Greetings!

Late spring winds and warm weather have come to the grasslands. The oak trees are beginning to lose their leaves, awaiting the summer monsoons. The last of the mariposa lilies are blooming, along with deer vetch, prickle poppy, a few primrose, and a scattering of yellow composites.

We have just returned from 18 days in South America. Our all-too-brief time was split between various parts of the Altiplano regions of northern Chile and Argentina and southern Bolivia (first part of the trip), and Cusco, the Sacred Valley and Machu Picchu, where we were joined by our friends, Sidney and Richard Wolff. It is nearly impossible to describe our journey, both because the landscape, architecture and cultures each in their own way evoked strong emotional responses, and because we've had so little time for reflection.

High points would include (1) the landscape between San Pedro de Atacama, Chile and Purmamarca, Argentina (at the southern end of the Quebrada de Humahuaca); (2) the incredibly finely carved Incan stonework in Cusco and Machu Picchu (I thought I heard the ghost of Aaron Siskind laughing as I photographed ancient walls); (3) the utter silence surrounded by the varied salt patterns in the Salar de Uyuni; and (4) the unexpected celebrations signaled by drums and flutes: families and friends marching together finding joy in the simplest of circumstances.

We've barely had time to catalog our images (we're almost embarrassed to report the number of gigabytes of disk space devoted to our photographic explorations; lets just say that we kept the number of individual images below 5 figures and the total storage below a terabyte!), let alone begin the process of understanding what was expressed during what was an inspiring journey.

Alas, sorting and reflection awaits our return from another trip: this time to celebrate the graduation of two grandchildren: one from Willamette College in Salem, OR, and the other from Hampshire College in Amherst, MA. On the way to Salem, we'll stop for part of a day to begin exploration of the northwest corner of Death Valley (the only part of the park we've yet to visit), and during our return, we plan to photograph along the Oregon and northern California coasts. We'll spend the summer trying to sort among images taken in virtually every environment: jungle (Guatemala), tropical forest (Machu Picchu and environs), and extreme desert.

The Desert Grasslands exhibit at the Tucson Museum of Art, in which 5 of Steve's images are shown, remains installed through July 7. We highly recommend that you see this excellent show. Karen has made an interactive electronic catalog for the show. This catalog is available at the iTunes bookstore. A non-interactive PDF version can be purchased as well. .

We are happy to say that one of Karen's Islamic tile images has been accepted into the 2013 Arizona Biennial at the Tucson Museum of Art. The exhibit will open on July 19 with a reception from 6 - 8 pm and run through September 29. this is the third time that one of Karen's images has been selected for this show.

We now have ebook versions for 5 of Karen's portfolios, Illusions of Reality, Architectronics, Assembled Images, Islamic Tile Studies, and The Perfect in Nature, and 4 of Steve's portfolios, Illusions of Intimacy, Living Stone, Agaves: Emergence and Transformation, and Sand Mirrors: A Portfolio. All are available through the iTunes store. Two of the portfolios, Karen's Illusions of Reality, and Steve's Sand Mirrors, can be downloaded at no charge. The other portfolios are available for $1.99 apiece. They can also be purchased directly through our websites (Steve's and Karen's) where PDF versions are also available. We invite you to have a look and of course to 'support your (non)-local artist!'

Karen's interactive electronic book, Sticks and Stone>, an alphabet book for the 21^st century, has been published by Polytropos Press. Owing to the inclusion of scripting for animation, sound and the image content, the book is currently available only for a restricted number of e-book readers. You can examine some of the book's content and watch a video demonstrating its interactive content on the book's website. You may purchase and download the book directly or purchase it from the iTunes bookstore. the Facebook page for the book and the website each contain a video where you may watch the book being "read." You may also download a sample of the book to examine it to play with it, please do.

Sand Mirrors, the book of photographs by Steve and poems by Richard B. Clarke, is available either directly or through Amazon.com. Information on purchasing the print book is available on the book's website. The iBook edition of Sand Mirrors is now available through either iTunes or the book's website. The print book may also be "paged through" using "Look inside the Book" on Amazon.

We want to remind everyone that prints of the images in Sand Mirrors are available at very reasonable prices from the Image Collective in Ashland, OR, in their TIC Collection. The photographs are all printed on archival materials, 8" by 8" centered on an 11" by 14" sheet, with prices starting at $25. All images in the book are available.

There is now an author page including all of Steve's books at Amazon.com.

Both Steve and Karen have created Facebook pages devoted solely to photography. We have each populated a 'timeline' where you can trace the development of our very different visions. For Steve, we invite you to visit: http://www.Facebook.com/StephenStromPhoto/ and for Karen, http://www.Facebook.com/KarenStromPhoto/). You can also follow our progress and view larger portfolios of images by visiting our websites: http://www.karenstrom.com/ and http://www.stephenstrom.com/.

The complete archive of our newsletters is now available on both of our websites.

To order e-books, visit http://www.karenstrom.com/ebooks.html for Karen's work
or http://www.stephenstrom.com/SESebooks.html for Steve's work.
Or use the following links to visit our artist/author pages in the iTunes store:

for Karen's author page at iTunes

for Steve's author page at iTunes.

To order Steve's books click on the book cover.