Art Retreat Week 2023

I’ve been wanting to do a residency-type thing for a while. Residencies are often hard to find, hard to get into, travel heavy, and can be pretty pricy. So I started pondering around the first of the year what it would look like to do it myself for a week but just here in my own studio. While I was doing my planning for July I realized that I could slot in a week for myself to make art summer-camp style. Art Retreat Week 2023 was born!

What I did to prepare

The biggest thing I did beforehand was plan out a few easy meals so I wouldn’t be cooking as much as I usually do. I wanted to work as much as possible all five days. I didn’t want to spend time coming up with dinner or spending time preparing a bunch of stuff. So I prepped some stuff ahead of time. Then during the week, we ate leftovers or I had super easy stuff ready to go.

I also made a list of things that I thought I might want to work on so I’d be ready to make and not trying to figure out what to do during my making time. I wanted to do some bigger projects: gelli printing and filming. Both of which require some quite time and a lot of space to work. Luckily, I worked during a band camp week for my teen so I had many quite uninterrupted hours to work!

Lastly, I cleaned up my studio. Wiped things down. Changed out my under paper on the painting desk. Watered my plant. Took out the trash. Put stuff away that was out in the space. Just generally spruced it up so it would be more inviting to work in.

The week itself

I spent time gelli printing and trying some layering with prints with my 3×5″ plate in a way I hadn’t before. I filmed my Concertina journal flip through. Also I worked on binding 50 copies of Issue 0 of Small Wonders magazine for their Kickstarter prizes. I worked on small watercolor sketches that I put in my paper bin to use later. I made an art folio out of a paper insert that came with some shampoo I ordered. And I did some writing about my process for an upcoming podcast interview.

In-progress art journals

A big thing I did during the week was pull out all of my in-progress art journals. I had seven and a brand new one I’d not started yet! The new one I decided to put up in my Etsy store. Which I did and it’s sold!

I identified one that I wanted to retire. Sometimes the moment passes before the book is done so I put away the Fruit of the Sprit Meditation Journal with pages left unfinished. It was good to explore these ideas and I love what is done in the book but I just don’t want to keep working on it begrudgingly.

I realized I was very close to finishing my Yellow Leather journal, my Random Movie Lines journal, my Imagined Landscapes journal and another watercolor journal that I’ve since finished (a flip through is coming soon). I’ve been working on these books in hopes of finishing up with them soonish!

End of Day: Studio notes

I was also really faithful about writing down my end-of-day notes. This end-of-the-studio-day journaling is a thing I’ve been flirting with for a few months now. It’s a way for me to sum up not only the work I did but to make notes on where I might like to go with the project in the future.

It also allows me to do a look back (like I needed to do for this post) and reconstruct some of the things I did because the work I do in the studio doesn’t always get a check box on my bullet journal list.

It’s also a bit of a ritual to close out the day. This week I also printed a few pics on my Instax Mini Printer and stapled them in with my end-of-day notes.

What was really different from your regular weeks, Misty?

Honestly? Beyond my hyped-up mentality going into the week, not much. My big takeaway from this week was that how I think about my work has a lot to offer my making in any given week. I was PUMPED for the week! I talked about it to my morning meeting group. Also I wrote “Art Retreat Week” and highlighted it on every day of my bullet journal. I woke up energized to go to the studio because it was ART RETREAT WEEK. It’s not a sustainable-all-the-time hype. But it was a lovely hype to bask in for the week.

But the day-to-day of it all was startlingly like my regular weeks. Maybe I made a few more things? Maybe? I’m not really sure. I didn’t produce anything BIG. So there wasn’t a big final thing to see at the end of the week. I was focused on intentional making for big chunks of time every single day in a way that I don’t usually. I still struggled with fighting the to-do list and the only thing that saved me was my whole week intention to keep the to-do list minimal.

One thing this week showed me was my evolving relationship to process over product. I’m continuing to shift my thinking about what I need from my practice. I need to feel the process and enjoy the making. The outcome is secondary to that. If I manage to produce something interesting, fantastic! But more importantly, did I enjoy the process of making? Am I more centered after? More in the moment during? These are becoming more central questions for me.

What I want to try next time

One of the things residencies require is an action plan for how you’ll spend your time during the residency. The next time I do art retreat week I want to come up with that sort of plan. Either an area I want to focus on and dive into. Specific reading I want to do. Planning for a bigger project. It would be a way for me to practice that skill set with zero pressure. Dress for the job you want and all that jazz.

I should have cleared the decks of some daily house and studio tasks before I started. I had some fiddley bits to attend to almost every day. So when I do this again I will make sure to either take care of some of these tasks earlier, delegate them to other family members, or just flat out ignore them until the week is over. If I were at an actual residency those things wouldn’t be getting or someone else would be doing them. So I’m going to shoot for that!

Next time I’m going to plan for zero cooking. Leftovers, sandwiches, take out, somebody else figure out dinner is going to be the plan. If I could have a dinner chef for the week, I’d consider it. Cooking eats up a big chunk of my day many days. I don’t mind it usually but for art retreat week, I’m skipping it.

To sum it all up

Art retreat week was smashing. 12/10, would art retreat again! Especially since I had only the barest sketch of what I was going to do for the week and still ended up feeling like it was a bunch of fun and really gave me a sense of renewal for my practice. I’m looking forward to the next one!

Do you have an art retreat planned? Have you been on one recently? Tell me all about it! Catch up with me on socials, email me, or go oldschool and leave a comment on this post to be immortalized for all of time.

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