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Cocreating with the Land: An Earth Artist Retreat and Paintmaking Studio


  • Center for Rural Livelihoods 80574 Hazelton Road Cottage Grove, OR, 97424 United States (map)

The creativity of the natural world is infinite and effortless. We also inherit this creative sense from birth, but often suppress our innate freedom as creators through judgment, critique, and attachment to outcome.

Intimacy with the land – the subtleties of shape, movements, textures, sounds, and colors of nature – can help us remember that expression is our birthright and deeply satisfying. 

Cocreating with the Land is a two day retreat to drop into a creative dialogue with the Earth, through exploring earth pigments and found materials, reading textures and patterns of the land, and gathering insight and creative revival from the practice.

We will spend time on the land, introducing ourselves to our foraging place before gathering materials. Returning to the studio, we will process our foraged pigments into paints (start to finish), which we will then take back to the foraging place for an extended studio session in the elements. In spaciousness with each other and the land, we will share and move through creative blocks with guided practices to embody our wild and innate creative spirit.  

  • Communing with the Land

  • Earth pigment processing and paintmaking

  • Experimenting with natural mediums and canvases 

  • Spacious outdoor studio time 

  • Creating without inhibition

  • Group dialogue and guided embodiment practices

Workshop is Saturday, April 21st from 10:00 - 5:00pm, followed by a nourishing dinner at the Center for Rural Livlihoods in Cottage Grove and Sunday April 22nd from 10:00- 5:00pm. Overnight lodging is availible in the CRL dorms (twin size bed with sheets) for $40 or car/tent camping on site for $20. If you would like to stay on site Saturday night, please select that option when registering. A full kithen will be availible for lunch and breakfast if you do choose to stay overnight.

Molly Abromitis

Molly is a self-taught woodworker, painter, and Earth artist living off-grid in Northern Washington. Her path to becoming an artist became a journey of remembering and reconnecting to the place within that lives beyond the stories, experiences, and identities of her personal life. Learning to create from this place opened an understanding how to co-create with the Earth and be a clear vessel for Life to create through. This led her to begin communing with trees and using mineral pigments to bring her visions into form. Her and the trees now work together to share energetic imprints of the elemental and spiritual world in each piece, blurring the lines between seen and unseen.

Sitimorba.com

@sitimorba

Hosanna White

Hosanna is dedicated to learning slow crafts like primitive firing, weaving, and foraging that connect her with the source of her materials and the magic that comes from transforming them for everyday use.

Hosanna lives in the foothills of Western Oregon, a geologically rich landscape that has inspired her studio work, Whitesnake Arts. She blends bio-regional history and land stewardship into her artwork painted with a colorful collection of hand gathered earth pigments.

Got a question about this retreat, contact us here!

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Intro to Pit Firing

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June 1

Intro to Weaving with Willow