ART AND SPIRIT RETREATS
Enjoy a restorative inspiring art retreat in a beautiful natural setting. Jill leads groups in contemplative practices, creative explorations, and ecological awareness. You’ll create a rich sourcebook of images, ideas, and inner truths to guide your artistic and spiritual path when you return home.

Jill leads her own retreats, and is also available for leading religious groups, women’s, book, or special interest groups on organized retreats. Contact her for availability and fee schedules.
Sample general retreat description - Springtime in New Mexico is full of new life. Come to this adobe retreat house in the heart of the landscape which inspired Georgia O’Keeffe. Working outdoors, in courtyard porches, or inside the spacious gathering areas, find a balance of time alone and guided art and contemplative experiences. Take walks to soak in the dramatic vistas and beauty of the plant and animal life. Relax, meditate, paint, write in your journal, sketch, rest, laugh, eat well, & make new friends. Inquire about dates.

RETREATS AND CLASS THEMES

OUR WILD NATURE

Our essential selves are creative. As we immerse ourselves in the natural world, we awaken the ancient impulse to create. Our senses come alive to the earthy textures and qualities of unrefined art materials. We will paint, make mixed media collages, and installations with elemental substances such as charcoal, our homemade clay and mineral paints, bark fiber, gut, beeswax, animal hair and skin, and plants. Unconventional surfaces and tools for painting help bring fresh vision to our art expression. Viewing images from ancient and contemporary earth artists from many cultures will inspire our discussion, and stimulate our explorations.

BRUSHES WITH THE SPIRIT

This workshop offers an experience with creating some of the oldest tools of human expression. We'll gather seasonal materials to make our own simple paint brushes and watercolors. The brush becomes a tool which is satisfying to look at and hold, and facilitates the experience of painting as a transformative gesture,. As we explore with simple materials like wood, beeswax, horsehair, grasses, and charcoal, we'll take a look at the origins of painting in ancient times and experiment with making our own meaningful images.

SACRED TRADITIONS: INSPIRATIONS FOR BOOK MAKING

In ancient times when books were rare, people found ways to carry sacred texts close to the heart. We'll look at these intriguing traditions from many cultures, religions, and times, and then create our own small books to hold significant poems, writing or images. We'll make several small books and cases, finding unusual ways to wear them or incorporate them into clothing or other objects. We'll also create a hardbound book using the coptic binding method, one of the earliest known bindings, dating back to fourth-century Egypt.