Winners at NAN!

The North American Model Horse Shower's Association national show was held last weekend in Tuscon, Arizona. I could not attend, but was able to be there vicariously through other people's photos. Here are some of the artist resin champions and reserve champions, from artist Sommer Prosser:

Champion Quarter Horse
"Pecos Gold"
owned by and painted by Sommer Prosser




Champion Other Pure/Part/Grade Spanish
"Derringer"
owned and painted by Sommer Prosser



Champion Workmanship Mini Dilute
"Jute"
owned and painted by Sommer Prosser



Champion Paint and Reserve Champion Workmanship mini Paint
"Elixir"
owned by Lisa Winkworth and painted by Sommer Prosser






Reserve Champion Paint
"Burlesque"
owned and painted by Sommer Prosser



Champion Workmanship mini Bay/Chesnut
"Namir"
owned by Lisa Winkworth and painted by Sommer Prosser



Champion Part Arabian
"Desert Sheik's Treasure"
owned by Valerie McEntee and painted by Sommer Prosser




Reserve Champion Appaloosa
"Shez Innitowinnit"
owned by Karen Jensen and painted by Sommer Prosser




Reserve Champion Other pure/Part/Grade Light
"Live Wire"
owned by Lisa Winkworth and painted by Sommer Prosser




Reserve Champion TWH
"Party Line"
owned and painted by Sommer Prosser




Reserve Champion mini Arabian
"Ma-Ajmala"
owned by Karen Jensen and painted by Sommer Prosser




Reserve Champion Mustang
"Signal Fire"
owned and painted by Sommer Prosser

They've taken over my life!

I've noticed that most of my blog posts are about horses, the real ones, and related equine activities and less and less about my sculpting and model horses. It hasn't been intentional, but almost without me noticing I have been exploring other interests in my life and just plain dealing with life in general. I can feel my creative urge to sculpt returning, but slowly, while my obsession with the beauty of horses has not changed at all. In fact, my 'real' life has become more and more entrenched with horses to the point where I sometimes feel they have taken over our lives and our purpose in life is just to serve them. "Our" herd of four, innocent as they appear dozing in the shade of the barn, are becoming adept escape artists and our lack of reliable equine containment systems (good fence!) is starting to assert itself on the top of our priority list. Well maybe not the absolute top, but close.

How can I be angry when they are so pretty?

With the riding season getting under way I can't help but remember of how little I could do last year when I had a bout of sciatica. I couldn't ride any real distance until late August. This year my back is holding together, knock on wood. I've ridden 145 miles so far, and hope to get 500 in by November. A few pack trips would be great too, maybe even some trailer camping in new to us areas like the South San Juans or the Lizard Head Wilderness. In the midst of my strong desire to do as much trail riding and back country stuff as possible this season is the reality of one of my friend Cindy's husband Jerry battling lung cancer. It is through incredibly good fortune that we picked this lovely area of the state to move to, and that they happened to live right up the road. They were exactly the right people we needed to know at the right time in our lives, as adults entering into horse ownership and back country activities. While I knew some stuff, having grown up in a rural area and having ridden horses from age 9 to my 20's, there was a lot left to learn (and still is). There is nothing so helpful as becoming friends with people who know horses, really know them, to help guide you along the way. Not the common 'order barking' horse experts found almost anywhere there are horses, but people that truly have an understanding of horses from countless hours and countless horses.

Jerry is off the chemo and feeling well enough to do a little riding, and we are planning a back country pack trip next week. It is hard to focus on sculpting when something like this comes up, and if he wants to go camping then we are going camping, it is more important than anything else this summer. We don't know how much longer we will have him for, and time is of the essence. Chances are we will still learn a thing or two from him along the way :)

Cedar Mesa trip

We got back yesterday from spending a week on Cedar Mesa, west of Blanding. We really like it up there, not a lot of people on the top and you can see a lot of things from the canyon rims that you might not see from the canyon floors, like these ruins nestled under a big rock on top of a peninsula:

Or these ledge ruins, which I thought were not possible to get to but maybe they crawled along the ledge from an access around the corner of the rock to the left:

We stumbled upon this metate on the mesa, notice the grinding stone is a river rock probably carried there from many miles away:

Once of the amazing things about the desert is how you can usually find water if you know what to look for. The cow trails led us to this pothole on a ledge:

I thought it was interesting how the roots of this old juniper lifted up the rocks when it fell over:

Some of the Claret cup cacti were blooming:

We moved after 4 days to White Canyon west of Fry Canyon. There are a few crossings along the highway, we parked at Soldier Crossing. You can ride a little more than 4 miles upstream, and at least 7 miles downstream from this point. We only turned around as it was getting late. I don't think this canyon sees much horse use, but it was actually pretty nice, about 50/50 sand and cobble stone, nothing very scary. The only real downfall of this canyon from what we saw is that it is close to the highway, which runs along it's southern edge, and you do hear cars from time to time. There were several interesting side canyons and slots, this one is in Long Canyon:

This was interesting, not sure how it happened (natural or human placed?):

A big piece of petrified wood:

A big log balanced on a rock:

It was a nice trip, not as long as we wanted but the weather changed. Today at home it snowed all morning! Hard to believe a few days ago I was having lunch on a big rock in the sun :)

Spring?

I think spring has arrived...but it seems to change it's mind every hour or so.  I am almost afraid to say it, but we are just about caught up with our casting backlog!!!! Which gives me some breathing room to start thinking about other things like sculpting and riding my horses...it's been a long time since I have felt a creative urge, but it is coming back, slowly but surely. There will soon be a new mini, hopefully in May. I'm still keeping the details secret, and as always all sales information will be made available to my announcement list first at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rosestudionews

An army of Jezebels that were shipped last month:

Rose Studios also now has a fan page on Facebook.  Lots of people are still sending me personal friend requests, but the easiest and fastest way to get the studio tidbits is to 'like' the fan page. I post pics of work in progress, castings being shipped out, some digital sculpting pics, and other miscellaneous stuff that seems to small to post here, and since they don't relate to sales I don't want to clog up my announcement list with them.

I recently received my personal copy of my reiner painted by Carol Williams, and wow, is he a stunner! Thanks Carol for yet another outstanding paint job!

Winter has finally arrived and with it less time spent outdoors, for me anyway. Todd feeds the horses, plows the driveway, carries in wood and I only go outside to get in the truck for grocery runs. Not that I hate winter or anything, it's the cold I have a problem with. I've hung up my riding gear until the spring, and am more than happy to stay indoors as much as possible, preferably in front of the fireplace.

Progress is being made on the casting backlog. With Todd about caught up on winter preparations he is now back in the casting shop and will be helping with casting clean up, so we should be able to get a lot more work shipped out over the next weeks and months. I've been spending all my studio time cleaning castings since the summer, when I needed to step in so Todd could work on a much needed home remodel project. So, I have not been sculpting at all, there is nothing new in the pipeline and probably won't be for at least a few more months. Believe me, I'd much rather be being creative than sanding on castings. It's very boring and tedious, and I don't seem to know where to stop so the castings going out are 70-80% prepped.

My back problem seems to be manageable now. I still can't stand for very long, but the pain is under control and I have been able to resume most of my regular activities. I had a great physical therapist and chiropractor and have continued my exercises at home, I think it helps a lot. At some point in the future I will need major back surgery, but the longer I can put it off the more likely the FDA will have approved new surgical devices that could save me from having to have a spinal fusion. Fingers crossed that's how it turns out anyway.

At one point my sciatica was so painful that I couldn't walk at all, and my therapist suggested I use a wheelchair for an upcoming pack trip. Yes, I was too stubborn to give up my pack trips :) As far as I know I may be the only person who has packed a wheelchair into the Weminuche Wilderness:












When my back started to do a little better I started riding Indy, Todd's TWH. Those who know Indy know he is, um, weird. But he is the smoothest horse we have and he makes me feel good, the way he carries himself just makes you feel alive:

The summer flew by yet again with me not updating my blog since June...yikes!

Lots of stuff has been going on. Firstly I have been having issues with my back since the end of May. Apparently time and gravity take their toll on us all eventually, but at 43 it wasn't something that I was thinking would happen to me. So, much of my summer involved going back and forth to Durango for various doctor's appointments and physical therapy. We also had company for most of the summer, and have been doing a major home remodel. During all this we managed to squeeze in two pack trips up the Pine River.

Fortunately I can still ride, and can work without too much pain. I've been cleaning up the reiner castings and am terribly slow, and probably way too particular, but I know what I am sending out is a top notch product. I normally don't do the clean up work, but am doing it so that Todd can have the time needed to complete our remodel before winter sets in.








Sommer Prosser was here for three weeks house sitting just a few miles away, and I was able to recruit her to help clean castings, too. Since she is from Phoenix I wanted to show her what life is like up here in the mountains and got her out on a few rides. Here she is on Indy in an area called Cave Basin, about 12,000 in elevation:




We are hoping to have the remodel mostly done in early October so we can go on our fall riding trip to southeastern Utah. Anyone who lives in snow country knows the need to extend one's Indian Summer for as long as possible to give you the fortitude to make it through the upcoming months of snow and cold. I am going to be diligently cleaning reiner castings until then, with my little room being the only place I can be and not get in the way of the remodeling project.

And what about the remodeling project? The master bedroom has been retextured, painted, wood floor installed and now the main part of the house is getting the same treatment. Except it's a lot bigger than our bedroom, and involves a semi-demo of the behemoth fireplace into something a little less huge and monolithic. We've lived here for 9 years and it is finally time to take it on! Yay!

Colorized reiner

After some time spent working through a basic Photoshop book I tried my hand at colorizing a photo of an unpainted reiner resin. I thought I would have time to paint one in reality, but simply ran out of time as I've been busy with cleaning up castings to ship, my garden, and my back going wonky on me. With doctors orders to take it easy I thought learning some Photoshop skills would be fun and come in handy.








Hopefully my skills will improve with more practice, I think it would be fun to do up a bunch of pics in all sorts of horse colors :) Fun!