yesterday afternoon into the evening was the TEDx Youth@Vail event, which took place at battle mountain high school auditorium in edwards, colorado. our friend kat produced it with her team. almost all the speakers were high school students, whose presentations were compelling, moving and very informative. kat has produced many TEDX events, but this was the first youth event.
i shot quite a bit of video. i interviewed all the speakers, as well as shooting footage of the event which i plan on turning into a 5-10 minute piece kat can use for publicity and to inspire future students to submit their requests to participate. here are the 3 hosts of yesterday's event, two of whom we worked closely with when they were still middle school students in edwards.
i'll be back in my studio once we're back on wednesday, where i plan on continuing work on the revised gaze 35, as well as going out to the creek to make more plein air paintings like the recent one you see on the lower left. one thing i was reminded of by one of the talks is the importance of making the most of each moment. sounds like a platitude perhaps, but from the perspective of a high school student who was paralyzed from the chest down after a skiing accident last year, it was far from that. that, plus my recent adventures with cataract/glaucoma surgery, have been a wake up call.
two days ago my vision seemed to get a bit worse, after improving steadily for 2 months. we went to a local doc, who did an exam and gave us the alarming news that i might be on the verge of a retinal detachment. he suggested drivng to denver asap to the emergency room at anschutz and being seen by a retinal specialist.
we drove through a snowstorm, checked in to the er, and waited. and waited. finally the on call ophthalmologist showed up, once again dilated my pupils and concluded that all was good, and that the swelling behind my retina, which we knew about, had actually gone down considerably. she did strongly recommend seeing a retinal specialist on tuesday, just to be sure. so once again, we'll leave edwards on tuesday & drive through a new snow storm, and make sure all is well. scary stuff for an artist!
