Studio Sommer

Gretchen's old web site, courtesy of the Wayback Machine It’s been about a year since Gretchen Oneail has passed away. I miss her all the time. I miss the sound of her voice, the way she said certain words. Her goofy jokes. The way she honestly and unabashedly cared about people. We have very few genuine allies in this world, which is why the loss of just one can be so devastating. I’ve had a difficult time writing some sort of tribute to Gretchen Oneail. Every time I’ve tried before now, I’ve zoomed off to another distraction, because to write this means that on a very real level I’d have to admit that one more person I loved, has now left.  Her visit to Arizona in 2014 It’s especially tragic when the person was someone as vibrant and fun as Gretchen. Some folks in the hobby have met her at Breyerfest. That’s where I met her. I'm not sure of the year, it was probably 2009 or 2010. She was a social butterfly at the Clarion, and looked forward to her visit to Kentucky all year. ...

Continuing down that long and winding road - I know, I know it's hard to imagine further than your living room right now - but last year about this time I was on my last leg home from Colorado.  Because it was a long trip we broke it into two days, and if you review the map from the first post, you'll see that I made a "loop" with the trip back going through Santa Fe. It's amazing that I had never visited Santa Fe.  It's an art mecca, but also only a day's drive away from Phoenix.  What finally drove me there, however, was my friend Mariah's recommendation to visit a very unusual art exhibit of sorts called "Meow Wolf".   Have a picnic by the giant spider! Also in the parking lot. Meow Wolf is very hard to describe. Basically, take an abandoned bowling alley, give a bunch of artists some money from George R.R. Martin (yes the Game of Thrones guy) and see what happens. I had a rough idea of what was inside thanks to photos shared by Mariah bac...