Smarty Arty Summit (SAS)

Okay - back to the travel log of November.

I got back from Charleston one evening, unpacked, did laundry, repacked and flew out to Colorado the next morning (I'm sensing a trend here).

The beginnings of a journal page

I met a new friend at the airport - Kim Rae Nugent.
We were picked up by my buddy Liz Kettle, who drove us to Jill Berry's house.
Team assembled.
We arrived there, unpacked and then repacked all of our belongings (I still can't believe that Liz got all of that stuff into her Subaru!).

(Wait, haven't I typed "unpacked and repacked" more than once or twice in the last two blog posts??!?)

We were going to use the trip to introduce one new thing to each person  there as well as work on what we wanted to work on.
I had my "group project" ready and plenty of book pages ready to capture what held my gaze (if anything did).


One of the fun things about staying in a cabin at Estes Park near the Rocky Mountain State Park with three other wild and crazy artists friends (well, maybe all of them are not as wild and crazy as me but fun none the less!) was that there were no outside forces compelling us to do anything except what we wanted to do.
Yeah.
Read that again.
We got to do what we wanted to!

This is the view that we had from our back door.

This is NOT a postcard!
It is the actual view from the back porch of  our cabin.

We created art, journaled, painted, stenciled, drew and ate for four days straight!

Oh, we went outside as well.
Here we are at the Rocky Mountain State Park.
It was ccccold that day!
The background is a portion of a map from the brochure from the YMCA Estes Park
facility that we stayed at.

Well, this isn't finished yet (obviously).
Did I mention that we got VERY goofy
and that we had a  very tiny convertible car too?!

Another one of my journal pages.
I have collaged a piece of the Estes Park brochure map
onto my sketchbook page, added a tiny photo from Jill's printer
(name escapes me right now) (pogo?) (I want one though!).
Then I roughed up the edge of the photo
with a bit of graphite. Needs more but that will have to wait... 

We saw elk in our front yard (and above the fireplace) and snowy mountain tops in our back yard.
We got up in the mornings when we wanted to, ate chocolate before breakfast (well I did) and went to bed when we could no longer hold our heads up.
We laughed, joked, talked, ranted and passed love, tenderness and strength between the four of us.
It was truly a bonding experience for all of us.

Bernardo the Elk.
We added the chic red scarf to his neck.
He really needed it.
Notice the cozy fire that our Fire Master (Jill) built.
Forever to be known as "the fire that Jill built".

My drawing of Bernardo the Elk.
Sans scarf.

We managed to have one "sit down" meal at the dining room table
before our art supplies took it over...we were relegated to
the coffee table to eat after that.

Notice the floor lamp in the middle of the dining room table...
lack of good light to work by will drive you to do
many odd things indeed.

The art supplies begin to reproduce and take over
the floor space around the "work table". 

And behind it to the small table as well...

If you have the opportunity - heck, just TAKE the opportunity to invite a few friends together for a "girls only" ("Art Summit") (whatever) few days - then, by all means, just DO IT.
We had a wonderful, awesome, fantastic, unforgettable time.
I hope that my name is already on the guest list for next year...


One last photo.
This is a sculpture at the main office at the YMCA office there at Estes Park.

What an awesome backdrop for a sculpture!