Greetings!

We have spent much of the past month refining Sand Mirrors, a marriage of Steve's images and the poetry of Zen master Richard Clarke. The images in Sand Mirrors - which might be called metaphorical photographs - were taken on a variety of beaches located along the Northern California and Oregon coasts during 2007- 2011. These beaches are notable for their relative isolation, expanse, stark uplifted and eroded rocks. backdrop of richly foliated coastal cliffs, and variety of sands. Fresh water streams flow through many of these beaches, carrying silt and minerals seaward from the nearby coastal range. It is the merging of ocean sands and finely ground minerals at the interface of fresh water and ocean tides that creates patterns - at once transient, yet somehow timeless as well - that Steve attempts to capture in his images. A gallery of the images from Sand Mirrors is now available on Steve's website.

We intend Sand Mirrors to be available as both a print- and e-book. A fixed-format read-along epub version will be available for the iPad, while an interactive (rich media) PDF version will be available for desk- and lap- tops, and for tablets equipped with a PDF reader. As other epub readers become able to read fixed format epub files, we will make the book available for those readers as well.

Sand Mirrors will be a 'living book', one which provides readers of one of the e-versions with a way to communicate by commenting on a moderated blog, not only with the authors, but with what Richard and Steve hope will be a vibrant Sand Mirrors community. For those wishing a preview of Sand Mirrors, we invite you to visit the website for the book. We hope to announce options for ordering e- and print- versions of the book sometime within the next few months.

In mid February, Karen and Steve will travel to the Atacama desert in Chile, and to the Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia. In addition to this great salt lake, we expect to visit the Tatio geysers, the Valley of the Moon, the Salar de Atacama, and a variety of high mountain lagoons (some apparently filled with flamingos!). We return in early March, we hope with filled souls and disk drives. Watch the next newsletters for a report, and perhaps for some initial visual impressions of 'the driest place on earth."

Four of Steve's images were selected for Soho Photo Gallery's Small Works exhibit. The show will run from Feb. 8 through March 3.

One of Steve's images, Badlands near Terlingua, TX, has been awarded First Prize in the 25th Annual Members' Only Show of the Texas Photographic Society. The show runs from January 9 - March 9, 2012 at the Options Gallery in Odessa, TX.

Steve's image, Death Valley Floor from Dante's View I, has been accepted into the Center for Photographic Arts 2012 Members Show in Carmel, CA. Karen has her image, Weston Beach, Pt. Lobos I, included in the web gallery for that show.

Both Karen and Steve have images accepted in the Arizona Centennial exhibit at the gallery at Tohono Chul Park. The exhibit runs from January 26 through April 22.

One of Karen's images, Home, has been accepted into the Home show at the Center for Fine Art Photography in Ft. Collins, CO. The show runs from March 2 - 31, 2012 with a reception at the gallery on March 2 from 6 - 9 pm.

Steve's one person show of his Earth and Mars portfolio at the Etherton Gallery space at the Temple of Music and Art,has traveled northwestward to the gallery at Biosphere 2 this week. If you missed taking in the show during its tenure at the Etherton, we invite you to visit the Biosphere in Oracle. You can view an overview of the show on the Etherton Gallery website.

One of Steve's images will grace the October page in the 2012 calendar for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. Spend a few minutes to look at their website and perhaps find a way to help SUWA to protect unique wilderness in Utah.

Both Steve and Karen have work accepted into the Beyond the Lens show at the Tubac Center for the Arts. The show will open on March 12 with a reception on March 16.

Karen has been notified that she has work accepted into the Center for Fine Art Photography's Black & White exhibition which will open on April 6.

Steve will have a retrospective show at the Verve Gallery in Santa Fe in October 2012 which will include the Earth/Mars images as well as a wider variety of both his recent and earlier work.

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