Colorado Flood Relief Fundraiser

I am a Colorado native, and I happened to be back in my home state for my brother's wedding while the unbelievable flooding was happening near the mountains. While we experienced only heavy rain in my neighborhood, up in 15 other counties the damage was crippling. 8 people were killed, hundreds were missing, 19,000 homes were damaged, and over 1,500 were completely destroyed. It's going to take a long time, and a lot of help for people to get their lives back on track.

To help in any small way I can, I am going to be selling prints for the next 2 weeks (through October 20) with proceeds going to the American Red Cross disaster relief in Colorado. The selection of prints includes 3 drawings/paintings of the beautiful Colorado landscape done in Boulder and Rocky Mountain National Park, two of the hardest hit areas of the floods. The final selection is a drawing for an ongoing project on the history and future of the settling of Colorado and the west. This image is available in its full, panoramic format, as well as in three smaller sections.

All prints are signed and printed on gallery quality rag paper with archival inks, ready for mounting and framing. Price of print includes cost of printing materials and shipping, with the entirety of the rest being donated to the Red Cross. I will wait until the fundraiser has ended and send one large check. Payment through Paypal to evan@evanturk.com
Please e-mail me with your selection AND your shipping address, and send the donation through Paypal. (E-mail me with any questions as well)

"The Flatirons"

8.5 x 11 - $35

11 x 17 - $60

"Purple Mountain Majesty"

8.5 x 11 - $35

"Rocky Mountain Sunset"

8.5 x 11 - $35

"The West"

9 x 44 - $180

"The West: Settlers"

8.5 x 11 - $35

17 x 11 - $60

"The West: Collision"

8.5 x 11 - $35

17 x 11 - $60

"The West: Beginning"

8.5 x 11 - $35

17 x 11 - $60

 Please let me know if you have any questions!

Kitties!

So after last post, I feel like I need to re-establish myself as a cat person. These are some drawings I did of my two kitties back in Colorado...and since I won't see them for a few months, this is my ode to them!

This is Stormy:

She's the older of the two, I think she's about 18 now, and is surprisingly hard to draw because she's just a tiny wisp of fluff. She's very quiet, has a tiny head, and weighs about a much as a kleenex.

And this is Athena:

She's only about....6? I can't remember. She's a lot more substantial (although still pretty tiny), but at the time I drew these around Christmas, she had recently been shaved into a fashionable and not-at-all-ridiculous lion haircut.

UPDATE!!!!: The cats' PR Rep (my mom) has released the following statement: "I am writing this response on behalf of the two afformentioned kitties. Stormy wanted to assure you that she weighs as much as two wet tissues (she has been working out). Athena is highly insulted and wants everyone to know that most of her hair has grown back and now she looks like the ferocious tiger that she is."

Colorado!

Hello! It's been a long time since I've posted here, since I've been out of town for the past month. I took a wonderful reportage class in Paris for 10 days, and then I went home to Colorado for a week. I'll start with Colorado since Paris will take longer. What a great month it's been! Colorado was so fantastic for a break. My boyfriend Chris and I went back to visit my family and take a little break from city life. The thing we could not get over was how INCREDIBLE everything smells in Colorado! There are flowers, trees, thunderstorms, rain, and just clean pure air. I can't believe I barely noticed how great it smells when I lived there.

Anyway, moving along, Chris and I went downtown into Denver one day and happened upon the Denver Botanic Gardens. They were having a show of Henry Moore's sculpture throughout the gardens, which was beautiful. Just drawing the flowers after having seen the sculptures made the gardens, shapes, and colors feel completely different.

The gardens cleared out once it got cloudy, and looked like rain, but we stuck around and stayed outside in the cool, fresh air. Rain doesn't seem so threatening in Colorado, because it just feels, smells and sounds wonderful.

Towards the end of the trip, we headed up into Rocky Mountain National Park to hike. Another thing I couldn't get over were the clouds! There is SO much sky in Colorado, and the clouds stretch around in a 360 degree panoramic wherever you are. The only time you can't see clouds in every direction is when you're up in the mountains surrounded by jagged cliffs and pine trees (don't even get me started on how good it smells up in the mountains...it's like what Pine-Sol wishes it could be...).

We ended up going on a 7 mile hike that looped around various lakes, through the forest.

Every once in a while, through the tangled pine trees, we could see through to beautiful soaring peaks and turquoise lakes.

Near the end of the trail, we came to the roaring Alberta Falls.

Finally we made it down to the base and began to drive home. The rains had finally come, after booming all day long, and we had given up on seeing any big wildlife for the rest of the day. But wait! Over in a marshy valley was a surprisingly orange animal wading through the grass. We all hopped out of the car and I ran down into the grass to get a closer look. A single, beautiful female elk was grazing near the side of a creek. It's always amazing to see such exotic animals, like something you'd see in Africa, grazing in a field only a couple hours from downtown Denver.

It was a wonderful, peaceful, and relaxing trip, and I can't wait to get back to clear the city air out of my lungs again.