If all goes according to plan, I’ll be on my way to Arizona on Wednesday. A few days of gallery visits in Tucson and Scottsdale and then I’ll be joining around two dozen fellow artists on Sunday morning for the nine hour (two hours at customs, they tell us) bus ride to San Carlos, a town of 4,000 which is just to the west of Guaymas on the Sea of Cortez.
We’ll spend five days learning about the Sonoran desert ecosystem, hiking, snorkling, going out in a 50′ boat and recording the wildlife and landscape in a variety of media. What is doesn’t look like I’ll have, as near as I can tell right now, is an internet connection, although I may be able to post some photos on Facebook via my iPhone.
The purpose of the trip is to gather the material needed for us to each create work for an exhibition “The Sea of Cortez”, to be held at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum in 2013.
One of my personal goals will be to compare the desert ecosystem of this part of Mexico with the Gobi of Mongolia. The biggest difference, which is obvious from looking at maps of both places, is that much of the Sonoran desert has at least some marine influence, whereas the Gobi has none. What this will mean in terms of climate, vegetation and animal life will be interesting to learn.
So, if you don’t see a new post here for a week or so, you’ll know that I’m suffering for my art- hanging out with a bunch of great artists, sketching, painting, talking shop and eating great Mexican food.
Susan Fox, American Artist 
Hey be sure to wave to us! We’re in Elfrida, about 100 miles south of Tucson, land of the sandhill cranes.
Have a great trip!
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Envy!! Tucson and Sonoran Desert are personal favorites. Hope you get to see some great birds and wildlife. (And that’s a sweet map of Mexico!)
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Suffer lots! 😉
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I am very glad I came across your blog. I think it is a great source of inspiration, and I couldn’t stop reading it 😉 Congratulations and keep up the good work!
Are you still learning Mongolian? How is your progress so far? I have been learning the language on and off your quite some time now, but I recently decided to give it some serious efforts. I would like to know which materials you are using, are they any good, etc.
I will be posting on my page some materials and info on the methods I a using, you might want to check it out soon.
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Bayarlala!
Yes, I am still working on learning Mongolian. I’m mostly concentrating on vocabulary and will work on pronunciation when I am there again this year. For materials, honestly, I’ve bought a big stack of Mongol pop music CDs when I’ve been in UB and I listen to them most days in my studio. I like the music and it lets me hear the language. I’ve also accumulated a large number of music videos on YouTube from before I was able to buy CDs. My channel is here: http://www.youtube.com/user/MsReynard. I have Mongolian/English and English/Mongolian dictionaries, a Mongolian grammar, the Lonely Planet Mongolian phrasebook and both a Mongolian language app and a dictionary for my iPhone and iPad. All have their uses. I transcribe song lyrics from Mongol Cyrillic into the Latin alphabet and look up words. Here’s a previous post I did last year on learning the language: https://foxstudio.wordpress.com/2010/05/17/mongolia-monday-teaching-myself-mongolian/
I did go to your blog and will look forward to your future posts!
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