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I’ve visited this church camp retreat for creative artists for many years. This beautiful place is called Camp Newfound on Long Lake in Maine, and this one week event is called Creative Arts Week. Even though I am a regular at this fabulous happening at the overlap of spiritual and creative people, this is the first year I have had the honor of both teaching here as well as being an artist in residence.

I’m teaching a class called The Art of Seeing in the afternoons, and I have to mention that it turns out that all my students are readers of this blog! And in the mornings, as an Artist in Residence, I plan to do pastel landscapes in plein air, as well as some black and white work on the less clement days. I even cleaned up my pastel box for this and you can see it gleamingly fresh in the last photo below.

I also led the church meeting last night with readings about how God is the only Creator (and we are not privileged originators)- aka “get over yourself, because God is doing the doing.” This was followed by some beautiful sharing from the group. In the next couple days I also give a teacher presentation to the whole camp, and on Saturday, my Abstraction: From Impressionism to Non-Objective Art (300 slide) PowerPoint is the evening entertainment. (It will be especially fun to share this with people who know metaphysics!) Monday night, my class gives a presentation of the work they have done during the week, and the following Tuesday morning I show my own work that was completed this week. Whew!  It all sounds like more in the telling than the doing.

Interspersed, I am having great conversations with new and long time friends, am planning to “swim to Cherry Island and back,” which is further than it looks, and will be attending all sorts of inspiring talks and presentations. Yesterday evening, after the church segment I led, we had a concert by Alex Cook of his touching and spunky songs that are inspired by his love for God.

Meanwhile, my husband is home and yesterday he drove our youngest to start her senior year of college…

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