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Monday, June 19, 2017

Summer Member News

AWARDS



Nancy Oswald's latest, TROUBLE RETURNS, was a 2017 WWA Spur Award Winner. 










 FINDING DOROTHY SCOTT, LETTERS OF A WASP PILOT, by Sarah Byrn Rickman, was awarded the Sarton Women's Book Award.

http://sarahbyrnrickman.com/ 








Barbara Marriot's “PAINT 'N SPURS: THE MEN WHO FOUNDED THE COWBOY ARTISTS OF AMERICAS” a biography of the founding members of the Cowboy Artists of America was announced a finalist in the International Book Awards. 
www.bsrbramasrriott.com 

Published by Fireship Press 

Amazon




 NEW RELEASES


BAD BOY, BIG HEART by Andrea Downing

When New Yorker K.C. Daniels heads to Wyoming for a summer job, she wants nothing more than to fit in with the staff of the Lazy S Ranch. Yearning to be independent of her mom and dad, and have a taste of the west before she starts her Master's degree, getting involved with a cowboy is the last thing on her mind—especially when she’s greeted with warnings about ‘Bad Boy’ Chay Ridgway.

High school dropout Chay Ridgway sees summer as his time to be a rodeo star and win a girl in his life, while facing the responsibilities he has for his father. Although working to bring in cash to help his dad, he's never had a problem finding a woman who's happy to be that summer love—until K.C. Daniels appears on the scene.

As two different worlds collide in a season that will end all too soon, is this going to be another summer romance or a love that will last for years?

Link:  https://www.amazon.com/Bad-Boy-Big-Heart-Book-ebook/dp/B072MKG48B/



Andrea also has a story, CITY BOY, COUNTRY HEART in the collection COME LOVE A COWBOY

Don’t miss this great collection from USA Today, Amazon Bestselling, and Award-Winning authors!! 

Available at https://www.amazon.com/Cowboy-Keep-Contemporary-Western-Collection-ebook/dp/B072869SGV/




THE GIRL WHO WOULDN'T DIE
by Randall Platt
publisher - Skypony


They call her the Arab of Warsaw.
Some say she’s Jewish. A few know she’s a girl.
Most agree she’s high on the Nazis’ hit list.
One person believes she could become a hero.

Poland, 1939. Arab knows that looking out for anyone but herself is as good as painting a target on her own back. So she plans to survive the Nazi occupation the way she always has: disguise herself as a boy, lead her street gang, and refuse to get involved.

But though Arab starts the war with just one goal–staying alive–others have different ideas for her. And when a stranger who claims to work with the resistance tries to recruit Arab for a rescue mission, she has to make a choice. Acting like a hero is a surefire way to get killed. But is she doesn’t do it, who will?

Available at your local independent bookstore, or at Amazon

The trade paperback of Randall's previous book, INCOMMUNICADO, is also now available. Learn more at http://www.plattbooks.com.



Ordinary Skin: Essays from Willow Springs
by Amy Hale Auker, previous WILLA winner
published by Texas Tech University Press


www.amyhaleauker.com
Book may be purchased from author website or all major booksellers
Amazon

Amy Hale Auker's first book of essays, Rightful Place, was the story of a woman finding beauty in her place, the Llano Estacado. Her new collection of creative non-fiction, Ordinary Skin, explores her mid-life transition with prose poems and essays that illustrate a new terrain as well as new ways of being in the world. Touching on faith and body image and belonging, these essays explore our role in deciding what is favorable or unfavorable, as well as where we someday want to dwell, and who came before us. In that touching, they feel their way with observations about current affairs, drought, mystery, and the hard decisions that face us all as we continue to move toward more questions with fewer answers. This exploration is informed and softened by hummingbirds, Gila monsters, bats, foxes, bears, wildflowers, and hidden seep springs where life goes on whether we are there to see it or not. It is about work in a wild and wilderness environment. In the end, even as life changes drastically around us, we are better off for knowing that the ugly mud bug turns into a jewel-toned dragonfly.


Susan Matley's story, THE AUDITOR is included in a new anthology, Incarceration (WolfSinger Publications). “The Auditor” is a horror story set in near-future China, inspired by the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. It’s more eastern than western. The publisher, however, is in Colorado! The details:

The publisher:
http://www.wolfsingerpubs.com/OurBooks.html

Susan Matley's website, Home page:
https://www.susandmatley.com/

Website, with “buy” link:
https://www.susandmatley.com/anthology/


 

Saturday, March 18, 2017

March News

Awards:


Sarah Byrn Rickman's latest book ----- the biography, Finding Dorothy Scott: Letters of a WASP Pilot (Texas Tech University Press, 2016) ----- has been named a Finalist in three 2017 book awards:
The Colorado Book Award
The Sarton Women's Book Awards from Story Circle Network
The Foreword INDIE Award

Dorothy Scott's biography is Sarah's seventh book about the women who flew for the US Army Air Forces in World War II.
http://sarahbyrnrickman.com/



K. Lynn Wurth's new novel, Seven Kinds of Rain: River Saga Book One, is a finalist for the Foreword Indies Historical Fiction Award.
www.klynwurth.com



Nancy Bo Flood's novel, SOLDIER SISTER has been selected as a finalist in the Colorado Book Awards juvenile literature category! http://bit.ly/2mDFV3q

Soldier Sister, Fly Home, cover art by Shonto Begay, a Junior Library Guild selection, 2016;*starred review, Publisher's Weekly, Scholastic Book Club selection

A celebration of family, riding horses pell-mell in the dark, sharing fears when a sister is deployed, comforted by the beauty of the Navajo desert. The novel was also selected by Tuba City Library, Navajo Nation, as a community all-read.


C.M. Mayo has been elected to the Texas Institute of Letters, and also, for the second half of this May, named artist-in-residence for the Guadalupe Mountains National Park in Texas. Her latest publications include an excerpt from Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution, her book about the secret book by Francisco I. Madero, leader of the Mexican Revolution of 1910, in Tiferet, and her translation of Mexican writer Rose Mary Salum's short story in Catamaran.


Mara Purl's novella "Where An Angel's On a Rope" won the Silver Benjamin Franklin Digital Award

New Releases:


The Tragically True Adventures of Kit Donovan
Patricia Bailey
Albert Whitman & Company
www.patriciabaileyauthor.com

Thirteen-year-old Kit Donovan made a lot of promises to her dying mother, and the most difficult one to keep – the one about being a proper lady – seems downright impossible in a place like Goldfield, Nevada. The corrupt owner the gold mine seems to hold sway over the whole town. When Kit convinces Papa to speak out against the dangers in the mine, trouble finds her family.

Now she must find a way to expose the misdeeds before it’s too late. With help from an unlikely friend, a Shoshone boy, and a newspaperman, she puts her big mouth and all the life skills she’s learned from reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to work. But is she really brave enough to stand up for what's right?


"A rip-roaring tale of love, friendship, and betrayal. Determined Kit will steal your heart. A romping good read!"
 -Karen Cushman, Newbery Medalist for The Midwife's Apprentice

"As dirt-caked and rough as any gold-flecked nugget found in a mine, Kit Donovan glimmers as a hero for the ages."
-Kate Hannigan, author of Golden Kite–winner The Detective' Assistant

Purchase Links:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Powells
Indiebound


 P.H. Garrett has been published in the 2016 Anthology, Untold Stories from the bottom of the well. A short story titled Breathing Fear

She has also been published in “Sisters Born, Sisters Found,” an award-winning collection of short stories, edited by Laura McHale Holland.
Web: www.wordwranglingwoman.com
Blog: wordwranglingwoman.com/blog
Email: wwwcomink@gmail.com
facebook.com/word wrangling woman


Tanya Buck's new book "101 Ways to Die with a Horse or Live Happily Ever After" is a safety guide for all things horse related for the first time rider, owner or student as well as the experienced horse person, trainer and riding instructor.

Aimed to simplify the world of horses and prevent injury to the equestrian and her horse, topics include:

Safety measures to take before you get to the barn; what to wear, how to act.
How horses think and why it matters.
Choosing the best trainer, Veterinarian and farrier.
Buying and selling a horse.
Safely riding in company; on the trail and in the arena.
Tack: which is best for you and your horse?
Trailer loading and safety hauling tips.
Health care.

"101 Ways to Die with a Horse or Live Happily Ever After, an essential safety guide for horse & rider" is the first in the Horses Happily Ever After series and the launching of the Horses Happily Ever After Project.

The project mission is to better the horse world through education that keeps both horse and human safe and happy. This project focuses on giving back to the horse world by my donating ​1​5% of the 2017 profits from the book  being donated to horse charity. I am also committing to offering seminars to raise funds for the preservation of wild horses in America. Please visit the interactive Horses Happily Ever After
 website: ​www.​Horses​H​appily​E​ver​A​fter.com

Published by Flying Frog, Jan 2017, also available in eBook version and on Amazon.


Bobbins and Boots
Shanna Hatfield


How does an act of kindness result in… marriage?

One carefree cowboy is about to find out in this sweet historical romance!

Born dirt-poor into a life of hardship, Allie Tillman seizes the opportunity to better her situation by answering an advertisement for a mail-order bride in the West. Upon her arrival in Baker City, Oregon, she discovers her intended is a low-down, lying thief. Determined not to marry him, she grasps at the one thing that will keep him from forcing her to be his wife — marrying another man.

Good-natured cowboy Ben Amick had no idea a simple trip into town would completely change his life. When he happens upon a mail-order bride desperate to avoid marrying her fiancé, Ben does the first thing that pops into his head and marries her. Willingly, he gives her the protection of his name and his arms, never expecting her to capture his heart.

Humorous, heartfelt, and awash in sweet romance, Bobbins and Boots captures the tender and tumultuous emotions of falling in love.

Buy Link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XCJCSZB

Tuesday, February 28, 2017

February Member News


Colorado writer and pilot, Penny Rafferty Hamilton, would choose A is for Airplanes and Airports in her new children’s western history book. Several female pioneers are featured on the pages of this unique picture book which incorporates historic and contemporary photographs, illustrations and simple text to encourage early readers to explore their local and Western heritage. 

My more recent Western history book, A to Z: Your Grand County History Alphabet, is a wonderful children's history book of Grand County, Colorado, that features many historical photographs, stories and facts. This book groups photos and topics in alphabetical order offering fun facts and tidbits that are sure to delight both young and old. This book is available online at www.amazon.com and several Grand County retail locations, including the museum gift shops of the Grand County Historical Association. 100% of this book’s net proceeds promote local history projects.   Publication date:  February 1, 2017.

ISBN: 978-0-692-83321-6

Available for purchase NOW on-line www.amazon.com

Friday, January 06, 2017

January 2017 Member News

New Releases, Awards and Special Events for January 2017

Awards

The prestigious Will Rogers Medallion Award presented to “The Longest Trail” by Roni McFadden in the Non-Fiction category for 2016.

At the banquet, hosted Saturday evening, October 29, 2016, in Ft. Worth, TX, thirty-six authors and publishers were presented Will Rogers Medallion Awards Honoring Excellence in Western Media in twelve categories.  “Each year, the quality and level of excellence of the books being awarded goes up,” noted Charles Williams, Executive Director.  “It is a tribute both to the enduring appeal of the West, and to the high quality of publications being produced today.  We are especially proud of our publishers, who have maintained such high standards in a marketplace where they face competition from e-books and other electronic media.”

Two weeks later, Reader’s Favorite proudly announced that "The Longest Trail" by Roni McFadden was a Gold Medal Winner in the Non-Fiction - General category in their 2016 International Book Award Contest.  Those awards were handed out in Miami November 19, 2016.

Buy The Longest Trail 

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Susan Wittig Albert's biographical novel Loving Eleanor (www.LovingEleanor.com) has added three recent awards to its previous IPPY:
  • Library Journal named it their Undie EBook (romance) for 2016
  • Kirkus Reviews named it to their Best Books of 2016 list; and
  • USA Best Books 2016 awarded it a first in their LGBT category.

The book was published under her imprint, Persevero Press, in February, 2016.


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New Releases from WWW Members

New Release on January 27, 2017

Remember How It Rained: River Saga Book Two
Author Name: K. Lyn Wurth
Publisher: True to Story Publishing

Divided in childhood, but children no more, Margaret Rose, Jack and Kuruk answer the echoes of childhood loves, memories and voices. Power is shifting in Darkwater Creek, old crimes cry out for justice and Nebraska’s deadliest floodwaters gather in the west. Book Two of the River Saga, Remember How It Rained continues Seven Kinds of Rain’s voices of innocence, corruption, courage and justice on the Great Plains. It sings of running away and coming home to find love, truth and justice in the places and people who won’t let you go.

Buy at Barnes and Noble

Buy at Amazon.com


K. Lynn Wurth's Author Website
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New Release Available Now


FLASH & FRIENDS
By Natalie Bright
Book #4 Rescue Animal Series

Available on Amazon Now

The series features true stories about a registered Tennessee Walker whose family moves and is unable to take him with them. Featuring vivid, colored photographs, Book #4 shares details about Flash’s adopted family and work in this very personal scrapbook. Find out where he lives, meet his corral mates, and follow him along as he works in an equine outreach program.

http://nataliebright.com
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New Release Available Now

Baby on the Oregon Trail
By Lynna Banning

Heading west to Oregon, pregnant widow Jenna Borland’s life can’t get any more difficult . . . until fate throws Robert E. Lee Carver across her path.  She resents his help, but she needs him to drive her covered wagon over the Great Plains.

Lee can’t fathom why this prickly woman gets under his skin.  But as the journey brings these two outsiders together, he wonders if Jenna and her baby could be just what he needs to begin a new life with a brand-new family.



Available at Barnes & Noble and Amazon.  Buy link at www.lynnabanning.net.

Carolyn Woolston, writing as Lynna Banning, shares this insight about her new book:

My new book, “Baby on the Oregon Trail,” is close to my heart because my great-grandparents came to Oregon in a covered wagon along the Oregon Trail.  Grand-grandfather Edgar Boessen was an immigrant from Germany; Great-grandmother Maia Bruhn came from Denmark.  Their descendants now number in the thousands.

Typical of those intrepid travelers who came west on the Oregon Trail is the following diary entry:  “Friday, October 27.  Arrived at Oregon City at the falls of the Willamette.  Saturday, October 28.  Went to work.”  (James W. Nesmith, 1843) 


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New Release January 6, 2017

THE ACCIDENTAL STRANGER
by Cj Fosdick

Jessica Brewster is being watched…and things go missing from the remote Wyoming home she shares with her toddler. In a freak accident, she shoots the bearded thief stalking her before she recognizes the mesmerizing green eyes that belong to the only man she ever loved.

Has Mitch bridged time to find her? In a race to save his life and change hers forever, she takes him into her home and heart. But his memory loss and puzzling clues curry doubt and expose mystery and danger. Is he truly her son’s father, a murderer from Old Ft. Laramie, or an irresistible stranger in her arms?

Series: Book #2 in the Accidental Series set in Wyoming can stand alone
Genre: Mainstream mix of contemporary/historical/romance/time travel/mystery
Released:  Friday, Jan. 6. in eBook & print (latter only from Amazon, publisher and author)
Publisher: The Wild Rose Press
Cj's Website: www.cjfosdick.com

Buy Links: https://www.amazon.com/Cj-Fosdick/e/B00V14E74E   Amazon
                http://catalog.thewildrosepress.com/1256_cj-fosdick   Publisher
                http://bit.ly/1QcHLOq      B&N
                http://www.bookstrand.com/the-accidental-stranger    Bookstrand


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New Release

Sarah's Secret
By Beverly Scott



Available now at Amazon
Author Website: www.bevscott.com

The two key protagonists, Sarah and Sam, historically on their separate journeys of trust, secrets and betrayal on the frontier of the old West, remain intimately connected.  In the 1880’s, Sam, who is irresponsible, lonely and untrustworthy has abandoned those he loves until he seeks redemption and marries Sarah.  After Sam’s death in 1911, Sarah draws on her pioneer spirit to find the inner strength to overcome loneliness, poverty and illness to support her children.  She learns staggering news which complicates her efforts. Will Sarah find forgiveness in her heart and the resolve to accept her new life alone?

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Events and Appearances

photo credit to Steve Atkinson
Amy Hale Auker has been invited to participate in the 33rd National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, January 30-February 4, 2017, in Elko, Nevada. Amy is appearing for the 5th time at the Elko Gathering. The National Cowboy Poetry Gathering is an international festival that honors the arts, culture and traditions of the rural West, with poetry, music, storytelling, dancing, workshops, exhibitions, discussions, food and fellowship. The 33rd Gathering will celebrate the art and tradition of storytelling in the rural West, presenting first-hand narratives wrought from personal experience and told in verse, song, film, visual art, new media and prose.

Amy Hale Auker cowboys for Spider Ranch in Yavapai County, Arizona, with her husband, Gail Steiger. Work on the ranch provides ample material for her writing: prose, poetry, fiction and non-fiction. She is the author of Rightful Place, a collection of essays, and two novels, Winter of Beauty and The Story Is the Thing. A new collection of creative non-fiction will be released in 2017. Amy’s presentations on the stage and on the page are deeply rooted in the natural world where the bats fly, lizards do pushups on the rocks, bears leave barefoot prints in the dirt. Where hummingbirds do rain dances in August, spiders weave for their food, and poetry is in the chrysalis and the cocoon. She tells stories about the real world where things grow up out of the ground, where the miracle of life happens over and over again, where people can and do survive without malls or Arby's. Amy believes that what you put out there is what you get back, and that growing food is an honorable profession.

Amy will join nearly 50 other poets, musicians and musical groups from the U.S., Canada and Australia who will perform on seven stages at four different venues in Elko. For artist bios and audio samples, visit www.nationalcowboypoetrygathering.org. The National Cowboy Poetry Gathering also features hands-on workshops in traditional Western arts including rawhide braiding and horsehair hitching, foodways, dancing, songwriting, and how to play the bones. A special exhibition will present an artful view of the horse in the American West and will display contemporary gear from the Western Folklife Center’s collection. Tickets to the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering can be purchased at www.nationalcowboypoetrygathering.org, or by calling 888-880-5885.

Friday, November 25, 2016

Member News - New Releases, Awards and More!

November 25, 2016

New Short Story by Mara Purl published as an eBook on November 29, 2016

 Where an Angel's On A Rope

Can an intuition save a man’s life? Astronomer and competent mountain climber Cornelius Smith depends upon his intelligence for both his career and his hobby. Never before has he faced a situation where logical steps couldn’t be followed to an inevitable conclusion. Yet even he couldn’t possibly have imagined or predicted his experience in the Angeles Crest National Forest high above Los Angeles. Out for a pleasant hike on a warm Southern California day with a bare minimum of equipment he isn’t prepared physically or mentally for his sudden challenge, nor for the intuition that seems to insist he make an illogical choice — or die clinging to a rock face. Can a man with apparently no way back up, and no way down – find an unexpected means of his own rescue seems to have been placed there for him ahead of time? How can he explain the persistent image of a tiny angel that seems to hover over him on the mountain? And what will he do with the illogical intuition that won’t leave him alone? Though the e-book stands alone, it also extends the Milford-Haven Novels, the critically acclaimed, best-selling series, a multi-generational saga. Based on Purl’s BBC Radio drama Milford-Haven U.S.A.

Check out Mara's Website Here

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Trouble Returns by Nancy Oswald
November Release


Nancy Oswald announces the November release of the third Ruby and Maude Adventure. The title, Trouble Returns, accurately forecasts the predicaments Ruby, her donkey, and her cat encounter in Cripple Creek and Colorado Springs, 1896.  MG historical fiction published by Filter Press, LLC.

Trouble Returns is available online at Filter Press and from Amazon. Contact Nancy at NancyOs@centurylink.net or through her web site.
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Christmas in My Heart ~ now available!
Buy on Amazon
Author Leslee Breene introduces an inspirational Christmas collection.
Christmas in My Heart
Soft cover & ebook
Universal, award-winning short stories of near and long ago.
ISBN: 978-1539610762
www.lesleebreene.com

The Caretaker
Snow Angels of San Marcial
Carpenter’s Crib
The Christmas Gift

Thursday, November 17, 2016

When Clouds Come Into View


This post first appeared on pearlmoonplenty.wordpress.org, November 5, 2016


As my friend and I drove to Ghost Ranch outside Abiquiu, New Mexico, I tried to imagine the dirt road as Georgia O’Keeffe would have driven it in her 1930s roadster.  Red rock towers spindled along the narrow highway as we left the Rio Grande valley and ascended the Colorado Plateau. We were on our way to Ghost Ranch as part of the Women Writing the West conference in Santa Fe, but it was a woman painting the Southwest who was on my mind as we drove.

The Ghost Ranch tour was led by Leslie Poling-Kempe, author of Ladies of the Canyons, a study of the circle of East Coast women who came to New Mexico in the early 1900s to create lives independent of Victorian gender roles. Kempe’s remarkable history of these women is this year’s WILLA scholarly non-fiction award winner and is an impressive work of research that re-illuminates the lives of women whose marks on the Southwest had almost faded from view. 


One of the ladies of the canyon was Carol Bishop Stanley, a trained musician who came to New Mexico on an adventure, married first one cowboy, then another, and never left. Her first gambler husband won a reputedly haunted, remote camp outside Abiquiu from cattle rustlers in a poker game. Stanley became owner after their divorce, named the place Ghost Ranch, and built it into a successful dude ranch and refuge for wealthy families from back East. We toured Stanley’s original adobe home and headquarters with its low ceiling and rustic wooden furniture. Ghost Ranch itself is now owned by the Presbyterian Church and is open to anyone for day or overnight visits. Part of our tour was a preview of a new exhibit at the Ghost Ranch museum about some of the ladies of the canyon, including diaries, photographs, and artifacts of their day. 

Georgia O’Keeffe first visited Ghost Ranch in 1934, and in 1940, bought a piece of the property with a house that had been built by Alfred Pack, who purchased Ghost Ranch from Carol Stanley (read Ladies of the Canyons for the whole story). While O’Keeffe’s house was not part of the tour, we did see the casita she rented when she first came to Bishop’s Ghost Ranch. 
In the distance, we could also view the Pedernal, a flat-top mesa in the Jemez range that O’Keeffe painted many times as the colors changed with light and season, joking that it was her private mountain since God had promised to give it to her if she would paint it often enough.

After the tour and exhibit, my friend and I hiked into Box Canyon, named for the geological formation that created a natural corral for the rustled cattle once hidden there. We followed red dirt trails uphill, past abandoned hogans, toward a plateau of scrub pine and high stone buttes ringed with cottonwoods, now ablaze in the October sun. As I hiked, I tried to place myself in O’Keeffe’s paintings, imagining what the artist might have seen as she hiked a path much like ours.

At the top of the rise, before the trail split into two, I stopped. Looking up from where I stood at the edge of a deep arroyo, it seemed the clouds were rising one at a time from the depths of the canyon, rather than floating across the sky. I thought of O’Keeffe’s paintings like Above the Clouds I, a canvas of oval clouds filling the sky to the horizon line, or In the Patio VIII, with its dots of clouds hanging over her adobe home. I could see why these New Mexico clouds appealed to O’Keeffe and how her particular style of painting them straddled a line between abstract and representational, as her work generally did. 

On previous trips to New Mexico, I hadn’t noticed how the clouds in that high desert region could differ from the clouds in Colorado that barrel over the Rockies and drape across the Front Range sky. Like the clouds in O’Keeffe’s paintings, the clouds at Ghost Ranch that day were distinct from one another, individual even in their similarity. As my friend and I continued onto the plateau and threaded our way through astounding rock formations towering far over our heads, I kept an eye on the clouds drifting in that trick of the horizon up and over the buttes.

According to O’Keeffe’s biographer, Laura Lisle, in Portrait of an Artist: A Biography of Georgia O’Keeffe, the artist began to consider painting clouds in the 1960s when she started traveling by plane. Her first oil portrayed a solid mass of clouds under a sky. Next she broke the bank up into smaller clouds, and then placed more blue between them, creating, as Lisle writes, “an inviting path of stepping stones into infinity.” Whether this metamorphosis from large mass to smaller shapes was inspired by the clouds of her New Mexico home, I don’t know, but the evolution from clouds by plane to clouds over her own patio does seem likely. Whatever its inspiration, the oversized cloud panorama she exhibited in 1966, Sky Above Clouds IV, was unlike anything any artist had painted before.
 
Two weeks after visiting Ghost Ranch, I hiked with my partner John in Rocky Mountain National Park just a half hour drive from our home. I wanted to compare our clouds with the ones I’d viewed in New Mexico. Just as I remembered, small clouds are rare here except as part of a larger pack. What’s more, in the Rockies, the mountains are so dominant, it’s easy to overlook the sky. Each time we hiked up and around a switchback, a new vista stretched before us, like another layer of a painting hidden, until then, from view. As I tried to let the majestic peaks recede in my vision, the clouds suddenly came forward, reversing background for foreground, earth for sky. With surprise, I realized that the clouds before me were as big and even bigger than the mountains, so massive in size, even their shadows could cover an entire mountain from peak to base. 


One mark of a great artist is how they inspire us to look at the world in a different way. I love O’Keeffe’s work for many reasons—her fierce commitment to her art, the trails she blazed for women, her recognition of beauty in common or traditionally “feminine” objects, and the emotional sense of place she worked to portray. But it wasn’t until I visited the land on which she walked that I understood the way her art inspires us to transcend what we see with our eyes into a larger vision. Whether the genius of her work is found in color, shape, scale, juxtaposition, or craft, her paintings capture something more than the sum of their parts. They offer us the opportunity to see both into the essence of an object and beyond its earthly form. O’Keeffe’s work teaches us that new perspectives are within our reach if we take the time to look.
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Kayann Short, Ph.D., is a writer, farmer, teacher, and activist at Stonebridge Farm, an organic community-supported farm on Colorado’s Front Range. Her memoir, A Bushel’s Worth: An Ecobiography (Torrey House Press) was a silver Nautilus “Better Books for a Better World” winner and Sarton Memoir Award finalist.  As an award-winning teacher at CU-Boulder, she directed memoir and digital storytelling projects with community elders, literacy students, and non-profit organizations. She is the founder of the Friedman Feminist Press Collection at Colorado State University and co-produced the DVD series, The History of Women’s Achievement in America. Her essays have appeared in The Hopper, Pilgrimage, The Courier, Random Acts of Culture, Genders, The Roost, and the anthology, Dirt: A Love Story.