Greetings!

First and foremost: our wishes for a happy, healthy, rewarding-to-the-soul New Year from wintry Sonoita. Vivid blue skies, and the filtered light of the winter sun reveal the grasslands in all their golden splendor.

December witnessed the opening of Landings at ArtsEye Gallery in Tucson. The gallery was filled with people throughout the evening. Feedback was stimulating and thought-provoking, as well as deeply satisfying. The remainder of the month was relatively quiet, which allowed each of us to continue to work on several bodies of work. Steve has assembled a complement to Sand Mirrors: Between the Tidelines, a portfolio that records the myriad complex patterns formed by colonies of marine animals in the intertidal zone. This quote from Rachel Carson's The Edge of the Sea perhaps best captures what inspired Steve as he photographed along the northern California and Oregon coasts.

"When we go down to the low-tide line, we enter a world that is as old as the Earth itself - the primeval meeting place of the elements of earth and water, a place of compromise and conflict and eternal change. For us as living creatures it has special meaning as an area in or near which some entity that could be distinguished as life first drifted in shallow waters - reproducing, evolving, yielding that endless varied stream of living things that has surged through time and space to occupy the Earth."

Karen has begun to create 'weavings' from photographs of trees and buildings taken during our recent trip to Guatemala and Belize; watch this space for updates! She has also published an interactive e-book, Sticks and Stones, an Alphabet Book for the 21^st Century, which in its own subtly subversive ways, serves both as social commentary and an introduction to ASCII code (more below!).

Landings which features Steve's images along with those of Stu Jenks continues through February 14th at ArtsEye Gallery in Tucson. The exhibit includes new images from the portfolio "Illusions of Intimacy," as well as 8 three-dimensional pieces in Japanese/Chinese screen format.

The retrospective of Steve's photographic career continues at the Verve Gallery in Santa Fe through January 19. A nice review of the show has been published in Visual Art Source. A video of Steve discussing his photography is now available on the gallery website. A video of the gallery talk Steve presented at the opening can be accessed on the same page.

A overview of the retrospective exhibition has been added to his website. You can follow the arc of his photographic vision and view a sample of the images shown in the show and in the catalog. A catalog for the retrospective is available. The 162 page, 8 x 8" catalog includes images spanning Steve's photographic career, and is graced by an introduction written by Rebecca A. Senf, Norton Family Curator at the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson and the Phoenix Art Museum. A print copy and/or digital (PDF) version of the catalog can be ordered here.

We will be traveling to Carmel for the opening of the 2013 Juried Exhibition at the Center for Photographic Art on January 12. Steve has two images from his Earth and Mars series include in the exhibit and one of Karen's images from her Islamic Tiles series is included in the web gallery.

Sand Mirrors, the new book by Steve with poet Richard B. Clarke, was featured in the Lenscratch blog written by photographer Aline Smithson. While the PHOTOBOOK 2012 exhibit at the Davis Orton Gallery has ended, Sand Mirrors will remain listed in their online Photobook Catalog. Sand Mirrors will remain listed in their online Photobook Catalog. 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.

Karen's new electronic book, Sticks and Stones, an alphabet book for the 21st century, has just been published by Polytropos Press. At the present time, due to the inclusion of scripting for the animation, sound and the image content, the book is available only for the iBook reader on the iPad and for the Chrome browser with the Readium extension installed. You can examine a subset of the book's content and watch a video depicting its interactive content on the book's website. You may purchase and download the book directly or purchase it from the iTunes bookstore. There is now a Facebook page for the book. If you are on Facebook, we would appreciate your "likes." The Facebook page and the website each contain a video where you may watch the book being "read." If you would like to download a sample of the book to play with it, please do.

Five of Steve's images are included in the Desert Grasslands exhibit at the Tucson Museum of Art, January 26 - July 7, 2013. The Member's reception is on January 25, 6 - 7 pm. A talk and slide show on grasslands will be given by Gregory McNamee and Steve at the museum on January 31 from 6 - 8 pm.

For a Golden Oldie, Harper's Magazine is placing their archival content online, available to subscribers. In March 1990 they published an image on their Readings page from the book, Secrets from the Center of the World, on which Steve collaborated with Joy Harjo. If you are a subscriber, you may download a PDF copy of that page.

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 Steve's books click on the book cover.