As youngsters growing up in little Denmark our early knowledge about the United States was primarily achieved through the movies. These movies left of course a multitude of impressions and stereotypes and amongst them were the notion of “going West” was the way to fame – the ultimate destination being Hollywood. We did not have to go all the way to California to find fame.

We found it just on the other side of the Rockies – in Grand Junction. More precisely on page 2C in the 10^th of June Sunday issue of The Daily Sentinel. Yes, we know it was not in sections A or B, but these sections probably were devoted to national and foreign issues, in which we do not mingle. On Sundays C is the Westlife section of The Daily Sentinel and it features articles by associated columnists – and this is good enough for us. We find it interesting, by the way, that a newspaper has a column on the art of quilting. 

Being the newspaper’s Art of Quilting columnist Sherida Warner covers aspects related to what Inge and I do artistically. She likes to feature quilt artists in her column and having yet again seen one of our works exhibited this spring at the quilt show in Paducah, Kentucky, the idea was born to take a closer look at the people behind them – and that lead to the idea of featuring us in her Art of Quilting column. 

Sherida Warner managed to get half of the page reserved for her article “Eye for nature comes naturally” – and it started above the fold – with space enough to feature two of our works in full colour – providing kind of a frame for a portrait of the two of us. 

We have on several occasions been interviewed for quilt and art related magazines, live and through written dialogues, so it was interesting for us this time to see how a written dialogue morphed into a newspaper article, where it had to match the journalistic style of a newspaper. 

You can read the article (without photographs) on The Daily Sentinel’s website but it is only when having the newspaper in the hands that one can fully appreciate how the lay-out of this text with the associated photographs works in the context of a life style section of a newspaper

We have visited the Rockies before, on the Denver side once and just north of Santa Fe on another occasion. We have never been rafting down the Colorado River or fishing in the Gunnison River, so you will bear over with us when we say that before Sherida Warner contacted us we were not aware of the existence of Grand Junction. 

When holding the newspaper copy in our hands the other day we could not help thinking about the fact that on Sunday the 10^th of June 2007 readers of a newspaper called The Daily Sentinel in a town with a population of 48.000 situated at the foot of the Western Rockies near the border to Utah had come across an article featuring us and our works.

A sympathetic thought – also the thought that Grand Junction has become a must visit for us next time our ways lead us to that part of the world. 

Although we set the regular warning intervals ourselves their appearance on the computer screen always come as a surprise. Maybe the surprise is not so much related to the fact that they pop up unexpectedly in the middle of the tedious start-up routine – as it is related to the fact that another month has swept by.Time always runs faster than I do… 

We colour correct our screens regularly to have the best possible starting point for image processing and we process our digital photographs as objectively as we can. The reminder we received the other day about the need for calibrating our screens came just after we had submitted proposals for an international exhibition, for which digital images were required – plus a colour print. The colour print requirement is an issue I will not deal with today, but just recall that the reminder triggered us to reflect on the variables that could impact the colour correctness of the image chain – from the camera to the projector used for jurying. 

In the pre-digital era colour rendition varied from one manufacturer to another (e.g Fuji films typically emphasized greens and provided overall cooler images of the object, and Kodak films typically emphasized the warmer hues). Photo labs processing the films could influence the final results of slides or prints dependent upon how “muddy” or “clean” their processes were. 

Today digital cameras allow the user to influence the images through selection of programmes and parameters. For formal photography we use Inge’s high end SLR cameras in RAW-mode, but if I used my compact camera I could influence the colour rendition through various white balance or colour options (e.g. vivid overall, vivid green, vivid blue, vivid red).  

The subsequent image processing can of course also influence significantly the colour rendition – even if we presume this done objectively and the ingoing image being photographed neutrally.How? Why is that so, if we do everything to avoid subjectivity in the process? Well, it can happen unintentionally if the computer screen used for the processing of the image is not calibrated correctly. 

For those of you, who have digital images stored on a website, try checking out how a particular image is rendered on several different screens. When seeing your friends and relatives next time, check it out on their computers as well. You will be surprised. 

The same holds true for digital projectors. How many of these have been colour corrected prior to jurying? We may be wrong in predicting an answer here, but we believe very few, if any. Yes, they vary as screens do! 

So, colour correctness is an issue concerning the full path of a photograph – all the way from photographers to juries – which we collectively have to work on improving. So, I will go calibrating our screens now – contributing to that from our end.

Our neighbours living in the apartment diagonally above us are very much into tennis and to no surprise they enjoyed themselves the other afternoon on the sidelines of the courts at Roland Garros in Paris watching the stars of the tennis world competing in the French Open. 

That same afternoon their TV-set decided to leave this world and to do so in a flaming spectacle. Inge noticed a strange noise from the floor above but did of course not connect it with the spreading debris of an imploding cathode ray tube. Other neighbours playing pétanque in the park were, however not in doubt when they noticed black smoke rise from the house – some ran to check it out, others reached for their mobile phones. 

Inge did not know this, but the fire brigade being based less than 5 minutes away meant that another type of noise attracted her attention very soon after she heard the implosion above. Four fire engines arrived discretely without hooting and a platoon of firemen and firewomen went into action with smoke helmets, hoses and ladders under the direction of the chief fire officer – another neighbour living in a house adjacent to ours in the park. 

While our tennis-loving neighbours watched the French Open quarter finals and I was on my way home Inge witnessed how the fire professionally and effectively got under control and damage limited to the interior of the apartment above.  

It was of course a shocking experience for her and the other neighbours who followed the events closely. We talked a lot about it that afternoon with them and later in the evening amongst the two of us. Having filled me in on the last details Inge, who had worked on images for our website started to reflect on how we would have reacted web-wise if our apartment had been devastated by fire and our quilts suffered the same fate as that of our neighbours’ wardrobes.

Would we have removed the destroyed works from our quilt-show on the website? No, we would not. We did not see a reason for doing so, since we had created them. But how should we signal to visitors of the website that they were no longer available for exhibitions?Should we label them “Burned!”, or “In the Collection of Eternity” – or something else? A bizarre topic to philosophize over and perhaps difficult to find a solution for – but fortunately it is not a burning issue for us to resolve right now.

When we drove north out of town yesterday to bio-shop it was overcast in this indefinite way where the landscape is bathed in a light so diffuse that no distinct shadows are cast and no bright colour spots marking transparent petals on a poppy. 

This indefinite light scenario triggered the yearly recurring reflection on the appearance of the foliage that seems to stay the same during the summer months – with no intention of changing to anything interesting before the fall sets in. I find it dull and uninspiring – this mid-tone range of greyish-bluish greens. Sometimes my mind adds the word lifeless to these attributes, which is kind of a contradiction because foliage is one of the chief indicators of life – and I ought to treat the summer foliage with greater respect than I actually do.

Yesterday, I did something about this disrespect of mine. I coined a name for the summer period colour(s) of the forest foliage as I subjectively experience it while driving by: Steady-State Green!  Those of you with an interest in fine art are welcome to add Steady-State Green to the long list of traditional and brand-names for green (e.g Chrome Green Deep Hue, Permanent Green Deep, Winsor Green, Prussian Green, Olive Green, Hooker’s Green…).

A compensating thought is that the cherries are lovely these days – both in colour and taste.