Artplane Creativity Workshop 2011

We just returned from teaching a 7 day Artplane Workshop at Esalen along the Big Sur Coast. We had a tremendous group. Some participants were working artists, others had little or no experience, but by the third day all were making amazing work and from where i sat, having a tremendous amount of fun doing it. It is hard to imagine a better blend of things: Art making, eating delicious food (that you do not have to make or clean up after), laughing, wine, chocolate, good friends, and floating in hot springs at the end of a full day beneath a blanket of glistening stars.
While our workshop was going on there also was a workshop led by Kim Rosen on Poetry. It seemed everywhere you went on the property her students were handing everyone poems on scraps of paper. They were even floating them in the hot springs. It was quite delightful coming across a poem in your day or having someone just come along and present you with one. We all had them in our pockets and, as a result, decided to use the poems in our workshop. To offer a visual response, an answer to the poem elves generosity. We cut our 10 x 10 boards down to 4 or 5 in square and took fragments or lines of these poems and used them as inspiration to generate imagery. Below are a sampling of some of these poem boards made in the workshop.




I am going from memory so I apologize in advance if your artwork happens to not be here or is credited incorrectly. From top to bottom:
Diana Arsenian, Sharon Virtue, Christopher Chaffin, Sharon Virtue, Nancy Worcester, Jennie Oppenheimer, Barbara Kyle, Sharon Virtue, Nicholas Wilton, Ashley Jones, Jennie Oppenheimer, Nicholas Wilton, Jennie Oppenheimer.