Artful Journey - Los Gatos CA - July 2010

I spent 4 days at The Artful Journey last week. This was held at The Presentation Center in the hills above Los Gatos, California. I took a 3 day class with DJ Pettitt which was Amazing! The location was Beautiful. It was quite rustic, yet very comfortable. The one thing I was tentative about was the bathrooms are down the hall, not in the rooms. It didn't take long to find that really didn't make a difference. It was dimly lit in the night & no problem getting there, back & right back to sleep. In the mornings, if I Did encounter anyone else having just crawled out of bed, sleepily brushing their teeth......it was actually fun to just say Hi & carry on. Felt kind of like a family in that way. There are no phones, tvs, etc. in the rooms. Although I did have my Ipad & laptop just in case. LOL But we tended to keep working on our projects into the night at times, or walk around the grounds (Bev & I saw a shooting star our first evening, sitting outside). We made & stripped our own beds which I found a nice thing. I have always felt it is such a waste to change bed linens in hotels every day as well as the towels. So this was good to me. And I found my bed very comfortable & slept well each night. :-) I can't Quite seem to concentrate even yet on work & home. I'm still living the memories of a wonderful 4 days.

This is Pueblo, the building many of us stayed in. There are also some cottages where some of our group also stayed.

This is a moss covered pond nearby with a trail going around it. Often there was a great blue heron on the water as well as a family of 4 deer wandering around the grounds.

These are views of our classroom from the back & the front. I'm sure the nuns have never seen quite such a Mess (although a Creative one!) in these rooms. LOL

I thought this was a beautiful cross. Very artistic.

This was a courtyard area where we had coffee in the morning, had the artists sale on Monday night and often just gathered there.

Bev (my roommate) and I did the Labyrinth one evening.

This was a cairn at the center of the labyrinth. I might toy around with using it as a background layer in Photoshop if I ever get back to catching up with my online class!

I am not Catholic, so I thought this picture was interesting! The thought of the nuns marrying just never occurred to me. It's a fun picture.

Here is Peggy, Melissa and Beth. Peggy & Beth are both in our local CaliforniaArtGirls yahoo group and Beth & I were table mates for the 3 days. I enjoyed working with you Beth! I had met Beth & Peggy before at Asilomar. Melissa was a wonderful surprise to see walking down the hall the first afternoon I got there! She and I shared a room at Art & Soul Virginia 4 years ago. We set it up on the online yahoo group, had never met each other & spent 6 or 7 nights & days as roommates. We have kept in touch every now & then, but what a Surprise to see her. And we were in the same class! We got along great in Virginia and I was thrilled to see her. We will most likely keep in touch more Often now. :-)

Here is DJ, binding MY Book. :-) Not the book I made in class. But a book I bought from her. :-) She used the cover to this book as a demo last October in Portland. I Loved it so much, I kept asking her if she would sell it. LOL She wouldn't just sell a cover, so we worked out what type of book and how involved I wanted and a price & she has been working on it. She had it Nearly done & brought it for me to see. It is trully Beautiful!!! I had to leave after class on Wednesday however to get back to work (which I really didn't quite do........I couldn't get motivated for work after 3 days of artistic creativity & being with friends!), and she didn't have it quite bound yet. So it is now on the road with DJ who is driving back the coast route & taking Spectacular pictures I'm sure along the way! It's kind of fun to be looking forward to receiving it when it comes. :-) She referred to it as "Margaret's Book" the whole time as she used it for demo. I loved that. :-)

These are just a few pix of demos and a great group of us students working hard on our wonderful books!

This is the final evening with show & tell, thank you's from Cindy and the teachers (who were DJ, Stephanie Lee, Richard Salley and Katie Kendrick who All were so very Available & Friendly......we really all were one big Happy Group!). The silent auction raised over $700 which was donated to the Center. I am sending off a donation to the center this week myself. They exist by donations only & it really was quite an impressive place. I did read the brochure and they are as I recall, nearly 100% green (or a Very high percentage) and one of the first places getting there. I noticed the first day I walked up, a rooftop garden over the huge building housing the dining hall, bookstore, etc. I didn't realize gardens like that attract different bird species, butterflies, etc.

And here is my book in progress. Many people did get theirs bound. I was having so much fun working on the covers & pages, I decided early on I would bind it later & just relax & enjoy creating the covers & signatures for it. I Do Hope I eventually finish it. But I also look forward to just working on it now & then. The first pictures is the Front (the bird which most of us used.......it was a picture DJ provided for us & for me, although I wanted to have pictures & make this my Own......working on the same picture & learning the layering, etc. was much easier I think than venturing out on my own.) By the time I got to the back cover (the tree & pole), I Did use a picture I took myself & had Much Fun trying to recreate layers like we did on the front. I ended up very happy with it!

And the rest of the pictures are pages I worked on in various stages of completeness. And I have several signatures I didn't even start on yet. I Thoroughly Loved this class and project! I plan to keep an eye on DJ's blog & take an online class in the future. Not that I didn't Learn in the class. But my creativeness seems to come either with a teacher & class or with other people. And this group in class was a Great Group! I hope to see everyone again at one retreat or another. Maybe even next February here again. :-)