Colorado, Cookie Crumbs & Copper Wires
Weekly Inspirations | A Dose of Direction + Magic
🎬 Let me set the scene. 🎬
I had just stepped off an old elevator in the historic Ford plant building in Detroit. You could practically hear the ghosts of American manufacturing echoing through the halls—empty, silent, and full of forgotten metal. I was alone, except for one man running the elevator, who let me wander the space and photograph whatever relics I could find: screws, car parts, industrial bones of a bygone era.
We were filming Prince of Motor City—a modern-day Hamlet set in the Motor City itself, directed by none other than Jack Bender (yes, the guy who made Lost the cultural fever dream it was). I was on set as a scenic painter, covering for the usual on-set painter because… well, that was a theme back then. I was always stepping in last minute. Always ready. Always covered in paint.
And then came the cookie.
I was starving. They had called me onto the set. There was no time to eat a meal. So I grabbed a cookie from catering, stuffed it in my face like I hadn’t eaten in days, and turned around—mouth fully loaded—to find a man smiling at me.
“Hi, I’m Aidan.”
Yup. That Aidan. Aidan Quinn.
And all I could manage was a cookie crumb spray to the face and a muffled, mortified, “I’m Jolene.” But it sounded like , “Impf, Johlhene.” As I spat out the cookie between syllables.
He smiled. I died. We never spoke again. End scene. I ran out of there as fast as I could.
🚗 Cue the Escape to Colorado
A few days later, back in Pittsburgh, my boyfriend woke me up and said, “Wanna go to Colorado?” And, in true me fashion, I said, “Sure. Why not.”
We hopped in the car and drove west, with no plan except to visit his family and see what happened. That was our first trip together, which, as anyone who’s ever traveled with a new partner knows, could’ve gone very wrong.
But it didn’t.
Skipping like a stone down I-90 we came across and stopped at Porter Sculpture Park. If you have never seen a giant red goldfish in front of a trailer, I highly suggest you stop. You can see a hint of the giant sculptures from the highway but to actually drive through is pretty cool.
I went to my first “real” rodeo in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Then we drove through Denver, then to Lyons, then Longmont. We made our way to and through Nederland. I don’t know why but I have always liked the name of that town. It’s Neder Nederland to me.
We hit up the natural hot springs (Sulphur Springs was my favorite—if heaven had steam, that’d be it), hiked through the Garden of the Gods (where we shattered the silence with a rogue car alarm—not our finest moment), and took spontaneous detours into tiny mountain towns. We laughed our way through that whole trip.
🎨 The Origins of Something Surreal
During this chapter—between half-finished sets and cross-country road trips—I started experimenting with surrealist digital photography. I was really influenced by him as he was a professional photographer. He taught me everything I knew about it.
This was 2008, and nobody (well, almost nobody) was doing the kind of weird, layered visual storytelling that fascinated me. I’d slam together photos from my travels, pull textures from rusted metal, skies from Colorado, and shadows from alleyways in Detroit. It was moody and strange and thrilling.
He encouraged my antics and misuse of his beautiful images among other things.
It felt like I was translating everything I couldn’t yet say into images.
That time cracked something open in me creatively—and it never really closed again. I would revisit this medium again and again throughout my life.
🧪 The Wild Lessons from Detroit
Detroit, by the way, was its own kind of education. I saw copper wires stripped clean from streetlights. I nearly passed out in a car that had been baking with turpentine in the trunk (spoiler alert: don’t do that). I watched an entire city navigate the thin line between collapse and resilience—and I carried that rawness with me.
It wasn’t just the job. It was an experience. The way the work, the travel, the people, and the chaos collided to create something I couldn’t have planned. And there were side stories, but I guess I have to save that for my podcast or memoir. Depends on who you ask.
🛣️ The Bigger Picture
Looking back, that trip was the start of something I didn't know I was building.
A visual voice. A way of seeing. A love for places that rearrange you.
Colorado would make its way back into my story again and again—sometimes through art, sometimes through escape, sometimes through reinvention just like Detroit did. Just like every messy, unexpected detour seems to do when you’re living a life under the influence of inspiration.
Moral of the story?
Eat the cookie. Take the road trip. Stop for the giant red fish.
Because that’s the thing about inspiration—it doesn’t send a calendar invite. It sneaks up on you between elevator rides and cookie mishaps, in rusted metal and mountain steam, in borrowed cameras and backseat brainstorms. It’s messy. It’s unscripted. It’s alive. And if you’re lucky—or just hungry enough—you might catch it in the act of turning chaos into art, detours into direction, and a random road trip into the first chapter of something you’ll be unfolding for years to come.
Have you listened to my podcast yet? Here’s a link to this week’s episode.
Always wonderful to read about your travels. It's a great escape for me.