The Yampa Is Wild

I've been working on a project for quite a while already, and I'm excited to start letting everyone know about it! I've been designing a mural about the river that flows through my town, Steamboat Springs, Colorado. The Yampa River begins in the Flat Tops mountain range and flows 250 miles to the confluence with the Green River in Dinosaur National Monument. There is a non-profit called The Friends of the Yampa that has asked me to design the mural, and they'd like the whole river- beginning to end, to be shown.

It's not possible to show the entire river, of course, unless you just paint a map and leave out the landscape and wildlife details. But those are the good parts! So what I've done is use a lot of artistic license and compress the river dramatically, but try to keep the feel of the landscape as it changes.

I was going to paint a scale version of the mural, but I was feeling pretty nervous until I decided to switch from paint to the medium I'm most comfortable with, and carve a relief print of the image. The way this print turns out will greatly influence what the final mural looks like. And I have a feeling it's going to look like a gigantic linocut up there on the wall! So I'm feeling out of my depth, but also learning a ton and having a really good time.

The title The Yampa is Wild was chosen because the Yampa is a free-flowing river with only some small dams and diversions. It floods its banks during high water in the spring, and this supports rare cottonwood forests along the banks. There are also native Colorado fish, birds, and other wildlife that depend on the wild and free Yampa River.

In the photo above I've been transferring the drawing from tracing paper onto the block. The drawing looks backwards here so that when it is printed, the image will be facing forward.

I just recently got the image completely drawn onto the linoleum block. Now it's ready to carve! I'll share updates about the mural as I make progress. Hopefully we'll be painting it this spring or early summer. Stay tuned! :)