MORE ON ARTISCAPE

Here I am , back again...now to continue my comments on ARTISCAPE..
.Saturday
My third class, MAKING A LEATHER JOURNAL.. was held at European Papers...A neat little shop owned by Lisa Ohmer..the retreat director. I really looked forward to this class and I wasn't dissapointed....
To start off with, she had very good handouts, very explicit...one could go home and make a journal if they had the supplies...and speaking of supplies, she had great leather for us to use and everything was cut and ready to assemble...she showed us how to lay out the leather to get the most and best pieces out of the hide, she had the pages ready and then explained the proper way to fold the different segments...she also had beads and waxed twine in attractive colors for us to use. I chose a tan leather journal cover and turquiose thread as the binding. The end result was a beautiful leather journal..I placed a couple of beads in the outside binding thread and cut a piece off one end of the folded journal and made a book mark out of it..I thought the inner cover was a bit long. I also followed one woman's actions and rounded off my corners...it really helped enhance the cover....
Now for the bad part...I didn't expect the class to be out of the hotel since it wasn't stated in the initial application. Also it was really uncomfortable in the classroom because we were all jammed in there like cattle..one couldn't get up to go to the bathroom if one had to. For anyone that has visited European papers, you know that the workroom is upstairs...which is neatly laid out, but the work area was too small to accomodate the number of people that were there..some were late and the class was delayed a bit. It was poorly lighted...we couldn't move our chairs without interrupting the person behind us..good thing I wasn't claustrophobic, or I would have had to leave...I was lucky that there were people at my worktable that knew what had to be done, because it was difficult for Lisa to get around to all of us....she did her best though, so I compliment her on that...another bad thing is that the store is not handicap accessible..unheard of in this day and age.....the stairs going up to the classroom are extremely steep and since I had a bad knee, it was most difficult for me to get up to the classroom..there was another woman who had the same problem, so we left as soon as we could in order to avoid the rush out of the building...I'm sure that there are handicapped people who would have loved to take this class..I saw one woman in a scooter type wheel chair.....the shuttle was used to get us there and back. the class was timed right , so we only had to wait 15 minutes for the transportation to get there. On a scale of 1 to 10, I would give this class a 5, mostly due to it's location, and lack of informing people upon registration of this and the crampted quarters.

the next class I took that day was "FLORAL JOURNALS"...

It was held on the 11th floor if I remember correctly. Even though I am an accomplished watercolorist, I always like to learn new techniques from other painters. This woman was an accomplished calligrapher..her journals were spectacular and well made...turns out that she is or was an associate editor for lettering for Somerset Magazine. She encouraged us to look through them, which I did and she was most pleasant to work with. Her techniques seemed to be impressionistic, and her demos were very informative...she demoed each page that she was teaching and then we went back to our workstations and tried to do as we were instructed. She also had handouts for us with calligraphy suggestions. This lady really went all out for us, she had paper, and paint boxes for people to use..I brought my own sketchbook and paints, because I really wanted things to be easy for me to get to when I got home....she even made us each a hand made little sketch book to do our flower painting in...the cover was handmade paper and had dried botanicals imbeded into it and was really quite beautiful ...I brought it back and showed my watercolor students what we did..now they can hardly wait to do the same things...in a scale from 1 to 10, I would give this class a 10..loved it...

Saturday evening was the big dinner that a lot of people went to....Syd and I chose to not attend and we were really glad that we didn't ...We ordered in a Pizza from Donatos...the shop around the corner and it was delicious...I did the dinner last year and decided it just wasn't worth the extra charge this year. After we ate, we took our pepsies and went and sat in the lounge and waited for some friends to meet us after dinner...Seems like there were a bunch of disgruntled people that came out of the dining room...turns out that they ran out of food due to the fact that the retreat director failed to give the proper count of attendees for the meal and they ran out of some food....Hey...when you don't give a bunch of women dessert, you could have a big uprising on your hands...there was a lot of bitching about the food or lack of it...in fact the hotel manager heard a lot of complaining and came over to our group and told us to take the problem up with the retreat director since she didn't give him the proper count and there were more attendees than they had planned for. In fact when we were eating our pizza in the lobbly, we noticed and heard Lisa comment to the employees at the front desk that people only got 1/2 cup of soup and she paid $3500 for the dinner....we were really happy with our pizza that night and glad that we made the right decision.....service at the hotel went downhill from the start of the retreat....one would think that they would have bent over backward for all the attendees, opened the restaurant early , had breakfast at an early hour and lunch at the proper time, dinner to accomodate the classes and made everyone happy...We could only imagine how much revenue they lost due to this....we left the lounge around 11..I had an early class on Sunday.

Sunday morning...I got up early, Syd slept in and I went downstairs to find out what room my class would be held in...AGHHHHHH...I found out that it was held out of the hotel and that also was not noted upon registration..Damn....good thing I was early, but the shuttle had just left for the airport...lucky for me another driver was available to take us to the studio ???? where our class was to be held. The studio was in a bay at a discontinued garage. Wow..!!! it was at least on one floor....they had breakfast food for us, muffins and coffee and tea if we wanted it, also water and soft drinks for anyone that wanted them...unfortunately the damned place was really cold, and not too clean...there were only 6 students in this class , so there was plenty of space....the instructor was very knowledgeable and talented...sad part was that some people were late, and she took too much time talking about sketching and drawing, which I assume each person would know anyway. Unfortunately the flowers that we were promised to use for the class were purchased on Thursday and by Sunday they were kinda wimpy, so we had to go outside and raid the flower pots for live flowers to paint...needless to say, we didn't have enough time (2 1/2 hours) to complete a painting as was promised. the handouts that one would assume would have some directions or suggestions, consisted of a list of books by flowers painters that one could purchase. This class would have a lot of potential if it were held for a longer period of time. It could also have been held in the hotel for the convience of the attendees.

Sunday afternoon...syd and I had a class together.."Journaling With Wax"...We saw this teacher demoing downstairs the evening before and we were enthralled with her work and happy that we chose this class. What a teacher!!!!!..she was great..!!!..she had enough supplies for everyone was very informative, had enough equipment to work with, had plenty of handouts and materials to use in our pieces, but we could have used more workspace to create in...For the life of me, I couldn't understand how the pieces we made would fit in a journal but it turns out that this type of journaling was meant to be displayed on easles or perhaps hung on a wall...her work was exceptional and we really loved it and the class...she has a DVD out and I hope to buy it at some time in the near future...the class was timed perfectly and we had plenty of time to work and create...we invited this teacher to come to our retreat next year and are really looking forward to seeing her again.....
That evening we went out to dinner at Lindy's ..the food was perfect, the atmosphere was great and we were happy to be together one last time before we left for home... all in all , with good friends, we had a fine time and a safe trip home on Monday morning...My dog was really happy to see me....