Things you should never do during hunting season

Never, never, never book an art show when you are scheduled to leave the day before deer hunting season. It was tough enough getting ready to leave for our six week – two show cross country trip, but Emma the lab and Ken only got two days of grouse hunting in before leaving due to heavy rains/snow.

We left Sunday to head to the foundry in Utah www.adonisbronze.com, we had a day and a half to do metal check on 9 sculptures and then patinas on those and three others. Kept the foundry busy until noon on Tuesday, basing and foaming in American pi- A Moments Rest for exhibition at the Allied Artists of American show at the National Art Club on Gramercy in NYC – then off to Arkansas.

Never, never drive through Colorado during hunting season – I stopped counting guys in camo, trucks packed with gear, guns, horses and 4-wheelers – with license plates from across the country.

You never know what weather to expect when going over I70 and the continental divide, says it's clear one minute and then the road is closed, plus just when you think you’ve gone over the last snow covered summit, there is another… It was starting to stick pretty good on the last summit before as we rolled into Boulder.

Never, never stay in a hotel full of hunters, or eat at a greasy spoon or pull into a diesel stop during the beginning of hunting season. It is only a reminder of what Ken is missing in Idaho – which used to be an annual ritual since college until I scheduled a sculpture show in Little Rock on the way to our one and only wildlife show in Easton Maryland. Only worse time to travel is at the end of the season when horns are sticking out of the truck.

And if you are lucky, you will tune into KMTS in Colorado and hear "The 30 point buck" by the Bananas at Large of their follow up song "30 Point Buck, Tale 2"  Only incites our conversations about why we are heading east during hunting season.

We love the Little Rock show www.sculptureattherivermarket.com. This year they offered an $50,000 sculpture opportunity to artists attending the show. 29 of the 44 sculptors participated and at the opening reception, guests voted on their favorites and the top three were juried by a committee to determine the final award winner. Ron Chapel of California sculpture was chosen.

Show sales seemed slow, at least for us, we had several interested people, but that doesn't put diesel in the tank. Ken's work Forever Ready did win one of the eight Awards of Excellence, juried by the Museum of Arkansas as well as a local art gallery owner. Ken does have two works in the city's intimate sculpture garden below the Peabody Hotel, check out the site for images of 30 sculptures in the Vogel Schwartz Garden.

I will be posting Ken's sculpture proposal at a later time on the blog. Leaving the Buffalo River we saw a four point buck-I think on the east they call that an eight point...