After the quilters left, I headed for coffee and a moment to regroup…

I was off to Camp Sherman on the Metolius River where Katy and family have a cabin.  For the last few years our Salem Art Group (SAG) has gone over to Camp Sherman annually to gather, make art, talk about making art, and sit on the river in a beautiful place.  Camp Sherman is “off the grid” and the five (of the 8 members) of us are all pretty addicted to google, email, instagram…the usual.  Four days without connectivity though led to communication, laughing harder than I have in a decade, talking about what’s coming creatively for each, looking at books (Kiki Smith, Morandi, etc.)., making books, eating healthfully (it wasn’t so bad!), sleeping soundly to the river song…

Susan cooked…

everybody worked…

I mended…

and sewed…on the deck

and it was so warm we ate out on the river’s edge…

Here’s to the chef…Susan Napack!

and we talked and laughed and began to draw as the night fell around us…

I had made everybody a little book and had worked on mine in the afternoon…

the dripping wax was incorporated….

and everybody began to work.  The next morning there was a flurry of workbook activity before hiking and painting…and sewing for me…producing a few more blocks…

and then the drawing…everybody

drawing everybody…

 

“Three Little Birds”

“The Flower girls”

and then the books.  We sat around the table late into the night talking and making and laughing.  The conversations found their way into the books…

pareidolia (seeing faces in inanimate objects…thanks Jennifer Hull) reigned…

and then, sadly it was time to go…