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In Craters’ Shadows

Posted on by Laura Wolstenholme / Leave a comment

I grew up in a landscape so mild my mother declared it Camelot. We lived between green, softly sloped hills, and a few miles away stirred a gentle blue bay. So I arrived unprepared for southern Idaho’s dramatic, sometimes strange geography.

When we first arrived, everywhere I looked, my eyes affirmed, “This is not California.” Sure, the softly molded, brown foothills were beautiful, but the Snake River! It has done some magnificent and bizarre work. Our first exploration of Idaho was to Malad Gorge, a bottomless canyon carved out by a Snake tributary. We didn’t stay long. Just paces from the gorge’s edge, my small family peered over and cowered at the sheer, 250-foot drop to the river’s bed etched below. We could almost feel the dark floods that had thundered westward, scouring out the gorge. As fast as we could, we hurried back to the car.

As we traveled around, I tried to make sense of the landscape. Tossed boulders spoke of an ancient flood. In some areas, lava rocked peeked through sagebrush and desert. We learned that numerous old volcanoes once shredded the Snake River Plain with explosions and hot basalt lava flows. One hot August afternoon, returning from Hagerman and full of curiosity, we stopped at the famous Craters of the Moon National Monument, Idaho’s ground zero of volcanic activity. Continue reading →

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Tarzan Loves Idaho

Posted on by Albert Frank Asker / 1 Comment

Years ago I wrote an article for myself, because it was one of those things that you just have to get out of your system. It felt important, like it had to be communicated to others, but I didn’t have anywhere to publish it. The article I wrote for myself was about the history of comic books in Idaho. In it, I wrote about the cowboy comic book called Idaho that was published by Dell Comics of New York City in the 1960s. I wrote about one-time Boisean Dave Stevens and his famous comic book character The Rocketeer. I wrote about native Idahoan Dennis Eichhorn and his Eisner Award-nominated autobiographical comic book series Real Stuff. I wrote about Boisean Andy Garcia’s Oblivion City comic book series. I wrote about Boise’s first comic book publisher, Bishop Press. At the end, I expressed a deep hope that all these people could get together and produce an anthology featuring the comic book creators of Idaho. It was a dream of mine to publish that article and organize that anthology. But no one ever read it.

Why was I so interested? I just loved comic books. One of my earliest memories is of sitting around the dining room table in Boise with my parents, cutting out a bunch of order forms from a stack of my old Captain America comic books. My parents ordered a subscription for me to Captain America, posters, and toys related to the star-spangled Avenger. My younger brothers and sister dabbled in comic books for a time, but I was hooked for life.

I’ll never forget the first time my parents took me to a comic book store at its old location on Fairview Avenue in Boise. The same store is still on Fairview, but it used to be farther down the street, next to where a pizza joint is located that eventually absorbed the comic book shop’s old storefront. I had never seen so many comic books in my life. The rich bouquet of newsprint filled the shop with the smell of yesteryear­—the Golden Age when comics were king.

There were so many old comics. There was Superman #123, in which Supergirl made her first appearance. There was Detective Comics #38, which had the first appearance of Robin. There was The Incredible Hulk #181, the first appearance of Wolverine. A framed original drawing of The Rocketeer by Dave Stevens hung on a wall. I had no idea such a place existed. This was my new mecca, Disneyland, and heaven all rolled into one. Continue reading →

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Art Calls

Posted on by Alex Vega / Leave a comment

As soon as we saw the huge, multi-level warehouse in downtown Boise, we loved it. Built in 1961, it had a long history. Our discussions with the owners of the building were professional, the city was easy to work with, and we leased the building. We brought it up to code, and turned it into a twelve- thousand-square-foot studio.

Why did we need so much space? It all started with art. At an early age, I showed promise as a creative type. Drawing came naturally to me. My brothers and I are all artistic, and our mother encouraged us in this, as in all our endeavors. She let us paint on our walls in our rooms as children—she wanted to see color! In junior high and high school, I took piano lessons and every art class available. I learned painting, sculpture, studio art, and advanced drawing. Nampa High School has an amazing art program and a lot of talented students. But even though my future in art seemed promising, certain people repeatedly told me there is no money in art. They said going into the industry was a bad idea, and artists were outdated. I took this to heart, went to North Idaho College, and studied finance. It was quite a leap, but I followed the money.

In college, as I looked at my future syllabus one day, I realized I had made a mistake. I had no interest in finance. I kept at it anyway, but even after I started working in the industry, my interests were elsewhere. I knew that the career I had chosen was not a good fit for me. I wasn’t aggressive enough, and I was forever doodling on the sides of my reports, drawing portraits of clients and fellow workers. I created comic books, and drew temporary tattoos on myself under the sleeves of my sleek business suit. Always daydreaming, I couldn’t wait to get home and finish whatever painting I was working on. My wife Jamie and I both paint, and I think her work is amazing, surreal, beautiful. When we bought our home in 2002, we were both twenty-two. It was a delight to create our own space, in which we could live and paint and raise a family. Art filled our walls, including the art of our sons. Every day when I went to work, I wanted to be home. The art was calling me.
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Rosalie Sorrels

Posted on by Kitty Delorey Fleischman / Comments Off on Rosalie Sorrels

Mellifluous. The word could have been coined especially to describe Rosalie Sorrels’ voice. Whether singing, or storytelling, the word fits. For days I’ve sought other, simpler words, but the search for vocabulary always dissolves to images. For Rosalie, speaking and singing are one. It’s how she communicates.

In her voice is the sound of Grimes Creek dancing over rocks and nudging flecks of gold along the course of its laughing waters. Then sometimes you’ll hear the gravel that lines the creek bed. You hear the trilling songs of birds that sail bright skies in her mountain sanctuary, and the shusshing sway of pine branches fluffed by breezes that sing to the cabin her father built by hand early in the last century. Sometimes you’ll catch a momentary glimpse of the sharp edges of rocks lining the canyon walls.

She came by it naturally as part of a well-read family of people who also loved to sing. As she talks, she switches from conversation to poetry to song in a smooth flow. In 1999 Idaho’s songbird also was chosen for a Circle of Excellence award from the National Storytelling Network.

For more than a half-century, Rosalie Sorrels has taken the sounds and stories of Idaho across the continent and beyond the seas. Jim Page, a folksinger from Whidby Island, Washington, once described Rosalie as “the most real person in folk music that I’ve ever met.” Now past her seventieth birthday, her outlook on life is both broader and narrower than it was when she was a younger woman. She has traveled extensively and has seen the world, yet the greatest treasures of her life are her family and her little handmade Grimes Creek cabin.

Her mother named the cabin Guerencia, which means “the place that holds your heart.” It’s a snug cabin with posters of her heroes on the ceiling so she can look up at them when she is in bed. The cabin’s walls are lined with books stacked layers deep on shelves, all of them read and all remembered.

As a youngster, Rosalie’s father gave her a dollar for each “chunk” of poetry she learned. She earned three dollars for learning Sir Walter Scott’s “Lady of the Lake.” When other youngsters were learning nursery rhymes, Rosalie learned to quote Shakespeare. Continue reading →

Folksinger on Canvas

Posted on by Betty Derig / Leave a comment

When I wrote a letter to the Teaters many years ago, asking to visit and to interview Archie, his wife Patricia’s two-word answer, “Please come,” made me feel I would be warmly received.

In their driveway, I stepped out of my car to the sight of a small but distinctive sandstone house cantilevering over the Snake River Canyon near Bliss, above the tumbling river. The house was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, with whom the Teaters worked closely, making several trips to his Arizona studio, Talieson West, to discuss the site and the furniture that the famous architect also would design. The canyon sloped away from their front porch, offering a view that would tempt any painter. Wild flowers bloomed seasonally, along with sagebrush, wild cherry, and sumac. “The house is so comfortable and suits us so well, we never like to leave it,” Archie told me. Continue reading →

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Lost Art Found

Posted on by Pat McCoy Rohleder / Leave a comment

An Idaho Bobbin Lacemaker Helps to Revive an Old Craft By Pat McCoy Rohleder This content is available for purchase. Please select from available options. Purchase Only

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Fiddlin’ Red

Posted on by Desiré Aguirre / Comments Off on Fiddlin’ Red

He Breathes Life Into Instruments And Their Players Story and Photos by Desire’ Aguirre This content is available for purchase. Please select from available options. Purchase Only

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Enlarging Idaho

Posted on by Loyd Bakewell / Leave a comment

How an At-Risk Young Man Found Freedom in Creativity By Loyd Bakewell Colby Akers came to live with us in Twin Falls after he had been in the system for a while. His dad died in a car
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