It was a cool windy January morning yesterday. A few people were drawing in the greenhouse?the atmosphere was tropical, quiet, and the light was beautifully even and diffused through the glass roof.

Meredith was drawing this wonderful sketch from within the greenhouse. I had an immediate connection because she had noticed something in a view I had tried to photograph many times, trying to capture the feeling of the place. I had to montage several photos together to get the sort of view she was drawing?it wasn’t really photograph-able. It’s the kind of moment one has when artists are drawing together, even though we are usually scattered about the landscape, working on our own.

I am sure that you could have any number of artists sitting together drawing the same scene every day for hundreds of years and you’d never get the same drawing. In fact I don’t think one could ever exhaust the possibilities of drawing, just in one small place. As another sketcher, who is drawing only saguaros, commented, after one has drawn or painted the same subject many times, it eventually starts to contain all possible subjects. A small place becomes the world.

I had Leo with me and my Uncle John and aunt Regina from Chicago visited for a while to enjoy the atmosphere of the Desert Lab and patio. So I was unable to draw that day. Others did it for me.

I’ll include one of my photos with Meredith’s drawing.