Finding Connection
A Festival, A Studio, and A Summer Quest
“Together We Are…”
Festivals like Mountainfilm in Telluride, Colorado, are strange in the best ways. They feel like a filmmaker’s equivalent of a savanna watering hole—where for a brief, magical time, you see everything all at once in the exact same place.
You run into adventurers, writers, artists, and storytellers. You watch a film about Nepal, followed by a conservation story about manta rays, right next to our own tale of reconnecting with the places my grandmother Lu sketched. Over the course of five days, the festival cultivates these beautiful, serendipitous moments.
As quickly as we all gather, in a blink, we return to our corners of the world. However, this year felt different. It felt less like a fleeting moment and more like the start of something lasting. Maybe that is because I challenged myself to sketch the people who make up the Mountainfilm community. That process was wild, uncomfortable, and amazing! Yet, something extra special happened this year, beyond designing the festival poster, screening our film, and being more involved than ever before. Some of you accepted our invitation to gather with us—and it was incredible.
Myself, Sherrie, Neny, and Producer Jenn under the iconic Mountainfilm banner on Main Street, Telluride, Colorado, 2026.
The weight of this struck me during a quiet break between screenings and panels. Two of our community members, Sherri and Neny, joined Jennifer and me at our Airbnb. We began passing around our sketchbooks, touring each other’s palettes, and finding so much joy in the simple act of sharing.
That moment changed how I view events like Mountainfilm. Together, we are connecting on common ground. We arrive as strangers, but we leave as life-long friends.
Of course, the festival was packed with other milestones, too! Here is a quick look at what we celebrated together:
🎨 The Poster & Gallery (see above gallery): Our festival poster was beautifully received and the creative team (Natalie you went above and beyond!) found many creative ways to use the artwork. It was everywhere! Our gallery exhibition at the Ah Haa School for the Arts featured an open space for the community to sit and add their own sketches to the walls. It was such a hit that we are already planning to do it again in 2027.
📡 The Livestreams: It worked! Phew! Thank you to everyone who tuned in from afar.You can watch the Mountainfilm Festival daily livestream replays here! You can also watch a shorter video 📹 of my quest to paint my largest panoramic watercolor from above Telluride here!
🎬 The Film: Our documentary, My Grandmother’s Sketchbook | Under Mont Blanc, was received with humble praise. This film is currently playing in select festivals and on tour with Banff Centre Mountain Film Festival World Tour.
To our old friends and our brand-new Mountainfilm family: thank you. 🤗 We’ll see you in Telluride in 2027!
The pen sketch to the left is from my grandmother Lu’s sketchbook archive of a cottage near her studio. On the right I tried to find it and sketch it for myself and A LOT changed in 50 years!
Inside my grandmother’s art studio: Cape Cod 2026
From Colorado, I reunited with my family in Portland, Oregon, before flying clear across the country to visit our East Coast family in Cape Cod. It is one of my favorite places on the planet, and it also happens to be where my grandmother Lu’s art studio is located. We are so fortunate to still have access to this space, and I am incredibly grateful to my father and his family for preserving this creative legacy.
If you are new to the Trailbound community, Looking for Lu and My Grandmother’s Sketchbooks are ongoing personal projects. My grandparents were world travelers, and Lu sketched every single place they lived and visited. She left behind over 100 sketchbooks and countless works of art, including large paintings and award-winning quilts. Each page, canvas, and quilt feels like a time machine transporting us back to far-off places.
Every time I visit her studio or flip through her sketchbooks, I feel a profound connection to her. From her small studies of backyard animals to her grand landscapes of distant lands, it’s a joy to "find" her in every pen line and brush stroke.
If you want to dive deeper into her story and see how she continues to influence my path as an artist, activist, and storyteller, you can check out these short films:
P.S. For those asking, our Looking for Lu monthly snail mail is currently on hold, but it is definitely not forgotten! Stay tuned.
This video brings my personal experience of finding and sketching what changed from 1975 to 2026!
Painting a Cape Cod Beach
If you haven’t picked up on this yet, next to my home state of Alaska, Cape Cod holds a very special place in my heart. It is by far one of my favorite places to spend time, sketch, and explore. The landscape and habitats are vastly different from Alaska or where I grew up in Upstate New York. It has warm salty air, wide expansive beaches, sand dunes, and some of the most adorable shorebirds!
Traveling cross-country is a big endeavor as a family of four, but it’s worth the long flights and jet lag for my sons to have these shared childhood experiences. This inspires me not only to track down some of my grandmother’s favorite places to sketch and paint, but to carve out some of my own, too—even when it means actually carving a little temporary studio out of the sand to create an epic panoramic watercolor at one of my favorite beaches.
With only a day left of our visit, the family sent me out on a solo mission, but I wasn't truly solo. Thanks to the power of technology, I was able to livestream and share both the place and the painting with this supportive community. Being introduced to livestreaming as a way to share my story has changed my life—thank you for being up for this new journey! Even as I sometimes fumble my way through the wires, mics, cameras, and connections, the effort is worth it. It can seem like a lot in the moment, but when I revisit the conversations with you—whether you are sitting at home in Switzerland, Hawaii, or New Zealand—WOW! How cool is that? I know my grandmother Lu would have thought it was pretty neat.
Livestreams can be long—as long as some of my recent panoramic landscapes—BUT, here’s a shorter recap of my day on the beach: building a little sandy studio and taking some time for myself, my art, and one of my favorite places on Earth.
This was a fun day on one of my favorite beaches my late grandmother also sketched. If you enjoy the video (click button below) it would mean so much if you dropped a comment on the YouTube video! It helps make it possible to share more watercolor demos like this one with the community. ✨
