Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Greetings from Ketchikan! Last winter the snow began arriving in force on December 23, and continued almost daily for two weeks. From that point on we spent four months traversing the steep hill to our house on foot, leaving our vehicles parked on the street below. While there have been several snowfalls since mid-November, currently we have barely any snow at all and temperatures have been fluctuating between crisp and cold to very mild. It’s quite the contrast to the same time last year.

University Online (Jan-Apr)
Pat signed up for an online course through the University of Alaska, learning HTML Web Design. She designed web pages by writing the computer code from scratch. For her midterm project she used sister-in-law Lisa’s company (Carolina Vascular Wellness) to design a series of web pages. For her final project she used her mother’s family history as the topic. Pat thoroughly enjoyed this course!

Hummingbird Festival (Apr)
As part of Ketchikan’s annual Hummingbird Festival sponsored by the Forest Service, Chris taught a 2-hour bird-drawing class at the Discovery Center in downtown Ketchikan. Eleven students attended the class. Chris put together a short visual PowerPoint presentation and Pat assisted him. There was a Hummingbird Juried Art Show with submissions by many town and local residents in the Southeast Alaska area. The art show’s criterion was for artists to render Alaska migratory birds, in any medium. All seven of our home school art students entered the show, as did Chris. Carrie (13) received “Best in Juvenile” and her brother Paul (10) placed “First in Juvenile”.

Rosie-locks and the Two-many Bear Cubs (Jun-Jul)
In June and again in July we experienced two home invasions…of the non-teddy bear kind. The first encounter happened on a sunny Saturday morning. Chris was outside carrying bags of garbage down to the truck to take to the dump. Pat was in the bathroom blow-drying her hair…when out of the corner of her eye she saw a movement. Lo and behold, a bear cub was peering through the open doorway!! The bathroom door was quickly closed and when Pat peeked out a short time later, the cub was nonchalantly checking out the living room where Mardi-cat was beginning to wail in fright. Pat made beeline out the back door purposely leaving it open. On the way she saw that the cub had climbed into the open back window and had torn out the screen. A visibly shaking Pat alerted an incredulous-faced Chris and he entered the front door yelling and throwing a pair of sandals at the cub, forcing it to leave via the back door. Chris was definitely Pat’s hero of the day! Pat spent a couple of months carefully looking both ways before leaving the bathroom.

The second encounter took place in July. Pat arrived home with several bags of groceries and as she entered the house she immediately noticed an odd odor! It didn’t take long to realize that another cub had been inside the house and had strewn the kitchen garbage all over the kitchen floor. She quietly tiptoed around to check every room for animals (other than cats). Thankfully, the cub had already left! Somehow the cub managed to force his way through the cat door at the back of the house. There were many muddy paw prints on the windows in the living room where he tried to leave, and more on the window in the back room where he had entered and exited. Since then, it has been several months of opening the front door and carefully peeking inside before entering the house.

Family Gathering (Jun)
The big highlight of 2009 was celebrating Pat’s parents’ 50th wedding anniversary at the end of June. The family got together in Calgary, Alberta, where Pat’s sister Cheryl and her family live. The last time our family was together was in 1997 for our wedding. It was a very special time and we enjoyed every minute of it. We made them an anniversary quilt (wall-hanging), incorporating five photos of Mom and Dad, including their wedding photo, each one representing one decade. Pat pieced the quilt, Pam hand-quilted it using a fleur-de-lys (lily) design, and Cheryl embellished it with several beautiful antique buttons that Mom and Grandma Burrill had collected over the years.


Following a wonderful week in Calgary, Pam and Chuck, Laura and Sarah, Chris and Pat drove up to Jasper National Park and shared a darling cabin in the woods for 3 days. We celebrated Canada Day in downtown Jasper by attending the small-town parade. We later drove to Mayerthorpe to visit Aunt Ann and Uncle Alfred on their farm where we enjoyed a very relaxing 3 days. Pam, Chuck and the girls continued driving back home to Juneau, Alaska. We flew home feeling very refreshed from a great2-week vacation.

Back to School (Sep)
In September Pat went back to school with another online course, Web Scripting. The class is almost finished, with just the final project to be completed by mid-December. This course has been extremely challenging, once again writing computer code from scratch, learning how to design forms for web pages, entering user information (i.e. name, address, choosing a product to purchase, etc.), collecting and storing the information in a database. It’s fascinating to begin understanding the in-behind-scenes of computer technology via the web. It’s also a lot like learning math again – the course resurrected some high school memories of algebraic-type formulas. It’s been a worthwhile experience!

Happy New Year!
We can hardly believe that another new year is quickly approaching already. We are deeply grateful for the blessings of 2009, and you are a part that. Some people we have seen recently, others we have not seen in a long time, but the continued connections we have especially at this time of year mean a great deal to us!

Holiday Tree

Here are a few photos taken over the holiday season. We decide to remain at home this year versus going off to visit family or friends elsewhere. With the bad weather on the east coast and in the mid-west it prove to be a good decision; plus we saved a few dollars in this economic down turn.

Patricia putting some finishing touches on the tree this year.

Putting on the string of lights gets interesting when there is a short or missing bulb.

We usually put a real tree for the holidays but in past two years its been a fake tree. When the real tree was up the cats would come running over to drink the water from under the tree. So for the past two years we've placed a bowl of water under the tree just for the cats. They get a fresh bowl placed next to their food everyday, but for some reason the water tastes better under a tree...they're so funny!

Mardi dressed up for the occasion...he looks so noble and handsome!

Farley looking for the toy mouse or is it a real one!

Winter Decorations

Getting caught up on a few blog post from this past winter. Patricia and I decided to drive around the town looking at neighborhood winter decorations. Not many on the island put up these decorations so its a treat to hunt them out and take a couple of drive-by photos.

Quite the set up even had a little bit of fresh snow to brighten things up. I think next year we're going to try taking video as there is much more going on than this photo is revealing.

This house not only had decorations but also play holiday music for folks like us who were driving by for the evening show.

Not sure why there is a snow globe, it was all steamed up so couldn't make out the scene inside that was unfolding. We like the lighthouse to the far left and the reindeer. All in all it was a good drive through town to hunt out these winter decorations; such a holiday spirit can't help but make it a special time.

Silvis Lake Hike

This summer my nephew Ethan came up from California to visit his grandmother for several weeks. He has been making this flight north every year since his family left Ketchikan back in 1997. One morning we both decided to hike a local trail Lower and Upper Silvis Lakes which is located on south end of the road system. We parked the car at the trailhead then signed into the trail log to begin our day.

The trail starts out fairly steep on an access road leading up to a pump house which is the midway point then level’s out a bit along the creek. It was overcast with a misty fog much of the first half of our hike that morning with the transmission lines peeking through on occasions. We noticed the water level in the creek, which was cutting through low hanging shrubs and trees, was down low. About 30 yards from the first pump house, just across the access road, we discovered a still quite pond with a few lily pads with dragonflies darting around.

We continued on our way up the access road past a tunnel with much of the penstock pipe from lower Silvis Lake in view. At some point we noticed that the misty fog was slowly clearing up with the promise of a sunny day awaiting us for the rest of our hike. Just before we arrived at Lower Silvis Lake dam the fog lifted to reveal waterfalls cascading down the surrounding ridges. As we rounded another bend the lower dam came into view as well as the lower lake with the surrounding mountains. We rested here for a little while as I wasn’t in the best of shape.



Ethan was eager to get to the upper lake so we continued up the access to the next pump house. It wasn’t long before we came across an avalanche sign warning about possible dangers that awaited us. Still we pressed on until we came across an avalanche chute filled with compressed snow and ice with a small creek running through it. Usually by this time in the summer these ice filled avalanche chutes have melted away, but due to higher than normal snow fall this past winter these areas were lingering around longer. It was fascinating to witness how the seasonal run-off had cut a tunnel thorough the chute craving out an ice cave.

We both stood there in the quite entrance of the cave simply listening to the water dripping off the ceiling of the cave while a cold fog rolled out on the ground. I waited outside the tunnel while Ethan entered to explore the ice cave and the raging creek flowing down the chute. Every now and then he would call out beckoning me to join him in the cave but my survival instinct wouldn’t permit me the opportunity. Besides he would share his picture with me later on.

After about fifteen to twenty minutes of cave exploration we decide to make our way up to power house between Upper and Lower Silvis Lake. We finally made it to the trailhead of Upper Silvis Lake to start our upward trek across the multiple switch backs leading to the grand vista’s that awaited us. The trail was well worn from the seasonal run-off and snow melt as well as previous hiker’s day long expeditions. At one point there was breakthrough in the tree line where we were afforded a sneak preview of where we started our journey earlier in the day.

We were quite surprised, once we made it to the top, to find the water level in Upper Silvis Lake to be unbelievably low. The whole shore line was about 50 feet below normal lake levels exposing numerous tree stumps bleached by the sun. Sitting there while Ethan went around a point to explore I could hear the roar of water cascading down the numerous streams from the glistening snow covered mountains from across the lake. Looking closely across the snow field from one mountain ridge to the next, it was pocketed with areas of avalanche slides as well.

We really wanted to make it to one of the far ridges opposite end of the lake so we continued onward and upward. By this time it was apparent that it was one of those rare hot days in southeast Alaska as we were sweating like pigs. We decided to sit down and eat our lunches as well as rest our weary bones before going to much further. We had a great view of not only the lakes but the fjords and inlets that dotted the vista in front of us. We both agreed it was well worth the struggle to get up as far as we have. Seeing how I wasn’t in shape to continue to the next ridge we decided to head on back down the mountain.

On our way back down the trail we came across some signs of bear in the area that wasn’t there on our way up earlier. We made it off the upper lake trail almost totally expended (as least I was not sure about Ethan) and were looking forward to revisiting the ice cave to cool off. As soon as we came to the cave entrance we both took off our shoes and sock to soak our dogs (feet) in the ice cold water. It was exactly what I needed to reduce the swelling in my feet. We also filled our empty drinking containers with ice cold water for the remaining last mile down to the parking lot.

As we drove back up the dusty dry road we both agreed that it was an extremely rewarding day trip into the mountains. Ethan drove back to his grandma’s for a quick shower and nap. I did the same and later we met up at Grandma Karen’s house for a barbeque. As we were eating and laughing with everyone we both looked very tried but happy.

Mission Street Sunset

"Mission Street Sunset"
Pastel on Wallis Paper
14" x 17"

"Mission Street Sunset" (detail)

It was a friday night so the two of us decided to go into town to grab a bite to eat. Once we arrived one couldn't help but noticed the late evening sunlight was casting long deep blue shadows over everyone and everything. We paused for just a moment so that I could snap a photo of several tourist heading back to their cruises ship along Mission Street. It was one of those evenings that seemed kind of magical in which each one of us seem to be drifting about.

Bear Cub Visit

We've had some bear stories over the years that we've lived on Springwood Court, but today's experience beats them all.

We had a close encounter of the black bear kind this morning at about 10:20 a.m. Chris was outside getting bags of garbage together and putting them down in the car, in readiness to be taken to the dump. I was blow-drying my hair in the bathroom, when a movement caught the corner of my eye – glancing to my right, into the kitchen (the bathroom door was open and looks into the kitchen) and saw a bear…I turned back to the mirror for a split second, quickly looked to my right again, and it began to sink in that there was a bear cub in the house!

I quickly shut the bathroom door as the bear cub and I locked eyes…then I realized that I was trapped inside the bathroom, so I cracked the door open to peek out and saw that the bear cub was now in the living room looking at Mardi (our cat) who had begun yowling and wailing…the cub seemed curious and was slowly looking around the room. I decided that I should get to the back door and flee…and that’s when I saw how the cub had entered…he had climbed up to the open window at the back of the kitchen, tore off the screen and frame, and knocked down the plants from the windowsill when he climbed through the window and into the kitchen. When I left via the back door, I left it open in hopes that the cub would notice and leave through it. I was also hoping that mama bear wasn’t too close by, but I had to get out of the house and tell Chris.

When I got outside and around to the side of the house I called for Chris, telling him that there was a bear cub inside the house, and that I had left the back door open. Chris looked incredulous, and then he went upstairs and opened the front door and looked in, yelling and growling at the top of his lungs, trying to scare the cub out toward the back of the house. As he looked in he saw the cub was taking a look at the dishes of cat food in the kitchen. Chris threw a couple of my sandals at the bear, yelling continuously, and the cub finally decided to leave via the back door. Chris’s voice was hoarse afterwards. My hands and arms were shaking so badly - it was as if they were fluttering in the wind. I had a hard time climbing up over the railing to get onto the deck because of how much I was shaking.

We never saw the mother bear, but we were really worried as to where she might be or end up, so it was a huge relief when the cub was finally out of the house. The bear cub was probably in the house a good five minutes or so before it left. The plants that were knocked off the windowsill caused a big mess but except for the ripped window screen and broken frame, nothing else was broken – amazing! We are very thankful that nothing worse happened. Chris said that the cub didn’t seem very afraid at all – not a good thing. And talk about adrenaline rush…

We figured that the bear cub was following Farley (our other cat). Just a couple of minutes before Chris had seen Farley rush past him in fear with his tail all bushed out. Because I was using the blow-dryer in the bathroom, any thumps/bumps I heard didn't seem important enough to catch my attention, and I just thought it was Chris working around the outside of the house making noise. He had been working on some "things that need fixing" projects this past week.

Just another day in the life of an Alaskan, I guess! Whew! Did we take photos of the bear cub?NO! But Chris did take couple of pictures of the mess left behind. I hope this sort of thing NEVER happens again!

Pennsylvania Farmland

'Pennsylvania Farmland'

Pastel on Wallis Paper

6" x 8"

Here is my second piece of work inspired by Karin Jurick's blog Different Strokes From Different Folks (DSFDF). Plan on submitting it tomorrow evening sometime after our dining out in town. Again its been good to get inspiration from others especially when one is struggling with finding a subject matter to paint or draw.

Spring Visitors

We threw a couple of burgers on the barbeque this past weekend. After about a half hour we noticed that distinctive bark from the neighborhood dogs that a bear was in the area. Both of us went out on the deck with our camera and took the following video of our visitors. These two were here last year, of course the cub was a bit smaller and mama was better looking. It was good to see them back again this spring.

Beggar

'Beggar' (study)

Pastel on Paper

16" x 24"

Besides doing landscapes and animals its good to keep ones hands in painting people. Lately been taking the time to work on portrait drawing of various people. Hoping to finish this drawing sometime before the weekend comes upon me.

New York City Street

'NY City Street'

Pastel on Wallis Paper

6" x 9"

Decided to give Karin Jurick's Different Strokes From Different Folks challenge a try as I've been setting a personal goal of completing one pastel drawing a week. Very impressed at the number of people that share in this virtual artists community. I think its great that Karin is committed to this project as an individual. Looking forward to future post at her website. Thanks Karin!

Gull Chick Nest

"Gull Chick Nest"

Pastel on Paper - 8"x10"

The picture of the above drawing was taken at about the midway point of finishing. I've actually finished this drawing but been lazy to post the final piece. Thinking about scanning the drawing versus taking a photo of the finished artwork at a later date. Been trying to complete at least one drawing a week to get back into producing a body of work like I did during my college years. Anyway enjoy!

Mother Hen

'Mother Hen'

Pastel on Wallis Paper

5" x 7"

Thirsty Farley

Had a little bit time this rainy evening to put together video of our cat Farley. He has taken to getting his drinks not only from his water dish in the morning but also from the tub facet. The house is quite in the morning usually, but every now and then we hear Farley licking the faucet. First time it happened we thought it was an animal under the house. Anyway he is a rascal. Enjoy!

Ward Lake - Pastel

Ward Lake - May 2, 2009

Pastel on Paper

Made it out to Ward Lake, a local recreational area that is frequented by most everyone in town, to spend my day drawing. Today was a beautiful sunny day and it seemed as if half the town was at the lake today. Tryed to do few pencil sketches as I walked around the lake but was interrupted by people asking "Are your drawing?", "Is it fun?", "Can I watch?, and "Will you draw me?" Needless to say I wasn't able to finish any real pencil sketches.

Decided to walk a little farther around the lake where I found picnic table off the path. After setting up my drawing pad and pastels my attention fell on the shelters across the lake. The clouds were moving in and changing my lighting constantly so I had to work fast. Just when I was ready to finish off the water a huge wind storm rolled in across the lake. I'll spend sometime later in the week working on the highlights in my shop. Anyway it was a good day to be out and about.

SeaDoo

SeaDoo - 2009

Pastel on Paper

Here is one of my most recent pastel drawings. Wasn't sure what to title the drawing so decide to take it from the inter-tube. I'm haaving the picture scanned and perhaps a few prints made up for friends or family. Hoping to post a few more drawings in the next week or so.

Twlight's Becoming

Twilght's Becoming

Pastel Pencil on Paper

(Close-up detail)

Sparrow

Sparrow (study phase)

Pastel on Paper

Sparrow (close up)
Pastel on Paper

Been working on a 18"x24" study of a Sparrow over the past few weeks. I was delightfully surprised by how well this study was turning out, especially the texture of the feathers. Should be able to finish this up shortly and post the final version.

Gull Chick

Gull Chick - March 2009

Charcoal on Vellum

(Close-up detail)

Since I had a good experience drawing the chickens on vellum paper decided to give it another try. The kneaded eraser was very effective removing any charcoal mistakes and dealing with hightlights. I'm sure to give this drawing some more of my time.

Hen & Chick

Hen & Chick - March 8, 2009

Charcoals on Vellum Paper

This pass winter Patricia & I were house sitting for a few firends. They had a number of pets for which we were more than happly to feed and play with each day. One day I decided to take a few pictures of the chickens during their feeding time. Now several moths later it was time to sketch up a drawing. I wasn't intending to do the drawing on vellum, but once I got start things were clicking for me to try and finish. The feel of the charcoals over vellum really worked out and permitted me to use a kneaded eraser to pick out hightlights. Hope to add some finishing details at a later date to round it out as a complete drawing.

(Detail Close-up of Hen & Chick)

Puzzled!

The Mainstay Gallery is a community art gallery committed to community artist development. The Gallery hosts 11 exhibits a year from September through August, and displays a wide variety of mediums from local and national artists, as well as traveling exhibits. On March 6, 2009 a show curated by Diane Naab called "Puzzled!"consisting of several large puzzle pieces were transformed into artwork by a diverse range of artists, then reassembled into one large gallery piece. Here are the pieces that I put together to contribute to this show.

Zen Bowl Puzzle

Color Pencil on Paper

Tin Crab Puzzle

Embossing on Copper

Fish Bone Puzzle

Gel Ink Pen on Paper

Sea Shells Study 3

Sea Shell Study 2 - 2009

Pencil on Paper

Sea Shells Study 2

Sea Shell Study - 2009

Pencil on Paper

Sea Shells Study 1

Four Minute Shell Study - 2009

Pencil on Paper

30 Second Shell Study - 2009
Pencil on Paper

Island Study

Island Study - 2009

Pencil on Paper

Kodiak Harbor Study

Kodiak Harbor - 2000

Pencil on Paper

Flying Gulls Study

Flying Gulls - 2009

Pencil on Paper

Gulls with Eggs Sketch

Gulls with eggs - 2009

Pencil on Paper

Study Thayer Gull 2

Thayer Gull - 2009

Pencil on Paper

Study Thayer Gull 1

Thayer Gull - 2009

Pencil on Paper

Paper Bag Sketch

Paper Bag - 2009

Pencil Drawing

Brenda, Wana & April

Saying good bye to our good friend Brend and her wonderful children Wana and April. The church had a going away get together after services. There was great tasting cake and wonderful fellowship to say good-bye to Brenda. She and the girls will be greatly missed by all of us at Calvary Bible Church and her many friends throughout town.

Here is the before picture of the cake.

Wana with Amanda & Christina

The two of us with Wana and April.

April breaking in the new camera.

Brenda & girls saying goodbye.

And here is the after picture of the cake. We were all quite hungry.