Greetings!

The monsoon season has arrived! Cumulus clouds begin to gather around the mountains surrounding Sonoita by mid-morning, and by mid-afternoon, the skies darken and on most days, we are blessed by rain (and, it must be confessed, cursed by power outages and humidity reminiscent of states east of the 100th meridian). The first green shoots of grass are beginning to emerge, presaging the greening of our rolling hills and the temporary feeling of living in Ireland rather than the desert southwest.

We have welcomed the self-imposed respite from traveling: it serves to give both of us the time to reflect on the images we've captured in South America and the Pacific Northwest, as well as the direction of our lives: both professional and personal. A few examples of the Chilean and Bolivian Altiplano landscape are included: stark, yes; primitive, certainly -- a place that both inspires and humbles.

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.

Two of Steve's images are included in the Verve Gallery of Photography's 10th Anniversary Exhibition - Figures Studies. The show runs from June 28 through August 31 in Santa Fe.

Two of Karen's mathematical mosaic images from her series, The Perfect in Nature, will appear in the exhibit, Piece by Piece: An Exhibition of Mosaic Artwork, at Tohono Chul Gallery. The exhibit dates are June 28 - October 20, 2013. The reception will be joined with the Dia de los Muertos exhibit on Friday, September 13th from 5:30 to 7:30 pm.

Steve also has work included in the current show at the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. This show, Same Difference, features artworks from the Airport's Collection. The works are grouped based on their visual relationships, each group containing both 2 and 3 dimensional works. The exhibit can be found in Terminal 3, level 1.

Steve's image of the Burnham mudhills, near the Bisti Badlands in northern New Mexico, is included in the Image New Mexico exhibit at the Matrix Fine Art gallery in Albuquerque, June 7 - July 13. The opening reception is on Friday, June 7, 5 - 8:00 PM.

Two of Steve's images from our trip to the Tatio Geyser Basin in the Atacama Desert last year were accepted into the All Art Arizona show at Art Intersection in Gilbert. Another of Karen's Islamic Tile images has been accepted into this show. The opening reception for the show was on June 1. The show will run through July 27 and includes not just photography, but painting, drawing, fibers, mixed media, and sculpture.

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 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.