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Mountain Mayhem: ‘Tis the Season

Isa Catto Studio is featured as a must stop shop for gifts this holiday season.

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Regular studio happenings, new pattern designs and gardening at 8K.

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Mar 3

We slipped far from the madding crowd into the first holiday in two years. I feel like we’ve stepped into a state of suspension and left a bit of last year’s rigors behind. It was the best kind of escape from last year’s navigation of the pandemic, the demands of a new business, the cancer treatments, isolated and displaced kids, a battered nation and world. One of the benefits of coming through cancer is living in a steady state of gratitude because you get to remain. Another welcome impulse — wanting to give and give more. It’s a lovely place to be. We are leaving today with renewed spirits and Hawaii is doing an amazing job at keeping the pandemic under control. Yesterday we toured Lanai with a handful of @conservationorg biologists to learn about the island flora and fauna and their efforts to balance endemic species with invasive ones. I was in heaven..... a few of the day’s highlights 📸

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Feb 22

I have been daydreaming about travel. Tomorrow I am stepping on my second plane in a year and am headed to Hawaii. I packed weeks ago (Colorado winter does not require flip flops) and feel like I just won the lotto. I have been thinking of the big trips in my life, the ones that shifted my axis. Morocco was one. I got engaged in Merzouga over 21 years ago surrounded by monolithic sand dunes without a soul in sight. Well, one fellow on a camel but he was on the horizon. This painting was inspired by a trip to Meknes and the plains around the ancient Roman city Volubilis.

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Feb 19

Our studio manager @tedmaertens has been busy animating our birds and entertaining us in the process. Here is the latest blog post and design story:

“I was an avid bird watcher as a child. I spent hours with the Audubon Society checklist, tromping in the Virginia woods adjacent to the Potomac River–oversized binoculars slung around my neck. Bird sightings permeate my childhood memories: the orioles, the cardinals, the wrens, thrushes and vireos, and a rare osprey or two. It was the late seventies and early eighties, so the river was not as clean as it is today and wildlife was much more scarce. But there were birds. Then the dark side of teenage self-doubt took over, and I fretted that bird watching was uncool. I pulled the hood of conformity over myself and tucked that passion away.

When I moved to Colorado many years later as a wife and mother, I started watching birds again. I am a clumsy birder, and much of it now revolves around the bird feeder and the morning dog walk. But the thrill has never waned. I know my birding laid the foundation for being an artist. It made me more observant, and I developed patience (never my strong suit) as I was trying to catch the flash of color in the overstory. I learned about color and nuance and how the animal world wields color and camouflage. I certainly underestimated these field skills until I was older, but isn’t that always the case? I will always be drawn to birds, particularly the most vulnerable ones, which is how our endangered bird series evolved. I found painting them delivered equilibrium and reinforced awe.

This has been an impossible year, and I don’t know how we restore a country that is bound up in so much contempt and anger. I do know that when you look at anything in the natural world, wonder comes calling. Reverence keeps your heart open and pushes away absolute thinking. I am taking this ethos to heart and want everything I design to be decorative, original, and an invitation to further inquiry.”

TO READ ON GO TO LINK IN BIO.

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Feb 17

I loved this commission. A friend of mine is one of these women who is a marvel of efficiency. She is the ultimate wife and mother and works full time. She is organized and disciplined and I always feel like I’m trailing in her wake. On her 50th she decided to do something for herself. No spa, no girls trip to Paris. Instead, she booked herself with @traversealaska and headed to the Alaskan wilderness. The whole experience shifted her worldview, refined her values and invigorated her. She asked me to paint this vista from Denali National Park as a memento of her transcendence. I looked at hundreds of pictures of the park and took this image from one of her own photos. This is the smaller study and the original now hangs in her apartment. I love the wilderness, but our wilderness is a lot less fierce than the Alaskan variety. Grizzlies for example. More extreme weather. More rugged individuals. Someday I will see this view for myself but for now, this study sits in the studio. Beckoning.

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Feb 12

It’s been a busy week in the studio and Rose and I are paws up for the evening.

Now that vaccines are going to be widely distributed the news is filling up with speculation about our post-Covid lives. How will we change for the better? Will we finally, finally tackle the vast iniquities in our country? What will workspaces look like? Will bringing your dogs to work be more widely accepted? Will we continue to wear masks from time to time? Will we ever return to a tailored waistband?

My pandemic days were not exactly idle since I run a small business with four employees and one of my kids was tethered to online school and had to stay home. I was also diagnosed, and treated, for breast cancer and that kept me on the move. (All is fine on that front, in my rear view, and will soon be a future blog post). That said I have grown accustomed to a calmer calendar and less running around.

Going forward I need to remember to play more. I had a blast playing scrabble at night with our kids, walking a bit more aimlessly, planning designs for dream gardens or daydreaming like the way I did when I was a child.

I wrote about our societal freneticsm some years ago and it reminded me of the pitfalls of the pre-Covid life: “There is cultural validation in being busy and we have conflated human significance with the intensity of our calendar schedule. From an evolutionary standpoint busyness is not going to grow our brains, or safeguard our health. A packed schedule is not going to amplify our stardust. My busyness is not going to single-handedly save the planet. Do I really care if I’m regarded as a flaneur just because I’m not showcasing my path? Social media reinforces all this agitation around doing and being. It is easy for all of us — producer and consumer —to be seduced by the filtered images and the airbrushed personas. And many users are driven to achieve goals just to have a viable post on Instagram — setting up a sinister feedback loop..” TO READ ON —LINK IN BIO

What routine would you like to keep from this past year and what do you think will stick? Enjoy the long weekend!

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Feb 5

Those of you who follow me know that my garden nourishes my art and vice versa. I am returning to a regular writing practice so look for more Friday blog posts. My latest is on gardening with our local elk herd.

"There is no succinct beginning or end to a garden season. Rather, the seasons are on a constant loop with variations in tempo. Winter is when I regroup and lean into the next pattern, the next beat. A Colorado winter always induces a big sleep. I see my flowers and vegetable gardens disappear layer by gentle layer under snow, and the animals, the full-time residents, are even more visible. They can no longer sink into the shadows, understory and grasses. Their cover is minimal.

When the snow completely smothers the garden, the elk show up. The snow is at least a foot deep and we have an arrangement, this elk herd and I. It is as reliable as any contractual agreement in my transactional world. They drift in at night and dig out the downy snow with their hooves and teeth. When I find their elk skulls in the hills around my house I am amazed by the size and weight of these teeth. They don’t seem to belong to an herbivore. Once they remove the snow, they raze the standing garden. I never cut my garden until the spring since it is a winter breadbasket for wildlife. It doesn’t take long for the elk to turn up.

They drift in the cover of the night. Some of them sleep leaning their backs right against the outside wall of the house, like a drunk cowboy slouched at a bar. We hear the eerie yipping on cold nights and rise to see their huge shapes dropped all around the garden like meteors, some sleeping, some foraging. They leave large imprints from their body heat, like lumpy snow angels, punctuated by their scat at the perimeters of the indentations. At first light, they retreat back up to the hills but return each evening until there is no more garden standing.”

TO READ ON GO TO LINK IN BIO.