Three Tulips

“Three Tulips”

Colored pencil on museum board, 40 by 30 inches.

Read about this piece on the blog.

Water Pocket Fold

I first saw the water pocket fold from an airplane. I didn’t know what it was. I saw a large gash in the Earth. It stretched a long way. Mystified, I used my phone to take a photo - knowing it would show me the location where the photo was taken.

Back at home, I looked up the location and learned it was Capitol Reef National Park - a 100 mile long fold in the Earth’s crust. This is where the Earth’s plates collide. One goes under, the other folds over, creating a pocket.

Another year later I was seeing Capitol Reef Park by foot. It is a fascinating place to visit. It is impressive from the air and very fun to visit by foot.

Hundredth Meridian

Map makers will mark the Hundredth Meridian as running through the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.  When explorer John Wesley Powell came along, he observed this was roughly the line between arid land to the west and fertile farm land to the east.  Today, this organic line of annual rainfall has shifted to the east and now lies at about the 98th longitude line - another indicator of climate change.  This drawing has a shifting divide in the middle to represent arid and fertile landscapes.