This a demo reel of some of my footage, not the actual documentary. Youtube reduces quality so you do need to change it to 4K for best effect.

Rita Deanin Abbey was a multi-talented abstract artist based in the Southwest for most of her life. She was incredibly skilled and worthy of attention in her own right, but her narrative is inextricably tied to her long and complex marriage to Edward Abbey. Edward erased Rita and their son's existences from Desert Solitaire in order to create a more interesting narrative, and the Abbey's Country myth pervades to this day.

Rita was equally influenced by the desert and went on to teach many influential artists at the University of Nevada. She was inspired by the nuances of the landscape and her work stripped away the excess to get to the fundamental spirit. She passed in 2020 and Rita's husband and son opened the Rita Deanin Abbey Museum and began filming a documentary about her work. The documentary follows the premise of her book, River Trip, in which she and Edward rafted Cataract Canyon.

My partner and I packrafted Cataract in April 2022 to capture video footage for the project. I also shot many scenes around Moab, a place where I lived and know as well as Edward and Rita. As the book follows Rita and Edward's trip down Cataract, the footage was filmed entirely at river level, on a boat from a passenger-perspective and with a low budget. I've done a lot of challenging things in my life, but filming in a sandy environment with the minimal equipment atop fluid, unstable surfaces while paddling the necessary high mileage is at the top of the list.