Butterflies

Hi again...if you read the last post, you will see that Desert Botanical Gardens was the host for the beautiful pieces of Chihuly glass.  As a result of that trip for my birthday, we joined the Gardens for the year with the hope of other photo opportunities.  I think we visited 5 or 6 times, and as all things growing, were amazed at the changes that take place in our newly adopted desert landscapes.  To hear many native Arizonans speak about their home state, you would think it was all brown cactus and dust, apparently, the dust may have clouded their vision, because things bloom and change and blossom and evolve just like other areas of the country where the weather fluctuates more than 10-20 degrees!! Just kidding, we do have cold winters here, I think it hit 60 during the day a few times last year... in any case.  One of the amazing things we were able to see at the Gardens was the Monarch butterfly exhibit.  Each year they hatch and tag monarch butterflies to track their Arizona migration.  It was an amazing thing to see and if you  ever get the chance to be in an area with an abundance of butterflies, you will not be disappointed.  So with that said, here are some of our favorite shots from our visit.

Blowing Glass

As you may or may not know, I used to blow glass when I lived on the east coast.  When I moved to AZ, I thought I would be able to find a studio to rent time in, but that has not yet become a reality.  I do however, still have a love for glass and one of my favorite glass blowers is Dale Chihuly from Seattle.  He is very famous and has several videos out, that are shown periodically on PBS, so if you are interested you should check them out.  He also has installations around the world and if you ever get a chance to see one of them you will not be disappointed. Desert Botanical Gardens is trying to purchase one piece to keep for permanent installation.  The Bellagio hotel in Vegas, has one of his pieces in the lobby, and there is a piece in one of the office buildings in Salt Lake city, just to name a few.

Dale had an installation at the Desert Botanical Gardens last year and we went for my birthday.  It was fabulous, and we got some amazing shots.  Unfortunately, we cannot use any of them for commercial reasons, so you will not see them in any of our products for sale or any of our calendars, but I thought I would share some with you here.

Alvin and I created two collages of many of our favorites which we have hanging in our home for our own enjoyment.

Hope you enjoy them too!

Going Big!!

We have recently enlarged, in various sizes, several of our favorite shots.  Now that we are shooting digitally, there is much more opportunity to GO BIG!!! 

I was inspired to blow up some of our images, when they were sponsoring a Native American photographer at work, who had enlarged a landscape of red rocks that was just breath taking.

So with that said, our house now looks like a gallery, with framed photographs everywhere.  Some of the shot take my breath away.

So here is a tease.

Cactus flower in the backyard July 2010

Monument Valley, UT March 2009

The beginning

This is it, our first attempt at a blog.  I thought this would be a good way to document some of our creative ideas, hence the name...our artistic impressions.  You will see various kinds of art posted, as I tend to dabble in many different mediums.  Most prolifically will probably be the photography that my husband and I have been working on  lately.

I have been taking pictures for most of my life, as a matter of fact, I was really the family photographer, which is why many of the family shots growing up did not have me in them.  I upgraded to a traditional SLR, my pentax K1000 which I love dearly, when my brother gave it to me as a gift in the mid 70's.  My best friend and partner in crime, started with his first SLR in the mid 80's, and we have been avid photographers ever since.

So now we have taken the leap into digital photography with the acquistion of our digital SLR's which have opened up a renewed love of photography. Most recently, we have been focusing on the beautiful cactus flowers around us.

We hope you will enjoy taking whatever part of this journey you wish to, with us, and hope that what you see will stir up the emotions and joy that we find in doing it.


This is one of the first pink flowers to bloom this year.  These flowers are so beautiful, but only bloom for one day and then die.  Most times, they are fully opened in the middle of the night, and we do out and shoot in the dark