape. In fact, they were like nothing Patreak had ever seen before.

Uneasy at possibly being in the company of a predatory animal, Patreak knew they had to keep moving because the village would be a safe haven from the cold, the snow, and whatever else they might be sharing the night with.

The two companions moved across the frozen lake and over the encircling hills. They fell into a rhythm, with Sorkay plowing through the mounds of snow and Patreak high-stepping to keep his snowshoes from post-holing; making their way toward the tiny town at the edge of the mountains a few miles away.

Patreak stopped when the snow abated and a patch of sky and stars appeared  overhead. He reached into his pocket for the compass. It was never easy to get an accurate reading this far north, but he looked at it anyway. The dial trembled between W/NW and he nodded, knowing they were at least heading in the right direction. If he could gain some higher ground he might see the lights of Nungak, providing the snow let up long enough.

He returned the compass to his pocket and glanced around for the Literary Fiction dog, but there was no sign of him.

Whenever they were out walking the husky would often run ahead and disappear for an hour or more, but would always come trotting back. Patreak called out, shrugged and pushed on, expecting the dog to sidle up alongside him at any moment.

After twenty minutes and a few more shouts into the darkness, the snow began to fall as heavily as he had ever seen. Patreak became concerned over Sorkay’s whereabouts and that he himself might lose his sense of direction or become disoriented.

He listened for a few seconds, then knelt and cupped his hands to his mouth. “Sorkay! Sorkay!” He tried to whistle, but it got lost in the wind. “Damn it. Where are you, pup?”

A low grumbling sound caused Patreak to swing around. Startled and a little frightened, he called yet again, “Sorkay? Here boy!”

He waited, listening for the dog, trying to determine where the noise had come from, thinking it might be the wind, but then he heard the sound again. This time it was longer and seemed closer, and it wasn’t like any animal sound he knew. Heart racing, he grabbed the halogen headlamp strapped around his hat, held it away from his body and started a sweep of the surrounding area. But the snow was too heavy and the shaft of light only magnified the blizzard’s intensity, like high-beams in a whiteout when the flakes head straight at the windshield.

When the two had started out the temperature was ten above, but Patreak sensed it had already dropped to minus fifteen or twenty. Worried about Sorkay and clammy from anxiety, he felt chilled and was uneasy about being so far from a fire to warm him.

He removed the neck gaiter from his backpack and pulled it over his head, adjusting it to cover his mouth and nose. Snow on his lashes began to freeze and his toes were
starting to numb.

Patreak sighed heavily, looked around one more time and then kicked up one snowshoe. As he stepped forward and started walking, the compass slipped from his pocket and was quickly buried in the snow below his feet.

While he walked he thought of Sorkay and recalled how ten years before, Ugalik, the owner of the trading post, had given him the runt of the litter from his sled team’s Alpha. The old Inupiat had said Sorkay was too tiny and timid to be a sled dog, and let Patreak take it. Patreak was happy and scooped up the puppy, stuffing it into his coat so only its nose poked out. From that point on, the two were inseparable. As Sorkay grew into adulthood he could hold his own against any creature. Once he even stood his ground against a Kodiak bear they had come across in the forest; growling, snarling and barking wildly he sent the beast hunkering off into the woods.

Patreak smiled at the memory and felt comforted that the dog would be okay this night, no matter what was out there.

The thump-slap, thump-slap of snowshoes moving through the drifts was the only noise Patreak could hear as he trudged onward. A large, dark shape emerged about ten yards ahead. He approached cautiously, trying to determine if it was a tree stump, or something else. As he got closer the shape materialized into the carcass of a freshly killed caribou. Blood stained the snow around the animal; its throat had been ripped open and the belly eviscerated. There was no sign of struggle and there were no tracks in the snow surrounding the carnage. No Eskimo would do this, he thought. They would never leave behind a dead animal like this, or have torn open its throat. Patreak was cold, tired, and troubled by the way the caribou was killed.
Frightened for himself and his companion, he screamed, “SORKAY!”

CLICK HERE TO READ PART 2

Sculpting is dimensional, physical, even touchable (though we rarely get to run our hands over an object).

Michael Naranjo, however, encourages viewers to touch his sculptures. To caress the smooth ebony finish of his bronze figures. To detect the bark of a tree or the wings of a bird. Feeling provides meaning and allows viewers to comprehend mass, form, and shape. For Naranjo, who is blind, his fingers are his eyes, and he has received special dispensation to touch artwork throughout Europe. In 1986, he touched Michaelangelo’s David. But there is one piece he would like to see again.

“If I could go back and see anything, it would be The Slave. I would love to touch that one again,” Naranjo told me sitting in Durango’s Sorrel Sky Gallery where he just installed a life-sized work called White Buffalo’s Vision.

Dying Slave and Rebellious Slave at The Louvre are two of Michaelangelo’s notoriously unfinished works. Naranjo falls on the side of those who believe that Michaelangelo did finish the works. He worked until he felt the need to move on, often learning something in one work that helped him finish another.

White Buffalo's Vision

“He finished. He did it intentionally. He did what he got done, that’s what he wanted. He simply wanted to let you see what he saw, and let you know that it is in there. He gives you a glimpse of what’s inside that stone,” Naranjo said.

That experience, the ability for him to touch these masterpieces, changed the Santa Clara Pueblo sculptor.

“I got a new sense of the stone. I knew there was actual life in these pieces,” Naranjo recounted in a New Mexico television special some years ago. “My hands could ‘see’ before, but after I experienced Michelangelo’s work, I had new life in my hands. I could see twice as much as I could prior to that time.”

Naranjo infused his own work with that tactile understanding. He has sculpted in stone, but primarily works in wax and clay, which are then cast in bronze.

Born in 1944 and sighted until 1968, Naranjo began making sculpture as a child, forming chunks of clay into animals. His mother Rose Naranjo is a Santa Clara potter. Growing up in Taos, he spent time fishing, hunting, and exploring the mountains and canyons with his nine siblings. After high school, he attended New Mexico Highlands University, but was drafted in 1968 and sent to Vietnam. Caught in an ambush, a grenade explosion took his sight and damaged his right hand. But while recuperating in Japan, he asked for some clay and began making small figures. When he returned to New Mexico, he learned to live alone and kept sculpting.

“My first love was sculpture,” Naranjo said. “It’s always what I wanted to do. I was fortunate in that my left hand was preserved to allow me to be able to do this. I discovered early on that with my mind’s eye and my one good hand I could still make pieces. I was thrilled.”

Naranjo works alone, with no assistants. There is no doubt that his sculptures are from his vision, his hands, his creative endeavor. He sometimes utilizes live models in creating figurative works and prefers wax to oil or water based clay because it’s lighter and can be constructed using thinner armatures. He uses only his hand and his fingernails when working with pliable materials – no tools that other sculptors use to create fine details because he doesn’t know what is happening at the other end of the tool. He does use a pneumatic hammer to carve from stone, holding it in his damaged hand and feeling his way with his left. He’s cut and injured his fingers many times.

Naranjo is sublime and his works convey an inner life and a soul. Naranjo enjoys reading while he is sculpting and he will often see visual imagery inspired by stories and dialogue. Or they will come to him in dreams and visions. He believes the stories add to the life of the work, giving them a yesterday, a today and maybe a tomorrow. I ask him about the man, sitting cross-legged holding an arrow: White Buffalo’s Vision.

“He was out hunting and saw a heard of buffalo from a distance with a white buffalo. He goes back and finds what he thinks is the perfect arrow shaft, then finds the perfect arrowhead, and a special kind of feathers he puts on his arrow. He’s just finished it. He’s looking down the shaft to see if it’s true and if it will be what he needs when he goes and finds the white buffalo.”

Naranjo's work on display at Sorrel Sky Gallery in Durango, Colorado

In the sculpture, the eyes of the warrior are not defined, a detail Naranjo incorporated in his work long ago. Both of his eyes were enucleated after the accident and he was fitted with prosthetic eyes. When the doctors asked him what color he wanted, the man born with brown eyes asked for blue ones. They are striking with his dark skin and silver-black hair. They sparkle and are almost real because his presence is so powerful, his energy so engaging, his passion for life and for sculpting so effusive.

And it is this conveyance of love and happiness that Naranjo suffuses into his work.

L'araignee rouge (The Red Spider) 1976 Alexander Calder - Paris, France

The year was 1913 when French-born, American Dada artist Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) created a piece of art using found objects. He would call the work, and others that followed, “readymades.” One of them, the upside down urinal titled Fountain and signed “R. Mutt,” is considered by many to be among the most important works of art of the 20^th century.

The very first of the found objects that Duchamp combined was comprised of a bicycle wheel, a fork, and a kitchen stool. Its most notable aspect was that the assembly actually moved, at least when it was manually turned. As such, it is considered to be the original piece of kinetic art. Duchamp invented the entire class of “readymades” to challenge assumptions about what constitutes a work of art, and in some instances referred to their construction as “kinetic.”

All kinetic art depends on motion for its effect and the movement can be provided in many ways; through wind, electricity, solar power, or sound waves; sometimes by relying on an interactive bystander cranking a handle. With today’s more sophisticated technology, artists are finding innovative methods to make art spin, shift, transform, and otherwise delight.

Some ten years after Bicycle Wheel, László Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946) created an elaborate contraption that he named a Light-Space-Modulator. The device was used for demonstrating both plays of light and manifestations of movement. Moholy-Nagy explained that he had designed the machine to create pools of light and shadow so he could study their movement.

With the new, broader definition of art, the ability to add movement to their work gave artists greater room for expression and experimentation.

Swiss-born Jean Tinguely (1925-1991) is best known for his sculptural machines or kinetic art, known as “metamechanics.” His most infamous work, a self-destroying sculpture titled Homage to New York was exhibited in 1960 at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), but it only partially self-destructed. A later version fortunately achieved the desired result and might even be considered an early form of performance art.

Soon afterward, kinetic art attained accepted status as an art medium. In keeping with the Dada movement, Tinguely’s work satirized the mindless overproduction of material goods in the advanced industrial society.

Alexander Calder (1898-1976) and George Rickey (1907-2002) both had training in engineering, and it was Calder’s “mobiles” (a term he adopted from Duchamp) and Rickey’s large-scale outdoor sculptures that brought them fame and pushed the concept into the mainstream. Rickey’s minimalist approach to kinetic sculpture was more subtle and serious looking than Calder’s, but it is Calder who is most associated with the art form; he produced his first mobile in 1934.

A contemporary of Calder and Rickey is Israel-born Yaacov Agam (b. 1928). Agam’s work often combines abstract art with movement, and might include viewer participation with the use of light and sound. In 1964, he published his artistic credo, which in part describes the kinetic art concept. In it he wrote, “My intention was to create a work of art which would transcend the visible, which cannot be perceived except in stages, with the understanding that it is a partial revelation and not the perpetuation of the existing. My aim is to show what can be seen within the limits of possibility which exists in the midst of coming into being.”

Kinetic Steel 9 Foot Rooster, Fredrick Prescott

Another early practitioner of kinetic art is Ronald Mallory (b. 1939). His most famous works during that period incorporatedmercury and acrylic, with fascinating results. His own definition of his art also describes the intentions of kinetics. Accordingly, he wrote, “I believe art must be creation itself. It must design itself. It must break away from tradition. It has been a natural evolution for me to make the transition from painting as I knew it. Working with the newest discoveries in chemistry, computer imagery and materials has become so much a part of our age. My work therefore has become organic in concert with my attempt at ‘controlling’ its innate nature to create a finished work. It is like a seed in the earth; it must evolve, it must change and become a collaboration (sic) between nature and man; synchronized, harmonious, beautiful.”

At the Autumn Arts Festival in Durango, Colorado this past September, Santa Fe metal sculptor Fredrick Prescott exhibited several large whimsical animals, most of which are designed to be outdoors. Although he works in a variety of sizes and themes, Prescott said the steel animals corralled at the corner of College Drive and 2^nd Avenue in Durango were not the largest of his pieces; some weigh 1,000 pounds or more and are as big as a full size elephant. As if their bright colors and fanciful stances aren’t enough, the heads are balanced perfectly on a fulcrum so that when touched gently they will bob for minutes at a time; even a stiff breeze will provide the amusing movement. In principle, while they are simple forms of kinetic art, there is nothing simple about them. That is one of the wonders of kinetic art, while it might look simple in some forms, it requires a keen understanding of physics; just another example of art and science melding with wondrous results.

Motion, “e-motion,” color, and light are qualities I look for when contemplating a photograph. I love to create and share interactive artwork that involves the viewer and lets them feel the passion of the moment.

Folkloric dancers in Mexico possess the qualities I value in fine art photography. This image is from my second series of folkloric dancers. It is one of my favorites and a jurors’ choice in a recent national photo contest.

Traveling in Mexico continues to be one of my favorite things to do. The Mexican people are always glad to share their country and culture, while being patient with my struggling Spanish. Experiencing the folkloric dances, the festivals and holidays, the food, and the happiness of the people are something I believe one should not miss.

-Barbara Grist