So, what is it this time?

The baby in this photo is me!

I was born in Hazen, North Dakota. I would have been born in Beulah, but there wasn’t a hospital there, so my folks opted for Hazen. My dad worked the seismic crew and we lived in a trailer. My dad was a doodlebugger. I don’t know what they call them now, or if that lifestyle still exists. We lived all over the central USA, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma, before my dad moved us back home to East Texas.

By this point I had a baby sister and another on the way. I don’t think my mom was up for another winter up on the Canadian border away from family. She may have been daunted at the idea of living in a trailer full of tiny people. At five years old I didn’t know that people lived in houses that didn’t move. I thought that everyone lived like we did. My parents sold the trailer. I was disappointed when I found out that we were going to be more or less stationary from then on.


I have vague memories of landscapes that look nothing like the rolling hills of East Texas or the flat Gulf Coast. Barren, lunar landscapes in shades of ochre, rust, chalk white and sepia rushing past the window of the old black Studebaker that had started to have that oxidized iridescent blue to it. I know that we went to Yellowstone National Park. I’ve seen the black and white photographs where my parents are a happy young couple with a towheaded toddler between them.

Christmas break of 1994 I took a road trip with a friend. We set out from Houston and spent the first night just outside Del Rio near Lake Amistad. From there, we drove on to Big Bend. The next night found us in El Paso and the following day we drove on by way of Albuquerque to Santa Fe. We spent a couple of nights in Santa Fe and then took off early one morning for Page, Arizona. It was an incredibly long drive. Christmas Eve found us standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon in a snowstorm. It was a mad dash back to Houston with a stop in Marathon at the Gage Hotel.

In the summer of 1995 my soon-to-be husband the geologist and I went to Seminole Canyon, Big Bend and Hueco Tanks. He looked at the geology of Texas and I hunted for petroglyphs and pictographs to photograph.

What I learned along the way was how little I know about my own country and how much I have yet to learn.

Somewhere between the trailer and high school I encountered the artwork of Georgia O’Keeffe. In a world full of white male artists out leapt Georgia, with her paintings of flowers and bones and the desolate landscapes reminiscent of my childhood, all set to be a model for what a young woman could do.

I read all I could about her. Perhaps you can understand my joy when I found out that she, too, had taught school. Best of all, she had taught school in Texas.
I continued to collect books about her, view her work whenever possible, even as I started to collect a bouquet of other inspiring women artists over time: Frida Kahlo, Emily Carr, Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo, Leonor Fini, Eva Hesse, Ana Mendieta, Louise Bourgeous, Louise Nevelson, Clyde Connell, among other strong women of vision.

When I returned from my first Fund for Teachers Fellowship in Europe I begin to plan for the next opportunity. I started rereading my books on O’Keeffe and picking up new ones as fast as I could. By the time I applied for my current fellowship I was the proud owner of thirty books and a video on O’Keeffe. I went through all of them looking for locations and when possible actual addresses. I begin to envision a trip from O’Keeffe’s birthplace in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin to Virginia, Chicago, New York City, Amarillo and Canyon, Texas and finally to Abiquiu and Santa Fe, New Mexico. The O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe opened after my visit there, so it would be a required stop.

In the meantime, a friend of mine from Italy taught me to knit and I begin to be fascinated with fiber arts, not that they hadn’t interested me before, but now I was on a mission. Many of the books I read on knitting mentioned places and people in the Albuquerque/Santa Fe/Taos area. The more I thought about it the more I wanted to go and see and meet them for myself.

I have always been fascinated by archeology, ruins and rock art. On my road trip to Lake Powell and the Grand Canyon I hadn’t gotten to stop at Chaco Canyon, Mesa Verde, or Canyon de Chelly. I’ve collected books and information on Southwest rock art, but seeing a friend’s photos of Chaco Canyon made me want to see for myself.

The more I thought about it the more I realized that I could plan a road trip that would include all of my interests and then some. The final inspiration to the trip was when I read an announcement of a six day summer workshop for art teachers with the delightful name of “Folk Art Traditions and Beyond” to be held in Santa Fe and coinciding with the International Folk Art Festival there. It was as though every time I turned around some other new person or place or thing was luring me along the path that would lead to this trip.

So there you have it. I wasn’t able to figure a way to make the entire circuit of Georgia’s life from Wisconsin to Illinois to Virginia, but I came up with a plan to hit on two of the three places that seem to have played the largest part in her adult life. At some point in the future I hope to make it up to Lake George in New York State, but that will have to wait for now. Before the road trip I am going to New York City to document the places that Georgia O’Keeffe lived and worked. If they are still standing I plan to photograph the actual places and, if not, I will document what has replaced them. This summer I will be driving to Northern New Mexico and the Four Corners Region. I have planned stops in Amarillo, Canyon and Palo Duro Canyon in Texas. I am signed up for the workshop in Santa Fe. I have Ghost Ranch and Abiquiu to explore. I am sure to make it to Chaco Canyon and I hope to make it on to Canyon de Chelly and Mesa Verde.

I have plenty of paper and paints, pencils and charcoal, my camera, my sketchbook and journal, and this, my trusty blog to document the journey.

Wish me luck as I start to finalize my plans! There are only five more weeks of school. After that I have a couple of weeks to set my home life in order and spend some time with my husband. Then, it’s on the road again!