That’s right! You can buy my Pacific Crest Trail oil paintings through Adelman Fine Art in San Diego. They currently have three favorites of mine at their gallery, and are also selling more work on their website! Check it out and spread the word! #artyouenjoy
Yesterday, my mom anc dad drove me to Connecticut to catch my flight. I was happy that TSA let me board w my gossamer gear trekking poles. Alladin and Lt Dan surprised me by picking me up in a rental car at the Tucson airport. It was soooo nice to see them, and their presence has helped settle my pre-start nerves. We ran around doing typical hiker trash errands (REI, food stuff) and then went to the Airbnb rental. Now we are on the greyhound bus, going to Lordsburg, NM. Tonight we’ll stay at a hotel there, waking early to take the CDTC shuttle to the southern terminus.
It’s been a 24 hour whirlwind of resupply activity in New England as I hang up my painting smock and prepare for my thru hike on the Continental Divide Trail. I bought 800 dollars worth of resupply food, which will give me over 100 days of food on the trail. The rest I will buy in towns along the way. Trying to resupply for the CDT is much harder than prepping for the Pacific Crest Trail. In fact, it drove me a bit bonkers. I should have listened to all those #cdt2018 hikers from the @halfwayanywhere survey and packed LESS boxes. Or listened to my fellow #cdt2019 hikers who are only prepping the first three boxes. Now I know they are wiser than me. I don’t even know if I addressed the boxes to the right locations. UPS took 20 minutes at the counter trying to over ride the computer’s refusal to acknowledge the address ANNIE VARNOT, CDT Hiker ETA: [FILL IN DATE], c/o The Toaster House, Hwy 60 South at Mile Marker 56, Pie Town, NM, 87827 as a real one. And I have a feeling I’ll have to do a lot of flip flopping too, as the snow levels in the San Juan Mountains, CO, are off the charts. So then these resupply boxes and their etas remain on my friend’s shelf staring back even more confused. “Where and when do I get to go?” say the 5 days of food and wet wipes. Sometimes I stare blankly at myself, too, as if I am also an inanimate object, totally incapable of comprehending my decision to hike 3000 miles. My boxes are my way of trying to make me understand the magnitude of the hike. I finally sent three NM resupply boxes off. I told the USPS worker that these were my first resupply boxes for my hike. All of a sudden I noticed everyone in the USPS was listening and braving to ask questions. And it started to feel more real. And I teared up behind my glasses and drove away. Ok, this is something big. And I can’t wait to touch the sand in the desert so it will feel real. #cdt #continentaldividetrail #hike #optoutside #girlswhohike
Site:Brooklyn Gallery
Artwork by Annie Varnot, “Pacific Crest Trail: Washington Sun Flares and Fire“ oil on panel, 36″x48″ 2018
Landscape: Real and Imagined
Juried by Eileen Jeng Lynch Friday, November 16th – Saturday, December 15th
Site:Brooklyn Gallery is pleased to present Landscape: Real and Imagined juried by Eileen Jeng Lynch.
Eileen Jeng Lynch is the Curator of Visual Arts at Wave Hill New York Public Garden and Culture Center. She curates the Sunroom Project Space for emerging artists and is involved in all aspects of visual arts programming, including exhibitions in Glyndor Gallery, publications, and the annual Winter Workspace program. As an independent curator, Jeng Lynch organized exhibitions that featured emerging and established contemporary artists in galleries and nonprofit institutions, including Sperone Westwater, Lesley Heller Gallery, Dorsky Gallery Curatorial Programs, and Radiator Gallery and worked at the Art Institute of Chicago. She has contributed to Two Coats of Paint and On-Verge.
Artists: Aaliyah Gupta, Aaron Asis, Andrew Arend, Ann Cofta, Ann Marie Auricchio, Annie Varnot, Athena Atocha, Beth Ganz, Bill Burgess, Christine Aaron, Claudine Metrick, Elizabeth Gargas, Françoise Soulé Zinsou Duressé, Hannah U, Jen Noone, Jessie Novik, Jolene Powell, Joomi Chung, Katie Westmoreland, Kayo Albert, Marcelyn Bennett Carpenter, Maria Ossandon Recart, Marianne Barcellona, Mark Granlund, Matthew Arnold, Meridith McNeal, Nathan Taves, Patty Cateura, Rebecca Schultz, Rosalyn Bodycomb, Rosalyn Carlino, Russell Horton, Ruth Jeyaveeran, Scott Bae, Scott Groeniger, Seungkyung Oh, Sophia Lee, Soulaf Abas, Stefan Hagen, Timothy Clifford, Whitney Sage, Yasemin Kackar-Demirel, Zachary Skinner
Gallery Info: Address: 165 7th St Brooklyn, NY Opening Reception: Friday, November 16th 6-9PM Gallery Hours: Wednesday – Saturday 1-6PM
I have four new drinking straw sculptures made out of repurposed drinking straws on view at NYPOP Gallery, Chelsea, NYC. See details below! I hope you can swing by to see the work 🙂
curated by Amanda Tiller
UMass NYPOP Gallery is proud to present de/Constructing Worlds, an exhibition of the work of five UMass Amherst alumni artists based in New York City.
The meaning of the word “world-building” has evolved in the 200 years since it was first introduced. Today, the term most often refers to entire fictional worlds complete with their own histories, languages, ecologies, and even laws of physics. Popular culture is so inundated with these fictional worlds that we have almost come to expect them as an integral component of our literature, film, television, and games.
But in the 19th century, world-building described the imaginative realm of artists and poets. This realm was a personal one, an individual mental state entered into by the artist. Hamilton Wright Mabie wrote, “To this world-building all the great poetic minds are driven; within this invisible empire alone can they reconcile the life that surrounds them with the life that floats like a dream before them.”
Hi hikers! So I finally updated my gear list from my PCT through hike! There are still changes that I would https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YqtKBYXxzDvVKZlA6JmpZJhgz6OS3fJe4NbLoz1mF08make, but overall, this worked for me!
Dear friends and followers,
I have so much blogging to do, and reflecting.
I finished Sept 30th, 2017
I’m sad being thrown back into another extreme exisitence of work in New York City. I had some profound awakenings coming back into civilization, and I hope to share them with you soon.
Until then, I am trying to remind myself that the trail provides. I wish the people stuck in the rat race understood that they too, will be ok.
9/17
At 5280 in elevation, I succumb to the elements and pitch my tent under some trees at Gravel Lake. I am 10 miles north of Snoqualmie, shivering in the cold rain. My jacket is soaked and useless and it is unwise to continue forward.
9/18
Damn. The rain continues throughout the night and now it is snowing. It is 8:30 am and despite my restless desires to hike, I know I must wait this storm out. I don’t have cell reception, so I can’t check the weather forecast.
In the desert, despite a forecasted rain storm, I hiked out of Warner Springs. It rained and snowed for two days on the trail. Along that stretch, I was lucky enough to get to a trail angel’s home and warm up next to a fire and dry my clothes. However, here in Washington, my next resupply is 65 miles away, and I can’t risk getting all of my clothes wet, especially with two overnights involved.
I regret having left Summit Inn yesterday. I regret having not anticipated this storm and leaving Snoqualmie earlier. Instead I am tent bound and the snow is falling faster and faster as time ticks on.
I guess I should try to focus on the positives: I have water and food and my base layers are dry. I am 10 miles from Snoqualmie so if things get worse, I can hike back. I can rest until the snow storm stops.
I anticipate that the next two weeks on the trail will be cold. My rain jacket was useless yesterday after one hour in the storm. I need better rain/snow gear to finish the trail in these conditions. I am nervous.
Later in the day: 2:00 pm
The sun peaks through the clouds. I pack up everything, and then it starts snowing again. I unpack. I wait. I debate whether to go back, stay, or go forward. I finally decide to go forward, wearing all of my layers.
It snows and rains non-stop. I hike a total of 16 miles, passing Taylor and the Swiss. “You guys see Sunshine,” I ask. It is dark now and I am freezing when I stop for a second. “She went to camp .7 miles ahead.” I hike .7 miles ahead and wimper near the next group of tents “Sunshine?”
It is dark and wet and cold and I don’t want to bother anyone in their tents so I continue on and pitch my tent under a wide bough and sleep.
9/19
Everything is wet. Sleeping bag, base layers, shoes, socks. I hit the trail and am immediately thankful for the footprints left before me. I know these prints: Sunshine, E Wolf, and Stake. They give me motivation and hope that I will make it through this leg.
I approach a camp in the dark. Again it snowed and rained all day. There aren’t any spots left so I pitch my tent on top of wooden debris, on a slope, in the rain. Throughout the night I shiver. Drips of rain repeatedly come through the double walled tent and land over and over again onto my head. I fall into a slight sleep for an hour but I wake to a temperature drop and sleet. I piss in the vestibule.
When a child, I would go to the beach in Rhode Island often with my grandparents. I hated the texture of my wet feet on the sand so much so that I would stay in the water until my grandfather would come down, lift me up, and carry me back to the beach blanket, where he would dry my feet.
Like wet feet on sand, I resist stuffing my backpack with all my wet gear and going back out there. My base layer shirt, even after wringing it out, weighs 5 pounds. There is no grandpa out here to pull me out of this.
Finally, after staring at the 12″ puddle growing in the footbed of my tent, I shove all my wet gear into the bag and head out.
Taylor and the Swiss catch up to me. While hiking with Patric, I find out that Taylor’s tent collapsed in the middle of the night, and so he woke Patric at 1;00 am shivering with his drenched sleeping bag in tow, moving into Patric’s one person tent with Patric.
I hike 12 slow, unmotivated miles, trying to dodge the puddles and slush, but it is no use, and I finally give up on avoiding the mess and dash through it as fast as possible to make it to Stevens Pass before dark. When I get there, I am in a desperate state, too wet and cold to hitchhike. A small Asian woman, Nemo, then floats out of an RV. She is also a thru hiker. I follow her to the Mountaineers Lodge, a hostel at Stevens Pass. I unbirth my wet burdens and take a shower. Other hikers are here, and they bring me hot cocoa and moans of empathy. This last leg was, as Reggie Watts would puts it, a “fuck shit stack.”
9/20-22 trench foot, swollen feet, new $70 leggings that I hate but were the only ones at the lodge that fit me, the amazing Mountaineers Lodge Hostel at Stevens Pass, warm old and new friends, fires, amazing food, and a window of good weather to come. As Boathouse likes to say, “send it!” Its time to take on the last 9 days and finish the hike. There is commrodarie and anxiousness amongst us. Through our intense shared experiences, I have become a part of a larger family and it is bitter sweet to have to say good by to them soon. The trail will end but I this experience will stay with me.
9/13/17
Bugle calls from a bull elk at 10:30 pm permeate the otherwise silent ridge, dotted with lights from miles away: Seattle. I’m on mile 23.4 of the Wonderland Trail, on a detour I take to bypass the Norse fire closure on the PCT. After 16.5 hours, 34.5 miles and 8500 feet or more in elevation gain, I drop my tent on wet ground. My legs tingle with sore pain permeating all the way to my bones.
I pitch my tent in the dark, atop of elk droppings and blueberries, eating a few of the berries in front of my tent as I take off my filthy shoes. I can see Seattle and my heart sinks. The last time I saw my ex was during this time last year. I feel sad and cold, my bugle call a grotesquely silent mourning from within.
Sunshine casually reminded me today that in Rainer, I will make new memories. I am making them, but I can’t seem to shed the old ones. I beg the moon to erase the revolving narrative. I take a step and look back up. The moon has disappeared behind a tree.
Like the moon, our stories can change within a single step. The bugle calls again, but this time, the shrill desperate noise is quieter – less intense – a sweet piccolo in the night.
Like the elk, I crave companionship. But instead of a warm body, I put on all my layers, and wrap myself into my sleeping bag – my cocoon. The elk calls and so does sleep.
9/11 September is filled with crisp air, dying, hats, different light, less light, frost, burnt sienna and yellow ochre. Like winged creatures to a headlamp, nostalgic memories battle for head space. On the PCT, Washington’s lush and grand landscape serenades me, beckoning me to attach myself to it like its ubiquitous moss.
Sunshine and Mars pick me up in Packwood, and I go along in the car with them to get a permit for the Wonderland Trail and to map out our fire reroute. That night, I stay with Mars and Jim in their amazing house in Eationville, along with Sunshine, E Wolf, and Stake.
9/12 25 miles, through Packwood, and then towards Rainer. After breakfast at Jim and Mars place, we load up into Jim’s truck and he drops us off at White Pass. I road hike w Sunshine, e wolf, stake, and one day. Lots of Traffic and trucks. The noise gets to me. Hot. Sunburn. Exposed. Ran 6 miles. Pizza in packwood w peeps. Two Kombucha and orange juice. While on a bridge, we witness a family of elk swimming in the river.
We decide to camp on the side of the road, 10 miles from Rainer Park, before dark, to avoid collisions with cars. Sunshine insists on a cuddle puddle (One Day joins), aka cowboy camping in close proximity.
9/13 34.5 miles (10 road walk, 24 Wonderland Trail)
9/14 26.8 miles. Catch up w One Day and Stake. Sleep on side of road near Carbonaro.
