Countdown to the end of 2016...

Hot in the sun... cold air...

Not the end of the world yet... 

but almost the end of this year... 2016...
the big presents under the indoor tree day is done...
it was white outside and knee aching cold...
the wood pellets have been burning all day...
for days, with temps in the minus degrees at night...
some days not above 32*, clear, blue, bright skies...
back to the every day food of life...
done with the eat all-day rich holiday foods = lbs....
everyone got their manual can openers...

and twenty five year shelf life emergency food...

we got emergency fire starter kits... 

for some reason we all can't stay awake all night as 

in years past, even with day time naps...

and they can't play games without at least ten bodies...

they don't quit with a winner, usually over when all the...

cards to the game have been gone through... 

needless to say lots of laughing, loud voices, and the usual 

family around the table banter... good to have them home.

Half the roll gone before the flame out...

Birthday boy two days before the CHRISTmas day...

The seven-zero this year...
i do hope this seven-zero is better then the 70's i went
through about thirty years back...
i can already tell it's going to be different in lots of ways.
b-day gifts rarely come...
for the big gift day i did get a hank of slick black leather...
and an Art therapy book, do-it yourself... coloring book...
two options on the coloring book... inside the lines, or
outside the lines... depending upon the day and mood...
The most intimidating gift of the season is three blank journals... but all the pages have lines on them...
thats more scary then a blank page with no lines !!
i really have a hard time writing on lined paper or pages.
it feels so formal & form like... don't get it wrong !
i feel like i can only write on every other line...
so i have space to add or make changes...
new things for my seventh year...

New day dawning through office window screen...

Sooooooo back the making leather bags...
daily post office runs with the Deeks dog...
writing & drawing in my sketch books...
trying to stay warm...
and now some Art therapy each day to sooth
my overactive mind...
daily morning scripture reading to keep up
with the Lord and His desires for me...
those morning reading have the ability to
change the course of doing and thinking
of a day and influence the "work" i do in a
given day... food for though so to speak ...
sparks to/in what could be an otherwise dull day.

"I know what LOVE is because of YOU"

see you all in the next year    CHEERS...

Snow on ground & P-38's by air...

snow moose in the window...

         Always trying to get to the heART of the matter, some days are harder then others...
have been a homebody the past couple of weeks... today 11 degrees at sunrise along with snow on the ground and a very biting wind... the window snow moose is back along with a bright blue sky above. 
A whole load of P-38 can openers arrived, morning post office run, so all the kids and grandkids get one for their CHRISTmas stocking this year... one of those bet ya don't know what this is gift. Now most our food comes in milar sealed bags and freeze dried!

Not my heart... mine is used & damaged...

The old heart had lots of work done this summer, ya know you have had a lot done when the hospital staff greets ya on a first name basis... i am thankful for for the great work they did for me. No new stints, but i did get a new ICD Pacemaker with all the bells and whistles and then an ablation so that everything works great. Bottom line... i feel much better... back for a check in February...

So as i was saying... the window sill guys are hard at work on getting ready for CHRISTmas
along with the rest of town... the place is dead
no places to eat open, everyone making the mass exit to wal*mart sixty-five miles away.... cause it's so much cheaper there, don't forget the gas $$$ and the two hour round trip drive and the icey roads over and 8K mountain. BUUUUUT it is nice to get out of town every once n awhile...

Out the river lane looking north...

The weather is cold with not a lot of snow yet... but it is coming sometime after the first of the new year... hopefully we will get the bulk of the snow at 7K and above, because during the melt in the spring it will run bye us at 6K and we can take whats needed for our spring & summer needs. shoveling snow has been declared not heart healthy... just saying.

add one match this year for 70.



          Then i can hang out with the family companion for the Holiday and we can all stay warm and enjoy the kids and grandkids... Merry CHRISTmas and have a good new year... " come what may and love it..."

                                                                                CHEERS.

Mr. Deeks... come on lets go sit down...

Collages & Ruminations 2016

Collage # 7

 Lots of HeART work this past six months, all stable now, the visitor season complete, now trying to get some much needed ideas out of me head...
Collage work with all the images i have from the season past, also going back to ideas/images i worked with back in 2011...
I also want to start writing more again this off season, combine the writing/images in the same piece... 
i think i will deactivate myself from FB, there seems to be more verbal contention there since the election, and a lot of that seems to be more false information then i desire to wade through... makes one start to wonder if these folks are really "friends"... but i was the one that asked most of the 135 to be my friend... and most of them i only know through FB... maybe that's why i don't have many friends outside of the social media network. it's a superficial friendship at best.

Collage # 3

So this is a good time to bring about some changes that i can have some control over... and we can watch what happens with the new political team for the next four years... after all somebody voted them in office, and with the grace and mercy of God they might just get something right.
So again lets bite into another peanut cluster, look up at the CHRISTmas tree and remember what this CHRISTmas season is all about the birth of the Savior and Light of the world...
Lets get back to basics and stop complicating and creating so much contention in this world... life is a test to see/prove that we will obey the Savior...
and remember we are Spiritual being first and we human/ physical being next... thus we are Spiritual beings having a physical/human experience. 

Sketch book idea for Collage # 6

Drawing/Writing are they the same thing?  marks on a paper or page, some of the marks being easer to understand/read then others...
sometimes i like the black and white marks of a sketch better then what i may turn it into later in the finished piece... I love to draw and have for most of my life, my next love is to color inside the lines... and on rare times ignore the lines and spread color all over everywhere... i think my love of color within the lines has come from my building/construction background... there is more then likely more to it then just that... but i don't need/want to go there now.

Collage # 4

Ya know that peanut cluster was pretty dry... and some of this swing to get back to writing is getting pretty dry also...
drawing/writing are much the same, to get good at either one  i must practice every day, both are mechanical skills... both also take practice moving ideas or knowledge from head/heart out and down an arm to fingers and the mechanical device, pencil/pen, to make the mark on the paper that is the same as the image in head or heart.
Both skills can be very abstract or very true to life depending on how i choose to use/practice them...
Some people always what a meaning for my work... and ya know some days i don't know what that meaning is myself...
Foe sure my work is about what goes on around me on any given day,week or month... because i try to use the process of observe, listen, discern, then speak/draw/write... so my max time limit or deadline on a piece is about a week, depending on where that falls between sunrise and sunset.

Collage #2

                       
This here, Collage #2, is the first completed piece, completed at the end of my working season of November '16. This collage started with a little girl, the one on the white horse, and her family in the visitor center coming up to me with a travel magazine saying this is me!... said i; well autograph it so i can keep it here to remind me you where here... she was so excited... That is the image in the top part of the collage, the remainder of the collage are the bits and pieces collected during the remainder of that week.

The remaining two collages, #5 & #6   posted below are other pieces i have completed since being off of my seasonal work at the visitor center... during my work season i do pieces called RUMINATIONS that are photographic images i make from around the visitor center with computer generated text as a vail over the top of the photo image. i usually create 12-16 of these per season dealing with feeling and thoughts about the ongoing season at the time.
So again drawing/writing/photo images...
collage & ruminations...

Collage# 6

Collage # 5

Rumination # 16

 CHEERS !!

Fathers Day 2016 & thoughts from/about me Heart...

With Fathers day this year me heart is full...
Grateful that i have a good Father...
thankful that i tried to be a good Father...
Grateful that Levi is also a Father and growing...
being a Father makes us all different people...
it was and is a lot of work... but makes us all better people.

 James G. Costigan, my Father...
Maggie, my sister...
me, 8 years old, 1954
moving to California, the land of my upbringing, an eastern born child but a western raised child to an adult.
A product of my parents with a western outlook on life. The west is the best i believe. The wide open space of the west made for a  great expansion of ideas and greater possibilities that have shaped my life into who and what i am.

Me and Levi, Escalante, Utah May 1999. Me at age 53 and Levi a cool 13... me trying to be the best i could, sometimes i wish for a do-over, but then he would not be who he is now. Levi has really turned out to be a good son/person in spite of what i did to/with him.
He has departed the small Utah town we raised him in and is now living and working in Cedar City, Utah.

This is Levi, now 30, with his daughter my granddaughter Layla at 3, she is going to be a head turner when she gets older... i hope  that i taught him well because he is going to have his hands full.
Wow thats four generations right there...
Oh and of course there is Sarah Rose... my daughter and Levi's big sister now 36 and her two daughters Ruby Mersadies and Alexis Ann.
They also live in Cedar City.
Not real far away but none the less i don't see them all near enough.

Then there is still me now at 69 trying to figure out what i want to be when i grow-up or get old whichever comes first.
i write everyday, something, work most days, make images everyday, read the the scriptures everyday, to give the day a leg up, draw and scribble, color inside, but mostly outside the lines, and try to call it ArT...
Hang some of it on the wall and get bored with it and take it down when i don't "see" it no more!!
Have come to believe that my ArT is just for me... it's kept me mostly sane, with a few slips here and there along the way, it's always been fun making marks on clay or paper and coming back to look at it all! It's nothing but a signpost to show me where i have come from... cause i sure don't know where i am going.

Down but not out of the game yet...                                                   June 2016

Sill more tunnels to pass through with only a peek as to what's on the other side... faith keeps me moving forward... i have always been a builder of some thing or another so each time i travel out of town i stop and have lunch while watching the work progress on the Cedar City Temple...

Lots of doctors to see in the coming weeks as me old HEart is wearing down and i have to have me batteries replaced in the ICD and hearing devices... never had many toys as a child that needed batteries but now i need them to keep me hearing and beating.

Getting old is sure a new education process, i am grateful for doctors who learned it and can explain

it in terms i can understand, mostly !  Cheers to the journey and will be back with more as the results come in.

                                                                                    !! CHEERS !!

Wind and noise in my head...

The wind has been howling here for days...
after all the wet weather we have had this spring...
as with most things in life this year, a bit un-ordinary...
even the shadows on the desk/table top are not the same...
my otherwise quite life is now filled with "new" sounds...
hearing devices have created new confusion and frustration...
what do i want to hear and not, i hear more from behind me then in front?!
it crackles, buzzes, and sounds tinny, and i can "hear" every cough, sneeze and
breath i take, and it feels best when i take them out every night!
now their beeping at me to charge the batteries !
Literally blew over into cedar city yesterday...
got a cold slimy chest rub...
for an echo look at me "rotten" heart...
had a mex fix for lunch...
then blew back over the hill back to Panguitch...
all be it with are now well groomed dog...
test result will come sometime next week for me heart...
everything else is pretty much up front.
Waiting to hear about an appointment with the heart electrician...
time will tell, hope to be back to work soon.

RUMINATIONS #11 2015

Cheers.

dumb crap... see ya later.

Some times life gets in the way of what i really need to be doing...
other times i am trying to do what i should and life gets in a tangle...
then i have to get back to my ART to make sense of it all...
the every day struggle on... and i try to take each day as it comes at me...
finding profound things to say or do is really hard to keep up with...
so i have found that small steps build overtime into something big...
if i stick with it... Daily reading and study of the scriptures, Book of Mormon,
centers my daily life... most days i do not get everything done, but something
done... the day to day tasks of life seem to take longer, getting older is hard.
So here i am about a year from my last post, unlike the numbered posts along the
pink ledges trail in red canyon, i have always said my Art is like a sign post along
the path of my life, as of late i have departed from the road of life and moved to the
narrow a path of life.... My visitor center work for the forest service takes a lot of
time and energy, people work tends to be that way... both working with people
and for people...
such is life i have to figure how to get images into this blog...
be back later when i learn how, see ya later love ya bye.
CHEEERSIUGigqekh:Wl
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=243275869708-3o539rtljbvashefoyeiwgfwbe/;snack/w
[oduwbqanpsp     dumb crap shit damn.

4/28/2016
when all else fails call somebody... Apple... thanks for the help still have a big learning curve... will keep at it and be back after four days of real work getting use to new hearing devices... getting use to talking and listening in a tin can... it's crackling sharp with a bit of fuzz...
Cheers to the journey, back real sooooooooon.