Snapshots from Badachro

Blake on Dry Island, picture by Sarah, 2008



Kenny and Sam, 2008



Blake's photo from the pier, 1999



Sarah's photo of the millenium Hogmanay party on the shore 1999, 2000



Photo of Sarah by Blake, 1992



Dry Island, acrylic on canvas, 1996 Sarah



Badachro River, by Blake, 1999

This image was made in Badachro during New Years 1999-2000 (Y2K). We figured that the magnificent land and superb people of Sarah’s home would provide good company if, as predicted, our technological societies spontaneously shut down at midnight and the world plummeted into chaos.

My photographs from that visit to Badachro and those made on our next trip in 2002 are immensely meaningful to me as they represent much more than just a record of that place. My original impressions of Badachro were formed from Sarah’s recollections and art. The depth of this place’s significance to Sarah is not part of my formative experience as there is no single place from my early life in which I can identify the historical, inspirational, or emotional investment that Sarah has found in Badachro. Early in our relationship, I came to know the place through her stories and art, and later began to accumulate my own experiences there. “Wild” is how Sarah has always described the landscape around Badachro. While her definition naturally draws from her personal experience, for me, wildness is viscerally apparent in the incessant wind, rain, and darkness of winter there. Those severe environmental conditions resign the photographer to a certain loss of absolute control with unpredictable motion, long exposures, and moisture on the lens and inside the camera. If images are to be made at all, the imagemaker must give himself over to the place. The photographs I made in Badachro at that time were unlike any I had done before, and I believe it’s because the conditions, together with my intimate knowledge of Sarah’s experiences, came to provide a portrait, not just of the place but of someone dear to me whose life is molded by that place.

Another reason that the turn-of-the-millennium represents an important transitional period in our marriage is that children were introduced to our lives soon thereafter (Kenny was born, um, nine months after the Y2K trip). Blake



Baosbheinn and Lechnasaide




Skin at the Surface

Floating, staring at the sky, blue and cool.
A deep breath pulls my chest above the surface;
A ripple reaches up my cheek
And salt touches the corner of my eye.
Floating, hands patting the sea
Legs giving balancing kicks.

Granny calls, "You'll catch your death,
Come in and have a cup of tea."

The dog is running down the quay.
She wants to play, but hates the water.
She wags her rear and smiles.

"Sarah, come up out of the Water
You've been in there an awful while."

It's not that cold, shallow here by the boat
Dark in the shadow of the jetty.
Seaweed curls around my feet
But it holds no grip.

"Sarah, come in and tell me your news -
I haven't seen a soul all day."

I could lie here all day
Ears underwater, eyes in the sky
Floating with the jellyfish
But she is standing at the front door,
Clasping her hands tightly.

by Sarah.

From "Whit" a book of poems compiled and edited by Madalyn Rilling and published at the Colorado College Press, 2012. All rights reserved.

Snapshots from Rocky Mountain National Park

Wally, Andrew and Bryan 1987







Blake, Sarah, John and Meri, assorted dates



Blake, Charlie, Meridith, Jasper and Sarah

Rocky Mountain National Park

We'll start with Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado, as it is a place we've come to know together.

In 1997, Blake and I, and our friends John and Meridith, attempted to climb Longs Peak. We stayed at the YMCA in Estes Park and were kept awake by frisky teenagers giggling under our bedroom window who were part of some Christian camp. So when we awoke to start our hike at 2.30am, we didn't feel very bright. We walked up the path to Longs Peak under the stars and it was lovely. Dawn came and then sometime in the morning we came to Chasm Lake and stopped, and stayed and decided that was good. A couple of years later we went back with Meridith, and this time my brother Jasper and his friend Charlie. We went up to Chasm Lake again, and with no thought of conquering Longs Peak, because the lake was now a destination in itself.

I've painted this view four times since. This version is from 1999. Sarah.

I first visited the Park on an weeklong trip from Houston in 1987 with Andrew, Bryan, and Wally Beckham. Extraordinary though that trip was, it provided just a taste. When I began considering where to attend grad school, it may have been the Park that pulled us to Colorado in 1995 just as much as potential colleges. Sarah and I explored the Park extensively over the first few years after moving to Denver in 1995. We visited in all seasons and in all kinds of weather, hiking, backcountry camping, cross-country skiing, meandering, sitting, looking, and listening. After our work hours became less predictable and kids began appearing, we went some years without visiting the Park.

In 2010, we finally spent several days there with our sons Kenny and Sam, introducing them to some of the places we had come to love. Our ventures were, shall we say...shorter than we had worked up to back in the day, but excitement was had nonetheless with bear encounters, ranger-led hikes, stargazing with amateur astronomers (with telescopes the size of a Prius), and a couple new places. It's been over 25 years since my original visit, is still right in our backyard, and I think often about getting back in there.

This image is from Glacier Gorge in 1998. Blake.

This is a collaborative project that looks back at 20 places that have affected us over our 20 years of marriage and 22 years together. When we first met in 1991 in Baltimore at the Maryland Institute College of Art, we both felt far away from our respective homes - Sarah from Scotland and Blake from Texas. During Sarah’s six-week stay in Baltimore, we visited nearby locations such as Gettysburg battlefield in Pennsylvania, Virginia’s Blue Ridge Parkway, and not-so-nearby places like Memphis, Tennessee (how could one visit America and not see Graceland?).

Some of our most memorable moments over the past twenty years have been those we identify with particular places we’ve lived or visited. We each believe that considerable aspects of our personal identities were formed by the places we grew up and visited. Our individual experiences with particular places were intertwined with intensity, excitement, reflection, and affirmation. All of these qualities remain true of our combined, collaborative life together. As artists, many of those moments and places have found their way into the images we make.

We have chosen 20 places to arbitrarily correspond with the number of years we’ve been married, but also to push us as artists to revisit some of the places and subjects that we have not, for various reasons, celebrated as much as others but which have provided subtle perspective and quality. From now until our anniversary on 31 July, 2013, we will post images related to three or four places per month. This project is not intended to represent a travelogue of any sort, as we do not regard ourselves as being nearly as well-traveled as we would prefer. Also, there are places we have visited, sometimes with regularity, for which we recall our affection for the people there more than the place itself – so no offense to our cherished Minnesotans, there will not be any pictures of Minneapolis! Perhaps that will constitute a different project someday.

For the project, we will respond to each place with our respective visions and with our media of choice – painting for Sarah and photography for Blake. There may be places, especially Colorado and Scotland, that we address multiple times representing extended durations and visits to multiple sites. There also may be places for which we will post fun, frivolous, or touristy pictures in addition to the serious ones.

We have often found that when we make the sometimes-intense effort to get away from the focused priorities, expectations, and conveniences of our urban life, we seek quiet places where we are reminded of the very elemental reasons that first bound us to each other. That is, most of all, what we hope is reflected in these images.

Sarah and Blake