Marble in the Rain

Allan and Julie came up to visit this weekend.  Allan helped me with work on Elixir of Love for the  San Francisco Opera. He's another USA 829 Scenic who has retired to Colorado.

Allan wanted to see Maroon Bells.

Julie wanted to see Marble.

It rained (a lot) so we went to Marble. As you might suspect from the name the town of Marble is next to a marble mine. To be specific, the Yule Marble Mine. Marble from the Yule mine can be found in buildings throughout the United States and most notably in Washington DC in the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. One of the best books to learn more is "Marble Colorado, City of Stone" now out of print.

The drive up was a bit wet and a "tour" of Marble is a pretty quick thing but we stopped in The Marble Gallery and picked up a few stone chips for Julie's collection. They steered us down the hill to the Marble Symposium. This village of marble carvers has been going on for 25 years now.

Vicki and Rex Branson were hosting. As we slid down the muddy jeep trail to the marble yard Rex met us with the question "Are you here to carve?" Well, no we were just here to watch...

As impressive as the Branson's work is for really stunning work in marble I have to defer to Elizabeth Turk* who also uses a lot of Yule Marble. *the link shows a video Greg Poschman made when she got the MacArthur Grant.

Her process is fascinating as this TEDx link shows....

It was a wet weekend for Allan and Julie. We need more rain, they can come back any time.