Swiftcurrent Lake reflection of Grinnell Point
— — the mountain twice, with a hush between.
Not only on a wall.
“Stand on the dock at Many Glacier Hotel on a still morning and Grinnell Point comes back to you whole — once in stone, once in water. Swiftcurrent Lake holds the reflection until the first wind from the cirque breaks it. The Blackfeet called this country the backbone of the world. The boat to Lake Josephine leaves from the same dock. From the studio, the piece is the held moment before the surface moves. from the studio
Swiftcurrent Lake reflection of Grinnell Point, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Swiftcurrent Lake sits at about 4,900 feet (1,494 metres) in the Many Glacier valley on the east side of Glacier National Park. It is fed by Swiftcurrent Creek out of the Grinnell Glacier basin and drains east toward the Sherburne Reservoir and the prairie beyond. Grinnell Point, the pyramidal peak that rises directly above the north shore, tops out near 7,600 feet. The lake is the doorstep of Many Glacier Hotel, opened by the Great Northern Railway in 1915, and the launch for tour boats running to Lake Josephine and the Grinnell Glacier trail.
The water carries the same pale glacial cast as other meltwater lakes in the Lewis Range, the suspension of rock flour scattering blue and green from the sunlight. On a windless morning, usually before about nine o'clock in summer, the surface holds a near-perfect mirror of Grinnell Point and the ridge running west toward Mount Wilbur. By late morning a katabatic wind moves down the cirque from Grinnell Glacier and the reflection breaks. The dock at Many Glacier Hotel is the closest public access; a short trail also reaches the north shore.
Many Glacier Road usually opens in late May and closes by late October, depending on snowfall. The hotel and the boat concession run from roughly mid-June through mid-September. Larches in the valley turn gold in late September; the high cirque holds snow into July most years. Bears — both grizzly and black — are active across the valley and the park requires bear spray on trails. The Grinnell Glacier itself, which feeds the lake, has lost more than two-thirds of its 1900 surface area, with measurements maintained by the U.S. Geological Survey.