The last city on our grand calendar tour is Austin. I have never been to Austin, but my husband has a number of cousins there and recently visited. He brought back many postcards, and the cousins were instrumental in finding my inspiration for the Austin sketches.
It was the postcard of the bat bridge that got me. It's proper name is the Congress Avenue Bridge and it is home to the largest urban colony of bats in the world. About 1 million bats live underneath the bridge during the summer months (they migrate to Mexico in the winter) and every dusk they emerge in this cloud to hunt for food, a sight that attracts over 100,000 tourists annually. That's 10 bats for every tourist!
The bats have become such an iconic part of Austin that many businesses have adopted the bat into their logos and below you can see a bat sculpture which sits across the street from the bridge, by artist Dale Whistler.
I've already done a second sketch of the annual kite festival. The Letterpress Library volumes will be available at the end of January. I'm very excited and can't wait to finally visit Austin!
Our 2012 postcard calendar is now for sale in our Etsy shop.
There are discounts for multiple purchases. We will also it for sale at
all of our holiday markets and events listed in the sidebar.
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