johngrade.com

John Grade is a renowned sculptor based in Seattle. Taking his artistic cues from the natural world, he's known for his very large site-specific installations, including "Spur," featured in this Outdoor Idaho program. The piece was initially installed near the Craters of the Moon National Monument in south-central Idaho, and then moved to Ketchum, Idaho. You can see 'Spur' next to the bike path near Serenade Lane in Ketchum.

Grade was invited to design the piece by the Sun Valley Center for the Arts and the National Park Service to help commemorate the 100th anniversary of the National Park system.

In addition to "Spur," Grade has designed and constructed many other pieces around the world, including "Middle Fork," a 105-foot long replica of a tree in the Cascade foothills of Washington State. The piece was on display at the Smithsonian's Renwick Gallery in 2015 and 2016, as well as at the Davos World Economic Forum in Switzerland. Grade is known for using large teams to help construct his pieces, and more than 3,000 people worked on "Middle Fork." The sculpture, as is the case with some of his other works, is designed to eventually disintegrate and go back to nature.

Grade, a graduate of the Pratt Institute, is the recipient of the Metcalf Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (NY), a Tiffany Foundation Award (NY), three Andy Warhol Foundation Grant Awards (NY), two Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grants (NY), the Arlene Schnitzer Prize from the Portland Art Museum (OR), and the Arts Innovator Award from Artist Trust (WA).

This interview was conducted by Marcia Franklin in June, 2016

Marcia Franklin, Idaho Public Television: How did you first hear about this project?

JOHN GRADE, Sculptor: I was approached by Kristin and Courtney at the Sun Valley Art Center, but four years prior I had just chanced upon the Craters of the Moon. And I think it was a particularly unusually abundant wildflower season, so against this black landscape it was really beautiful. So that took me right in, so that when I was approached by Courtney and Kristin, I said, "Oh, I've got to do something here."

Franklin: Why did you want to work in this environment?

Grade: I love how stark and spare the landscape is, and this idea that there are thousands of voids under the landscape, with these lava tubes, is really compelling. Also, the fact that it was created by all this kind of drama of the volcanic landscape and this molten thing happening; that was appealing.

Franklin: How did you come on your idea of doing this for your piece?

Grade: Well, originally, there was this idea of doing something that was in some way related to Craters of the Moon. But then also folded in was this secondary idea, could it relate to Sun Valley, to the city of Ketchum, and how do I bridge those two landscapes?

Franklin: How does this relate to the landscape here?

Grade: So the sculpture relates to the landscape very literally. I went in and looked at a number of different lava tubes. And then choosing the lava tube, I worked with the biologist here, on staff, so that we could find a lava tube that was important for bat habitat.

And I knew that I wanted to come in and make a digital model using LIDAR technology. So they were excited about the fact that they could have this very specific map, this point cloud.

So ironically, for me, I took this effort of making this LIDAR imagery, and what I ended up with is something very different than what that map was. So if you look at the actual cave that this was inspired by, it's very, very horizontal. There are very few places in the cave where you can actually stand up. The cave is also four or five times larger than what I've made. This piece is only about 85 feet long.

So when I had this point cloud, it's so detailed that you're getting a point in space that's every couple of millimeters. We've actually got renderings of bats that were hanging from the top of the caves in great detail, which is actually quietly incorporated in part of the sculpture.

But with all this specific information, I can then go in on the computer, and I can compress and contort and change these things. So I have all that license. And so it needed to be more than about just this cave; it needed to be about the secondary part of what the sculpture is about, which is this relationship to Sun Valley.

And, for me, there, it was this kind of ode to the railroad and that history of the spur coming off the railroad. So the scale of each of these ribs of the sculpture is the scale of a railroad tie, about nine inches wide. And then as you're looking across the length of this sculpture, you see these pairs of horizontal pieces. They reference railroad tracks. They're certainly not railroad tracks; they're sort of railroad tracks that became limp in a way and then rigid again.

So there's also something going on materially for me in choosing wood, because when I think about both the motion of a railroad, but, probably more importantly, what's happening with a lava flow, you have this very hard material that's in this beautiful state of flux. And so when looking at this, your first impression from a distance might not be that this is wood, because we think of wood happening on a kind of rectilinear sort of plane, where this has been carved much more in keeping with something flowing.

Franklin: Why did you choose a lava tube? You could have chosen any other depiction of this area. What was it that intrigued you about it?

Grade: My first trek into the park was in the winter, so it was February. And I got a late start, so I was largely skiing by moonlight into the park, and so it was about shelter. A lava tube cave is going to stay at the 32 degrees when you've got these howling, below zero winds. So it had this layer for me of refuge. So beyond this idea of refuge, it also came to this idea of imagining a landscape in flux, very literally.

Franklin: So it's part art; it's part science, really.

Grade: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, the more that I can step outside of what I know, the better. And this has also been a technically challenging piece. If I look at the kind of span of the pieces that we've been working on in my studio for the past few years, this is the most challenging, and it's been the piece that people have gotten the most excited about. There's a real buzz in the studio now because people are really pushed, everybody's kind of stretched to their skill limit. And everybody's kind of got a slightly different approach in terms of how they're fabricating these parts.

Franklin: Why do you work in that manner? Why don't you, John Grade do this whole piece?

Grade: Well, on a practical level, I'd probably spend three years doing it, and so I'd get a lot less in terms of variety in what I get to explore. But I think more important than that, it's much more interesting to collaborate.

Now I'm doing projects where there are as many as a thousand people volunteering to help work on they might each only be spending four or five hours on the process, but you get so many more interesting nuanced things, things that I would never do or want, but then you need to respond to it. And that becomes a very interesting conversation.

It's kind of akin to putting something out in the landscape like this, where we don't know what might happen. You know, there could be an animal that comes in and does something here. And it's usually these unusual events that then spark tangential future projects.

So it's a kind of a give and a take. You kind of have this trust in putting something out in the world, and this trust of having other people collaborate with you. And I've found it brings back much, much more than you might expect.

Franklin: What has been the most challenging part of this?

Grade: You know, part of it is we were in a really compressed time frame here, so from concept to completion we're just a little over a year. And so for a piece of this complexity, that's the biggest part of it.

Franklin: There's an interesting story about the wood.

Grade: The sculpture is made with Alaskan yellow cedar. And it's particularly special wood because the trees are probably four to five-hundred years old. And they're standing dead. But because cedar's so hardy and insects aren't getting into it, it's perfectly beautiful wood. And rather than having to kiln dry that wood, it's been dried naturally.

So I had been in touch with somebody who I've worked with on a number of projects, and he was able to go in with a Forest Service pass and cut down a number of these trees and slab them to what we needed for the dimensions for this. So it's got this kind of interesting connection to this wood that's been standing dead and coming into this environment where we've got these lava tubes, which are kind of this tracing of life that's happened long ago. So it felt very appropriate.

It's also very practical to use the cedar out here because it is a hardy wood. It's going to crack, it's going to do all these kind of wonderful things to kind of have this nice dialogue with this landscape, but it's not going to be eaten by insects. It can be in ground contact and, you know, last many, many, many, decades.

Franklin: Talk about the torching.

Grade: Yeah, the idea of torching the inside of the wood really comes from traditions in Japan, which is a means of preserving wood. And what this does is it makes the wood much more durable to the elements.

For me, it was also a really kind of important conceptual and aesthetic choice because it references the heat of what's going on, if the lava's flowing through, but it also gives it a kind of a graphic difference from the rest of the sculpture. So you have this very literal kind of interpretation of the surface of that inside of that lava tube.

And then by leaving the outside, it's this kind of gleaming white, pristine surface, but within six months it's going to echo all of these gnarled, worn, gray, almost metallic gray trees that are, you know, kind of sprinkled in throughout the park. So I think that logic will come through with some time.

Franklin: Right now, when you come around the corner and you look at it, it almost looks like a dinosaur skeleton.

Grade: And that was intentional. It's of the body. So I think that there's something about this kind of scale of something like a dinosaur or I see a whale, maybe it's because I'm from this, you know, area of the sea.

But I think, also, there's this idea, for me, of and this comes back to the railroad where as you're moving through the sculpture, the ribs are further placed on the ends, and then they become more and more compressed as you come in.

And what this is doing is it's both giving you a little bit more of a sense of kind of the claustrophobia that you can get when you're in one of these caves, as you kind of make your way toward the center; but, also, I think about being on a railroad car and having the light kind of snap by you, going "choo choo choo," in this kind of staccato fashion.

Franklin: What do you hope when people come upon this?

Grade: I kind of see the sculpture as a bit of an ambassador because it will be traveling between these two locations. And when it's at Craters, I'm hoping that people will understand that the sponsorship is coming from Sun Valley; they might want to go see what's happening in the art center there. And then when it's in Sun Valley, for its longer duration, people that are there that have never taken the time to go to Craters of the Moon will say, "Hmmm, it's something I want to try."

One of my frustrations working in conventional settings, like, say, a museum, is that there are certain necessary practical considerations in terms of why people can't touch and interact more with their bodies. So what I think is nice about this piece is it's meant for people to grab hold of it, to just sort of lean on it, to put their bodies, really, directly against it. It's a piece that's meant to be felt, which so often is the case with sculpture and can't be implemented. But here I think people will.

Franklin: Any other hopes for it going forward?

Grade: I guess, you know, I'm excited about how it's going to gray out. It will become this sort of dull aluminum, and that will give a different set of associations. I like the idea that initially you wouldn't think of it as wood. You might think of it as bone. You might think of it as something metallic because it's out in the landscape. So you have that sense of discovery.

jasonmiddlebrook.com

Jason Middlebrook is a well-known artist based in Hudson, NY who works in various mediums. Trees have been the subject of his recent sculptures, including the steel, fiberglass and slate "Homage to a Limber Pine (1000 Years of High Winds, Heavy Snows and Countless Gazes)" which was exhibited in the Craters of the Moon National Monument in Idaho and now is in Ketchum, Idaho.

He was invited to design and construct the sculpture by the Sun Valley Center for the Arts, as part of a commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Craters of the Moon National Monument.

Middlebrook has a B.A. in Fine Arts from the University of California at Santa Cruz and a Master of Fine Arts from the San Francisco Art Institute. He was chosen for the Independent Study program at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Iaspis Residency in Stockholm, Sweden.

This interview was conducted by Marcia Franklin in May, 2016

Marcia Franklin: You first came out to Craters of the Moon just to take a look, right?

Jason Middlebrook: Yeah, I came out in the winter, so it was a really stark landscape. It was really, really bizarre. And we actually cross country skied in here. And I finally got kind of frustrated with the skis, and I went off, and I just fell in love with these trees, the dead trees.

Franklin: What about them resonated with you?

Middlebrook: There was a couple of things, the elements of where we are and what happened here with the volcano and how old they are and how weathered they are and how much character they have. And, you know, their color, their monochromatic sensibility, their contrast to the landscape, but their significance to the landscape, because they're dead, but they're still alive.

Franklin: What was your process for trying to design this?

Middlebrook: Well, I came back, and I had to draw the trees. I had to spend some time here. And I spent two days, and I walked and I hiked, and I drew probably 15 trees. And one of the requirements was that we couldn't have any low branches so people would hang or get hurt. It couldn't be too massive because of budget and scale and all the transport.

And so I kind of found a tree that I really liked that was kind of the model. And then I just kept drawing it and drawing it and sketching it and trying to capture the wind, trying to capture what the wind had done to this tree and where it, you know, had been affected by the elements. Then I went back to my studio, and the very first step is I have to bend pipe, almost like bending pasta. And that's the kind of fun part, because that's the kind of lyrical part.

So I actually had a picture of the tree, and I went to my steel guy, and we worked for a couple of days just trying to get the rhythm of it, because once that that central core is really the real thing that captures everything. And then once we got that, then we branched off it, literally. But capturing that took the most work.

Franklin: How did you decide what material to use?

Middlebrook: I had done quite a few of these. And I work with a company in Long Island that kind of uses a pretty toxic process of fiberglass. And the fiberglass is really impervious to the elements. And so they helped me structure the engineering with steel and Styrofoam in the core, and then that's covered in fiberglass.

Then it's brought to my studio, and my assistants and I we tile it, just like tiling your bathroom. And the slate that it's tiled from was on a house, on the roof of a house in Saratoga Springs, from the turn of the century. So that's slate tile. And I wanted slate to match the colors of the limber pines because anything else would be too glossy, too metallic-y, modern.

Franklin: What about transporting it? Were you concerned about that?

Middlebrook: No, because I kind of learned through this process, sometimes the heavier things are, the bigger they are, they're easier, believe it or not. You know, if you had to move a porcelain lamp across country, you'd be more stressed.

Franklin: What is your hope for people when they see this?

Middlebrook: I think to not only pay attention to the sculpture but to really think about the trees, the dead trees and the history and the time-relationship the trees have to this place and the world. You know, people are shocked that these trees are a thousand years old. And I kind of like that challenge that I was trying to make a thousand year old thing, you know.

With all my art I want to just stop people for a minute and have them ponder what their relationship to this is and how significant they are or insignificant they are to it.

Jonathan Mills Photography

Jon Mills isn't your average outdoor photographer. When others are waiting for gorgeous sunrises or sunsets to light the landscape, he waits for the dark. That's when his experience with digital cameras and knowledge of astronomy and meteorology give him an edge over the daytime shooters.

It takes a certain degree of patience and a little bit of nerd to hang out under the stars all night waiting for just the right moment to take a shot. But his obsession has paid off. Breathtaking pictures of the Milky Way, and constellations like Orion get thousands of hits on his Facebook page.

And when a storm rolls in over the desert south of his home in Jerome, he grabs his camera and heads out to chase it. Some of his lightning storm shots have even gone viral, gaining national media attention.

Jon Mills is a photographer from Jerome, Idaho. He specializes in night photography, astrophotography, and lightning storms. This interview was conducted by Sauni Symonds in 2017.

Sauni Symonds: What inspired you to pursue night photography?

Jon Mills: I was working during the day and would work all day, and when the day was over I was out of light. I was forced to, essentially, find another outlet for my camera and started to go out at night. And I thought, I'll try and get the stars, see if I can get something. So, I set up the camera, fired the shot away, and I had it.

It was instant that I was hooked, like, wow, I really can capture these crazy nightscapes that are just way beyond my imagination, didn't even know you could get something like that out of a digital camera. And that was it, I was hooked. I was off and running with it. And I haven't really looked back either.

I had seen the Milky Way before, faintly I had seen stars -- always kind of had that astronomy bit in the back of my head, as well. But it was how much more powerful the photo looked when you could take something and take that exposure and make it really, really long. And how much more light was actually out there.

And that drew me to go out to places like this: Gooding City of Rocks, Little City of Rocks, Craters of the Moon, the City of Rocks down by Albion. And that's what got me chasing those nightscape shots. Because you can't put it into words. I had to go take a picture of it to show people, like look at what is out there.

Symonds: It's something you really don't see with the naked eye.

Mills: No, you don't. Being able to prolong those exposures and capture the light for longer because cameras are calculators; they count photons. And our eyes can only count photons at a rate of 60 hertz; that is roughly our refresh rate in our brain. A camera can do it for 30 seconds, or minutes or even longer. So 30 seconds is about the maximum I give my equipment, given the Earth is spinning, so the stars get moving, you'll wind up with star trails, another interesting bit of night photography. But, yeah, it's amazing how much more you can capture.

Symonds: What does it take to understand the mechanics and technology of a digital camera?

Mills: In order to really enjoy what the camera is up to, on the inside of it, you have to have a desire to pick things apart. So I was kind of the kid that wanted to take apart my alarm clock to see what went on the inside. So because I have that curiosity, I had the same curiosity with cameras. I wanted to know what was it that made this thing tick? Why is it so much better than what I can see. And once I had that desire to understand what the inside's doing, that was it.

I was fortunate enough to work at a place, Best Buy, that has an unlimited resource of learning for the equipment, because if you learn about the equipment, you can sell it. So they lay out a massive quantity of resources at your feet then just say learn as much as you possibly can; it is a benefit to us, too; it's a benefit to the customer, it's a benefit to everybody.

And once I understood what the camera did, at the basic level they're a photon calculator I could really, really start using them to their maximum potential, which is a lot further than just understanding that when you push the button, it captures what you're looking at.

Now, if you understand that when you push the button, there's a whole lot of other process behind it - light comes in the lens, it gets bent and hits your sensor. Your sensor counts exactly how many photons hit each pixel. It does some math and some algorithms behind that to make the image higher, or, lower contrast. There's so much going on behind the scenes.

Symonds: How does light pollution impact night photography?

Mills: So one of the problems with light pollution or having a lot of light in the area is the atmosphere, itself. It usually has lots and lots of dust, lots and lots of water vapor, a lot of things that will reflect that. And what you wind up getting are these orange washed over shots anywhere close to a city. It's hard to get away from that, especially in these areas. We're not too far outside of Gooding. We've got the Magic Valley all behind us. However, just getting even a few miles out really changes how much reflection that you're getting out of your skies.

Anyone who's into photography and lighting usually knows what is called the inverse square law, meaning the further away you get in meters, you cut the light in half and cut the light in half and cut the light in half. You put a few miles in that situation, and not a whole lot of light going on.

Symonds: What kind of equipment do you use?

Mills: The gear needed is usually a fairly simple setup. A tripod that is very, very stable is a must. You're going to be taking very long exposures, which means your camera equipment has to be very still. So a really good tripod is absolute.

You have a much wider range with cameras, but it must be a camera that has a manual exposure setting. So cameras are designed to find a middle gray area, compensate for that, and that's the image that they give you automatically. You've got to be able to override those controls in order to get the night sky.

DSLRs and a lot of new mirrorless cameras do that quite well. I have a couple Canon DSLRs. They do the job quite well. When I picked them up, they had very decent what's called signal to noise ratio so they weren't as noisy in those long exposure pictures. And they add very decent ISO, which is essentially your sensitivity range. And I could crank it up without dealing with as much noise.

So as equipment advances, of course, it's getting better every day. But you don't need the highest end stuff to get into it, I found out really quick, just a fairly basic setup and a wind angle lens to capture as much as you can, and go have fun with it.

Symonds: What kinds of settings work best for night shots?

Mills: So there's a couple of mathematical rules with cameras. APS C sensors have what's called a rule of 250, meaning 250 divided by the focal length of your lens is the amount of time you have in seconds before you start seeing star trails in your photo. Full frame, they call it a rule of 400, it's the same math. Medium format would be closer to a 1,000. It's just off of that. So there's a mathematical, you know, bit that you can understand in order to get the right shot that is sharp with your stars without seeing that little bit of star trail.

Your ISO range is usually determinant of how much time you have with that lens. You have to kind of I don't want to say play it by ear, but play it by eye and see what the camera's actually producing with that lens setup.

So, typically, with my stuff, as long as I have pretty dark skies, I see very decent results at an ISO range 4,000, 3200, I get plenty of data in the camera to mess with later in post, in Photoshop. That will also differentiate with the f stop of your lens, as well. It tells you how much light is actually coming into it. I upgraded lenses here not too long ago, in order to get a little bit more, I'm running with an f2.8 lens now.

Then you get to fight your hyper-focal distance, which is how much of your foreground, background, everything is in focus. Because at f2.8 if you have interesting rocks behind you, they may be out of focus, versus your skies that are nice and in focus. So, there again, is another game to play back and forth versus, you know, your ISO and your time.

Symonds: How long did it take you to really get the hang of it?

Mills: It took me a couple years of trial and error to be able to walk out to the spot I want, drop my camera at the time I want it, take half a dozen shots and have one of them be a winner.

I would spend nights after night after night, initially, trying to get that shot, playing that settings game back and forth, going back and watching YouTube videos to try and figure out what I did wrong and what other people are doing. That was a big learning curve that I've narrowed down to a few minute ordeal nowadays.

Symonds: That's a lot of dedication.

Mills: I'm patient. I understand that I need to be patient with it because I'm not dealing with something that learns. The camera is not going to intuitively know what I want to capture. I have to know what I want to capture and tell the camera these are going to be your settings, hit the button and walk away and let it do its thing.

Symonds: What other things are important for night photography?

Mills: So, other than the camera knowledge, you have to have a very good awareness of what the weather is going to be in the area that you're going to be shooting at. You have to also have a very good awareness of where the stars are going to be at as well. There's some pretty readily available tools, weather channel is a great resource to be able to type in a ZIP code and have a rough idea of what's going to be going on.

You also have available for a lot of mobile devices an Ephemeris, which is basically a tool for seeing where sunrise, sunset, and moonrise and moonset is going to be relative to a GPS location; you can punch that in and find it as well. Typically, you have to have internet signal for that, so it's something you've got to do well before going out to the site, because a lot of these sites if you're getting away from city light, you're also getting away from cell signal, so you better know before you get out to location.

Symonds: How has technology advanced the ability to shoot the stars?

Mills: Technology has opened a big window to people that want to get out and do it. It is now much easier. The research has already been done. You can just go to the internet and find it out. There's still that need to go to the internet and find it out. You can't just you know, you can't Google search astrophotography and have all of the knowledge in front of you for that particular night. There's still work involved every single time you go out.

Symonds: How do you use the landscape to your advantage?

Mills: This landscape out here, in particular Gooding City of Rocks and Little City of Rocks, has so much contrast, especially for some of the light painting techniques that I use, have anything from a small flashlight to a little bit larger LED panel light to bring some of the color out in the rocks. That lichen turns a bright green. There's red and oranges that seem to come through in the rocks, as well, especially out here, that are unique. You don't find this anywhere else.

Symonds: You also chase lightning storms. What turned you into a storm chaser?

Mills: When it comes to storm chasing and catching lightning, what got me hooked was, again, that epiphany that I had when I very first captured lightning, having the knowledge that there were other people out there able to catch it with similar equipment. I had known how my camera works at that point in some of the settings. And there was a storm that happened to be rolling through close to home, and I got a wild hair and decided why not; the worst I could do is not get it.

I went out with the camera, set up everything the right direction and clicked the button on long exposure, lightning flashed, and I had it. I couldn't I didn't really believe the back of the camera at first. And I thought no way. Like, that's something that really big professionals do. This is not something that's at my level. How did I capture that?

And I was really hooked on that. Because that is an instance that never happens again. Lightning is different every single time it strikes, and you don't get a second chance. You do get more lightning, but that one's gone. It's just a brief moment, and it's over. And I got to go get it all.

I, then, started putting a little bit more of my traditional training and some of the things that I taught myself for composing the shot better. I started bringing that into the situation with chasing lightning. I wound up with a few spots that I really like that are my go to places that it usually works quite well in. And have been able to capture lots and lots and lots of lightning ever since.

Mills: Yeah, I was hit by lightning. Not by choice. I had an opportunity go out not far from home I could walk there and capture a storm that was rolling through the Jerome area. I knew it was coming, so I made sure batteries were charged and everything so I could just run out with minimal gear and go capture some lightning. So I gathered up a camera, grabbed an umbrella, ran out to the field with an interesting pivot in the foreground, and I thought that was going to look very neat, and a little bit of rain started, and lightning was coming through. So start the camera on some longer exposures.

And I was watching it come through, holding the umbrella over the camera and there was one shot that I got that was very bright, and I was thinking, wow, I just captured all of that strike; that was impressive. And then a little voice in the back of my head said, that's getting close. Because the old rule you're taught when you're a kid to count seconds from a flash to the sound, there wasn't very many seconds to count. And I thought maybe I should put my gear up and head for cover, still holding the umbrella … way too late.

It's a very odd feeling to try and explain. Sort of like putting a sweater on, a wool sweater fresh out of the dryer. It is very, very tingly, you get that kind of everywhere. I had that for a brief millisecond, and everything went white. Whether it be from the flash or the fact that it knocked me out, I don't know. All went white, felt like I was falling for minutes, a long time it felt like I was falling.

And then senses started coming back piece by piece. It felt like a long time, the rain was hitting my face; I knew that much. The white started fading into black, from the edges in. I could start noticing that I was a little bit cold and that I was laying on the ground. And then everything started coming back online; that's a good way to put it. I don't know if I didn't know what happened or didn't believe what happened, but I opened up my eyes, and it was raining in my face. It was raining pretty hard.

I just told myself I have to get up, you know, gather my senses and gather my gear and head back in. I knew I had to head back in, and that was kind of the only thought in my head. My arm and down my chest felt hot, not burnt but just like it was much warmer than the rest of me. The umbrella had blown off somewhere. I gathered everything up. I got to the house and just set my gear down on the back porch after I had made the walk back. And it all finally kind of came through in my head, when I saw that my hand was burnt, that I just got hit by lightning. It didn't make sense until ten minutes later, after walking back in, what actually happened.

Symonds: And you actually took a picture of the bolt that struck you?

Mills: Yeah, it just looks like a big lightning bolt almost off of the frame of the camera. What doesn't translate is that that main bolt of lightning in a wide angle lens was less than 300 feet away. And I got one of the little because it spreads out when it hits the ground, and I got one of the little side guys.

Very lucky. Or unlucky, I don't know. I got lottery tickets, and those didn't pay off after the fact. But, yes, very fortunate to have not taken the full brunt of that is why I'm here now. Probably would not have survived that.

Alexandra Paliwoda is an artisan blacksmith living in Driggs, Idaho. Most of her young life was spent in Alaska where she learned to love and respect nature. She decided to set up her blacksmith shop in Driggs, after spending a lot of time in and around Colorado and Montana. Her connection to the outdoors is very strong. She likes to ski, run, kayak, backpack and more. Driggs, which lies in the Teton Valley, gives her a center from which to operate her business, but also keeps her close to nature and the inspiration it provides.

Working with steel is something she has always enjoyed. And now, after many years of hard work at the forge, she is right where she wants to be. Her work can now be found in galleries around the country and on websites like etsy.com/ and commongoods.com/.

Alexandra Paliwoda is an artisan blacksmith living in Driggs, Idaho. She specializes in functional art forged from steel. This interview was conducted by Sauni Symonds in 2017.

Sauni Symonds: How did you get into blacksmithing?

Alexandra Paliwoda: I actually, really, specifically loved horses. I loved working in the equine industry. And it was justI've always loved animals, actually. I owned a horse before. And so, yeah, it was just great to be able to work professionally in that field, to help them, to, you know, work with lameness problems, work with veterinarians. It was a lot of fun.

So, one of the things you have to learn in horseshoeing school was how to make shoes. And that not onlyit encompassed shaping steelyou know, there's quite a few aspects to actually make a horseshoe, a specific type of horseshoe. Forge welding is another aspect of that. All those things you can utilize in terms of in blacksmithing.

And I yeah, I hadn't anticipated I would necessarily be a full time blacksmith, but I was really good at making horseshoes. And I found I liked doing that and just shaping the steel. I found I liked it more than, actually, working on horses. So, yeah, it gave a good because, again, it's repetitive. And even though there's some variation to every hoof or maybe a specific type of shoe, it gave a great foundation to very simple steps that I could take and apply to, you know, the actual craft of blacksmithing.

Symonds: What inspired you to work with steel in a creative way?

Paliwoda: Working with my hands has always been close to my heart, creating has. And so when I dabbled in the arts, tried other forms of media, steel was what really grabbed me. I think because of the environment and, really, the wildness of the place I'm from. And it's tough to move, but at the same time it's very forgiving, and I can relate to that, you know.

It's one of the basic elements. You can touch it, you can feel it. It's unassuming. It's organic. The shapes are real. I think that I hear a lot of people say that it's something they could fit into their home. And that's a variety of homes, mentioning that; it's from modern to rustic. Steel fits in almost anywhere. It's handcrafted. It's real. A lot of blood, sweat, and tears goes into it. And people like that. They like the story.

Symonds: How do you find time to do custom pieces with so much production work?

Paliwoda:The thing is that I've gotten really good at certain things. And so I've taken those things and applied them to custom work, which, actually, I probably do one to two custom pieces a week. Yeah, everything from small kitchen, functional art pieces on to some architectural work. And so it keeps it interesting, and the consistency is you know, the quality is there due to the repetitive aspect of it. But, yeah, I'm usually not too bored. And I still love it.

Symonds: Do you ever get bored doing production work or making the same pieces over and over?

Paliwoda:I think with any job you can say there are moments that are repetitive or mundane. But the truth is that every piece of steel is just a little bit different, and even though I'm doing the same thing over and over again, and, yeah, when it's really busy it can get a little boring at times. The fact that I am a business owner, there are always a hundred things I have to do outside of just shaping the steel.

Symonds: Talk about your connection to the outdoors and how it influences your work and art?

Paliwoda:Yeah, in terms specifically to the outdoors, I love how you can I mean, almost everybody loves a beautiful picture of the outdoors or being in the outdoors, seeing it from a car window, however they experience it, people generally love the outside, at least aspects of it. And so that's reflected in the work.

But in terms of how it inspires me, nature is beautiful, nature is rough, nature can kill, it can give so much, as well. And I think that that is not only represented in steel and working with iron; on its own, I just love looking at an aspen tree and going, oh, I think I'm going to try and make that leaf out of steel.

Yeah, nature inspires me almost every day. I think every run I take or hike outside I see something beautiful. And I love how there aren't too many harsh lines in nature. There are a lot of curves in all reality. And that, that I love as well. And so I try to represent some of that in my work.

Symonds: Can this be dangerous, working around fire and heavy equipment?

Paliwoda:Yeah, I would say the two main dangers are getting seriously burned or having a tool take something out of your hands, throw it out of your hands. For instance, grinding on the bench grinder is actually one of the more dangerous jobs in here because that wire wheel can literally catch on any corner and just throw that piece.

Another big danger is working under the power hammer and having let's say I'm doing multiple tooling, punching holes, because there's so many tools working at once, you know, and you're dealing with significant hammer blows, the items can get thrown out of my hands. And so I always make sure to try not to point tongs towards myself, to always have things kind of, you know, facing at my sides. And then to hold them firmly, yes, but to have that ability to just let go, just let it go. If it wants to fly away, let it fly away.

But, yeah, getting burned and then just the fact that they're moving machines, and they're a lot stronger than I am, and they don't have flexibility. They really like doing the same thing over and over.

Symonds: Have you ever been injured?

Paliwoda:Well, I was actually grinding a paper towel holder, of all things. I wish it was a more elaborate story. But, yeah, I was on the bench grinder, moved it to the wire wheel, and it took it out of my hands and broke my nose, hit me in the face. So it crushed my face pretty well.

Yeah, I've had hammers hit my face. Sometimes you miss. So black eyes, bloodied, bloodied hands, big cuts, big burns, yeah, I think the main thing is just the wear and tear you feel after a while, but that's getting better.

Symonds: Why did you set up shop in Driggs?

Paliwoda:Well, to me, I think the community is you know, it's a small community, everybody kind of knows everybody, which is mostly good. And it's a very careful community, environmentally speaking. I think there are a lot of people here who really do make a difference. And I love that. It's really clean and a lot of people care. It's beautiful, mountains are close by. And so you just have this mix of people who love what they're doing and where they are.

I love the option of Jackson Hole being fairly close by. And Idaho just has a lot of wild, open land to explore, so it's just one of those great areas. I love the fact that within 15, 20 minutes you can be skiing, kayaking, mountain biking, trail running. It's great after a long day of work, you know, you can just go outside and have fun.

caseykristofferson.com

Casey Kristofferson is not related to Kris Kristofferson, the famous singer-songwriter. He gets asked this question all the time, especially since he's a musician. He is actually an Idaho native and lives in Challis, but he has also lived in Stanley in the Sawtooth National Recreation Area. That's where he was working when we met up with him.

He calls his compositions "mountain music," written and recorded in the heart of Idaho's central mountains. The sound is a mix of indie, blues, and folk. The lyrics tell stories of mountain life, with a modern twist. Every word seems to come from the heart. And that's a good way to describe Casey's music - it has heart.

A guitar is always by his side and pen and paper nearby. He has one album out and another in the works. So, even if he isn't related to the famous Kristofferson, he somehow inherited a music gene.

Casey Kristofferson is a singer-songwriter living in the mountains of central Idaho. His instrument of choice is the guitar. This interview was conducted by Sauni Symonds in 2016.

Symonds: When did you first get serious about playing and writing music?

Casey Kristofferson: Well, I knew from a younger age that I wanted to play. Like that's one thing that has always been ingrained in who I am. But, then, there are also these social constructs that can create a lot of pressure on you, such as you've got to get a job and have benefits and have a family by this age or that age, so it took me a long time, you know, to figure out that I really wanted to play professionally, and that's what I wanted to pursue. And so in doing that, it's only been, really, not that long, like not even a year yet. But, you know, it's something that is now my goal and my driving force behind what I'm doing.

Symonds: How would you describe your music and what are you trying to convey?

Kristofferson: I think indie folk, mountain eclectic, experimental, you know, it's blues, you know, are a huge, huge influence on me. So it's an amalgamation of things, I would say. You know, I think with my music it's something that is different in that it's raw and real. And it's not, say, like a recording that you'd here on the Top 40 list. It's not meant my music is not there to be a product for you to consume, and it's not there to be something that you'll be obsessed with. It's there to share ideas. And with the music, I'm trying to sort of reflect the landscape that I live in.

I write music because I believe that songs these days need a larger meaning than what is currently popular in music. The world is so complex that you there's just so much material to write music about other than just all this dumb bull---- that we hear on the radio, you know. And so that's sort of what I'm trying to do.

Symonds: What do you like about living so close to wilderness?

Casey Kristofferson: I love the free living up here, the independent lifestyle you feel like you live life without the constraints of society, sometimes, you know. I mean, we have our own society up here where we feel like we're unaffected, in many ways, by things that seem to be more present in bigger cities or more populated areas. Maybe that makes us uninformed, you know; but in the same sense, I think ignorance is bliss in living up here.

Your first album "Hat Creek Sessions" was recorded in a remote, off the grid cabin. You call it "raw." Are you happy with it?

I don't think a true artist is ever happy all the way with what they do. And, no, I mean I guess the answer, to be truthful, is no, I think it could have been better, for sure. But I think if you get something almost too perfected, and you play it over and over and over, it almost removes the human element in what you're doing. I don't know about anybody else, but I think that mistakes give something character sometimes. And I am a firm believer in trying to make keep that connection between people that music has had for many years.

And you'll never see me with a laptop and a midi, you know, out there being a deejay, because it's just not who I am. I think that the sound of the fingers hitting the strings and the sounds of people trying to make music is something that is special, it's very special. So that's what music means to me.

Symonds: What inspired your song "Lost in the White Clouds?"

Casey Kristofferson: I was up on a hunting trip with a good friend of mine, and it was getting dark, and it was getting cold, and I was on top of this mountain ridge. And, I just remember being clear up there, and on my right side I could see Castle Peak only a few miles away, the tallest mountain in the range; and then on my left side I could see all the mountains in the Bowery area. And it really just made an impression on me just how vast and large the landscape was.

So I'm seeing that, and the wind sets in, and it's just blowing like crazy, and the snow is coming down. And you could really feel how small you were in relation to everything around you. And it was really kind of a powerful moment that stuck in my mind. And that was pretty much the seed for the song.

Symonds: What inspired your song "Night Comes Down?"

Casey Kristofferson: You know, it's hard to pinpoint one thing. But I know that when I wrote that one I was coming back from Idaho Falls and had driven that long stretch of highway in the desert and was coming back to go to work the following day at a job that I didn't really like that much. And I remember feeling this depression, a little bit, in that I was living my life the way I didn't want to live it at that moment. You know, I was living my life by somebody else's standards.

And, I think it's this discussion of life's struggles, you know, this idea of life, struggling throughout life and trying figure out where you belong. And then at some point everything every thought and idea and good thing you've ever done in your life is over, and you want to just make sure that the time that you spend on Earth that you're doing the things that you want to be doing, and that you put your time towards what you want.

Like the one lyric is, "I hope that I can find myself a pot of gold without the need to sell my soul." I don't want to be somebody that I'm going to trade my life for a dollar sign, you know. I don't want to have the label of "your time is worth this many dollars per hour." It's not the way that I want to live my life.

And, therefore, I've decided that I'm not going to live my life by other people's standards. I'm going make money, and I'm going to make a living the way that I want to, and it doesn't matter how much work or how much time that takes or how much money, or whatever; that's just the way it's got to be, you know.

Symonds: What is the hardest part of the song writing process?

Casey Kristofferson: I think the hardest part in the songwriting process, for me, is sometimes you have this thought or this idea or even the essence of an idea that's in your head of, oh, I want to bring this across, and somehow it's all tangled up and confused in your own brain that you don't know exactly what it is. And sometimes it takes months to get that idea across and out on paper in the way you want it to sound; other times, it takes minutes, you know.

And I think songwriting is not it's not like going to work at 9:00, doing a 9:00 to 5:00 job. You know, sometimes it comes in spurts, and other times it's much more reserved, and it takes a lot of digging to get it out of you. So that's the struggle and the reward, I guess, in writing songs.

And then trying it out, I mean, you'll have it written one way. You can rewrite it a million times to try and get it the way you want it. Really, the best way to see if a song is going fly is to just try it out in front of your audience and see what they have to say about it. Don't do that in a bar when everybody's drunk, that's my word of advice.

Symonds: Do you consider yourself more a singer or a songwriter?

Casey Kristofferson: I like guitars a lot. I've always really loved guitars. And they have infatuated me from a young age, like I had said. Yeah, so I started off playing guitar. I couldn't, when I was younger, care less about singing. And honestly, still to this day, I really just love to play. And I do love to sing, but I am a guitar player before I am a singer, and I will just flat out say that.

When I start a song it usually is some kind of melody and then lyrics come right after that. I'm very lyrically driven, so it will usually be some kind of guitar lick or riff, or whatever; and then, you know, I'll sort of get some ideas down and what I want to write a song about and what's been on my mind; and then just sort of build it from the ground up. But the foundation is always the guitar, and that's what I always come back to.