Dave Hall

I was introduced to the Centennial Valley in the mid-1990s, drawn to a fishing hole called McDonald Pond. Home to an explosive strain of rainbows, we would arrive in July for opening day following waterfowl nesting season. Then one year there was no pond. Why? An earlier generation had built McDonald and other ponds to help save the trumpeter swan. A legendary success. But in the process gravel bottomed creeks — native grayling spawning habitat — had been vastly diminished.

There’s a lesson here of course, one that I pondered often in the artist studio at The Taft-Nicholson Center. The studio view out the bank of windows across the vast valley to the stripe of Upper Red Rock Lake and the rising sun fed me for 30 days. I painted the Valley—experimenting and risking—and I thought a great deal about giving back, doing my part to support wild places and clean, moving water. The Taft-Nicholson Center’s Art Residency was a gift

Visit Dave's website: MovingWater.org