My Tribe

"We evolve at the rate of the tribe we are plugged into."
Carolyn Myss

I had been writing and re-writing this quote into my journals for years...put it in many of my paintings (and sold a number of them). And (drum roll please), I've found them. My art tribe! This was our second meet-up. Two of the first nine of us weren't able to be at our new site/time (though Michelle did come up for a day, so we were 10 on Saturday), we did recruit two new women for this retreat, so there are 11 total now.
These first two photos are of our first collaborative book that the amazingly talented, infinitely generous and sadly blogless Penelope created for us. It is filled with quality photocopies of a few of the journal pages we each created on the first retreat, recipes of some of the meals we enjoyed there, favorite quotes, favorite art supply sources, memories of the weekend (GSD) and so much more.

The amazingly talented, wildly generous and sadly blogless Penelope brought her coil binding supplies and taught us some great methods for coiling binding and using the holes punched for binding in other creative ways. I made three coil bound journals, and once they are filled I will likely change the binding to one of the other creative techniques she showed us. For now they will be coil bound because they lay flat for creating. The first two of these photos are of the little 4 x 4 journal I created for our son. The inside of the cover has a little snippet of his great-grandmother's quilt (my grandmother) that I have treasured since I went away to college.

This is a "junk journal" I made with some of the recycled cardboard that folks brought for the sharing tables (yes two tables filled with papers, stickers, tags, magazines, tons of fun stuff). (Have you tried these Holiday Jo-Jo's? *so* tasty!)
My second junk journal. A kleenex box as the base...note the back cover has the window where the kleenex came out, I filled the window to be viewed on the inside of the back cover and covered the opening on the back. One of the photos of the inside of this journal shows a practice card of my calligraphy for a class I took years ago. Before going on this retreat I went through my studio and put a great majority of my papers into four canvas totebags.



My notes on Sunday, trying to summarize all the tips and techniques I learned over the weekend.


Find your tribe. It's freeing and fun and worth the wait. Cannot wait until our next weekend -- in January 2010!