Banff!

I was lucky enough to be selected for a residency at the Banff Centre for the Creative Arts. I've never been up to that region. In fact this is the furthest north that I have been on our continent. It gets cold and rocky up there and from what I saw, really beautiful.

I got my snow experience for sure. Living in southwest Georgia at 300 feet above sea level primed me to be jazzed by the soft, powdery, pancake-sized-snowflake snow that settled on everything with perfect timing (around day 5 or 6 I think?). Above is the view from the room I slept in. The mountain peak outside was fantastic and monumental. I am posting this photo but I also want you to disregard the photo because it does not do this thing justice. The peaks around us were bare rock when I arrived and after this weather event they all became snowcapped.

In this photo the bright orb is the moon, not the sun. The air, the distance, the colors- everything was different. This is actually just the view from the walkway I traversed to get to our dining facility (yes, they fed us every day, so we did not have to deal with food logic).

Roughly the same point of view as the previous image. Looking at these mountains every day affected me in many ways, most of which I have not sorted out yet. Two things have gelled in my mind though: the first is a correlation to my memories of waiting for the #7 train each morning when Hannah and I lived in Sunnyside (Queens NY). Every time I stood on that elevated platform I would look at the skyline of Manhattan and the colors and tones were always different. It was the same thing with these rocky peaks. Every hour was different, every minute really.

For the first week of the residency I was waking up very, very early for a number of reasons. I enjoyed a number of magical pre-dawn walks across campus and into town. So memorable.

Here is an image of a bonfire we had at the end of our residency. This blogpost only deals with the scenery- I will follow up with posts about the amazing artists I met here and all the other stuff.