Grand Canyon Celebration of Art - Day 8 and the End

You can see rain falling over by the North Rim, at Point Imperial

The last day of the artists' participation in the Sixth Grand Canyon Celebration of Art dawned with bands of clouds sweeping the Canyon with rain. Before the Buyer's Brunch, I said a long goodbye to the Canyon by taking the rim walk from the Kolb Studio to the Park Headquarters and back. Having neither raincoat nor umbrella, I kept an eye on the clouds.

It's an interesting walk. It's part of an interpretive trail called the Trail of Time. Every step, the pavement is punctuated by a brass ring the size of a penny that marks off a million years, and every ten rings, a large marker announces the passage of ten million years. If you start at Verkamp's Visitor Center, you'll be at the beginning of the Canyon's geological record (1.8 billion years), and if you go all the way to the Yavapai Point Geology Museum, you'll come to the end of the record (270 million years.) Along the way, you can see rock samples from the Canyon that were created at different times in the Canyon's history.

Along the Trail of Time

The Trail also gives you spectacular views of the Canyon. Sometimes, you can run across the unexpected. Here's a cute little guy that I found walking the trail:

Tarantula - about 4" across

The brunch ran from 10-12. As with the the opening reception the night before, the food was great. This morning we had mini quiches, mini breakfast burritos, diced fruit and an assortment of cheeses and pastries plus, of course, coffee. I don't think we had quite the frenzy of the night before, but things definitely were moving. Following the brunch, the doors were opened to the public, and by the end, the Grand Canyon Association had sold a total of $200,000 worth of art. (This includes the Saturday morning auction and evening reception as well as the brunch.) Half of the money goes to fund the proposed art museum with the other half going to the artists.

Of the 14 paintings I created for the event, seven sold. The remaining paintings will be on exhibit and are for sale until late January at the Kolb Studio. As paintings sell, artists are asked to supplement the exhibit with other Grand Canyon plein air paintings. I have several more I will be adding as time goes by.

This last day is always bittersweet. Many of us felt we could easily stay another week painting the Canyon and were sad to leave our painting friends; all of us were eager to get home to our loved ones.

I am honored to be part of this worthwhile event. I would like to thank the staff, volunteers and sponsors of the Grand Canyon Association as well as the National Park Service for working together with the GCA to make the event possible. I would also like to thank my hosts who, for the third time, made my stay a very enjoyable one. Thank you, Chris and Rick!

For me, I am heading back to Campobello Island for a few days - just long enough to pack up and start the long drive west with workshops in Maine and New Hampshire. When I get back to Arizona in mid-October, I will arrive just in time for my next plein air painting event - the Sedona Plein Air Festival.