September Newsletter

Welcome to the first official newsletter by yours truly! In the following (likely) block of text, I'll give you those juicy updates you've been looking for, including: an update on the raffle, an overview of what I've been up to, an interview with my neighbor Mike and possibly a few more things.

Firstly, lets address our raffle for the "Flight of the Ribbon Bird" print - which is likely the reason you got roped into this newsletter. As of this first month we have reached 65 of the 250 subscribers for the raffle pool. At this rate, it may take another coule months before the drawing. Going into this marketing strategy, I wasn't sure how long it would take to reach the goal of 250 subscribers, but I think this first month was a good baseline. I'm incredibly grateful for your support in this project. Thank you for your patience as I push my art to the world and get one of you lucky ducks this awesome prize!

As far as personal and professional projects go, September has been a pretty solid month for me, so lets dive in. I started the month with a re-launch of my website and with that, my email list, which you are proudly a part of, Cheers! After years of testing different options for art prints, I've finally found on a service that provides high-quality and versatile options. I've been ordering just about every product proof I can afford in order to see how they turn out. Most of the produts turned out great- the rest, I slyly remove from my website. I'm esespecially excited by the quality of the canvas, paper and Tshirt prints.

This month, I also had the pleasure of teaching a "Hike and Paint" class. My friend, Sarah, runs a company called Abstract Adventures. She takes people out on hike, brings art supplies and leads an awesome, mindful plein air experience. Abstract Adventures got booked by a large group of 13 architectural software engineers from San Francisco who were in Denver on business. With such a large group, she needed a a hand with hauling supplies and teaching, and so reached out to me. We developed a lesson plan and had a great time. I'd like to give a huge shout out to Sarah for running such a tight ship and for having the most professional artistic experience I've been a part of with Abstract Adventures.

In brief, this month also included: an art show of three original paintings at Public Offering Brewery, taking weekly figure drawing classes at Threyda Gallery with Shannon Miguel and Seth McMahon as teachers (always gotta keep learning,) began a new ceramic sculpture, and went on an awesome camping trip with my brothers. I'll spare you the details and just include a few of my favorite pics...

I would like to introduce you all to my neighbor and friend, Mike Haddox! Mike is an incredibly genuine, generous and supportive human. He is always sharing the fruits from his garden, his machine shop tools, project advice and good times. Mike was my first newsletter subscriber and the first to order a shirt of my website. As a thank you to Mike for being such a cool cat, I surprised him with a gift of one of my first edition wood lamps. He happened to be wearing his Maternal Mountain t-shirt, so we snapped a quick pic and I asked him for an interview....

Mike wasn't sure what he did to "deserve" gifts and an interview but then recalled his old saying, "The only thing you deserve is an ass whoopin', you earn everything you get." Such a quintessential motto for a man of his generation. Mike is a father, grandfather, husband, photographer, gardener, mountaineer and retired machinist- just to brush the surface.

I was impressed to hear about Mike's time as a Mechanical Technician. He started, as a kid, rebuilding old war plane engines and getting the G's knocked out of him by his pilot boss. Apparently a good way to counter a passenger's airsickness is to freefall into barrel rolls until they nearly black out....
Out of highshool, Mike took a machine trade class for a year, did well and got hired out. He moved back and forth between New Mexico and Texas before moving to Colorado to work with Ball Aerospace Technologies.

One of his (declassified) projects at Ball was building a "deep impactor" in 2002. It launched a satellite that dropped a 99.9% pure-copper impactor into a comet. This allowed them to examine the fragments and dust of the comet to see what materials it was made of.

Mike also worked on the JWST (James Webb Space Telescope). This is the telescope NASA uses today to capture the deepest ever images of outer space! He helped build all the mirror work for the telescope. The JWST has one main mirror and 18 secondary mirrors that are 3 foot hexagons, gold coated and made of incredibly fragile beryllium. Each mirror has 6 motors that can change the prescription by nanometers in order to zero in on images billions of light years away!

We reminisced on his families travels to Australia, Greece, Italy, Turkey, Alaska and few other stops on the way. From the depths of the sea to the space station, Mike would most prefer to spend his time backpacking with his sons in the mountains, which he did all across Colorado's continental divide and up in Alaska. If you're at high elevation and think you hear cows mooing, make some noise and watch out! Mike and his son encountered a grizzly and her cubs which, evidentially, can impersonate our less dangerous bovine friends.

As we step into October, I will likely hop into Mike's shop to borrow some tools for creative projects. But first, I've got a handful of half finished pieces and ideas to wrap up. Of course, I'll keep you posted on when things turn out.

Well, that's all for now. Thanks for tuning in! Have a lovely time and get your butt outside to see some pretty autumn colors.
Much Love,

-Eric