Create an Art Camp Adventure for YOURSELF This Year

Create 

Your  Art Camp Adventure

Do YOU need a creative getaway?

Looking for some time and space to just relax and make some art?

Last year two of my daughters (Heidi and Ilsa)  decided we should  take a vacation together  and  go to a place where we could be alone, in nature, and make art for a week.  Another art friend, Lois, decided she wanted to go, too! That was a year ago, and now we are packing up for our Art Camp Adventure – just for the FOUR of us!

 We needed to choose a location  somewhere in-between Burlington, Kentucky  where Ilsa lives, and Western  Pennsylvania where the other three of us live. Ilsa and Heidi got started on finding the right spot for us. Shortly it was decided that a rural area in Southern Ohio would be just right.

We’ll be leaving for our Art Camp Vacation next weekend. We rented an A-frame with a hot tub. We can go hiking, do a  zip line, and attend outdoor activities in that area.

You can choose 

an exotic location 

like a Rain Forest  

Or Some Place near your own home!

Your back yard 
or along the banks of a nearby creek;

How about a quiet place 
where you can be alone with NATURE?

Right now, I am deciding what to take along for me projects to work on. I decided on taking the materials I will need to begin a couple of new Talisman necklaces. I am packing up some Tree Agates, Lapis Lazuli, Green Opals,  Honey Wax Opals, Japanese Seed Beads and Swarovski Crystals in brilliant greens and purples. I plan to be inspired by the woods and chose the colors with that in mind.

If you are unable to do a getaway, 

you know you can still create your own Art Camp Experience 

right where you are.  It is really a Vacation that is inside of us -

Make an ordinary day 

into a Vacation Day! 

Think about when your Vacation will begin. Then, decide what you will work on during your vacation time. You can do it at home, very easily.  Decide what you will not be doing in your daily routine, so you can decide what you will be doing for your ART projects. Then, go ahead and have yourself a great Vacation, wherever you are!

I would love to hear about YOUR art camp experience.

Where did you go?

Did you go away for your retreat, or did you do it in your own home?

 What did you work on that was not in your daily schedule?

What was the experience like for you?

In a couple of weeks, I will report on how mine went.

I will take photos and you can see how it was for the four of us.

Why not do the same and post some photos of you on your Vacation Art Camp?

You can VIISIT me on Face Book, too. Just look for

Lynda McKinney Lambert

Eclipse (Hands Folded in Prayer)

Here is a poem I wrote recently in celbration of the night there was a Solar Eclipse and a New Moon.

this poem is mentioned in my blog article:

How to Read  Poem.

Eclipse (Hands Folded in Prayer)

It’s mid-May! The breeze is thick

with humid scents of Eau de Parfum.

Today, we have a New Moon

combined with a Solar Eclipse.

The fragrance drifts across the mountain 

Delicate, shimmering lavender pink flocks

fragile lace amongst the many specimens

near the edges of a  sun washed meadow.

Tamukeyama  stands in solitude

near the center of the outer corner.

She glances towards 

the Stone mountain, famous for a shrine

of a famous Japanese warrior.

 There, in saturated sunlight,

bright yellow-green crescent -

wild ferns encircle her bare feet.

Her gown a shower of brilliant purple lace.

The leaves turned purple in April.

Tamukeyama

Asks you to set your intention

This is a wonderful opportunity

Take your time!

Hand write 10 wishes

closest to your heart

Consider anything that passes

through your thoughts

What do you want?

Your desires will be magnified.

\what you say will be magnified.

Be wise.

Write each desire on a vellum sheet.

Close the book when the pages are complete.

Hide it carefully.

Be conscious,

The progressive season brings  transition-

the colour of the leaves from purple

towards burgundy and maroon.

Tamukyama   comes into her highest form

She starts to sport

amazingly bright red leaves.

Acer Palmatum dissectum forma astropurpureum

“hands folded in prayer upon the mountain.”

What seemed impossible before is just a thought away.

Believe!

Butterflies Bring Healing

Butterflies

Large Crimson RED Butterflies in January...

Today is June 1st. We are fully into the Spring Season now.

Spring time here in Pennsylvania  brings with it a myriad of flowers. They  begin to scatter over the meadows and fields and along the roadsides, 

I remember one special day in January 2008 when I watched  two butterflies playing in the stillness of an afternoon. 

But, it was not spring time. 

There were no flowers. 

It  was not over a field or meadow.

When I see a butterfly it brings back a memory for me.

It was 4 1/2 years ago, and I had just lost most of my sight. I had not yet had any help, and did not yet know about technologies that would help me, nor did I yet know of rehabilitation for the blind. I had no white cane, and no way of doing just about anything I had done just a couple months before. Overnight, my entire life was transformed into something that was new and unexpected. I could not use the elevator because I could not see the buttons to press, or know what floor it had landed on. Simple things like that, we took for granted, but those simple things were now a mystery to me.

It was at this very time that my second daughter, Heidi Melinda, was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Now, I stood at her bedside in the IC unit in a Pittsburgh, PA hospital. Her surgery to remove the tumor that had spread to a stage 3C cancer was completed a few days before. But nothing had gone well, and within a couple of days she was near death. They had put her in an induced coma to try to give her sick lungs the opportunity to begin to heal.

Day after day, it was one step down after another.

Even though I could not see very much, I was staying at the hospital day and night. I could find my way from the waiting room, to the bathroom, and to my daughter's room. I slept for short periods during the night, sitting in a chair in the waiting room of the IC unit. Then, I would walk back to her room, to sit by her bedside.

She was kept in a coma for over 2 weeks. Nurses and doctors were at her side or directly outside her room working on the monitors and computers continuously, monitoring her, searching for the right mix of drugs to help her. We waited there in limbo as the days went by. There was nothing we could do but pray and wait. Family members came and went, all helpless.

One afternoon I sat in the chair at the bottom of her bed with my eyes focused on her laying there with tubes and apparatus all over her body. The hospital staff had named Heidi, The Sleeping Princess. On this afternoon, the Sleeping Princess had two unexpected visitors. They did not come in through the door.

As I watched Heidi, two enormous butterflies were there. They emerged from the base of her feet and they flew back and forth, playing with each other as butterflies do when you see them in a field. The two butterflies were a deep red crimson and they were the size of my hand. They were bright and very large. As I watched them, it was the most normal scene I could ever have seen. Heidi's body was the field over which they were zig-zagging back and forth over as they moved towards her head. It seemd like I watched them for quite awhile, but I believe it was probably only seconds. It was like an eternal moment, when time did not exist, and I had been a witness to timelessness.

The butterflies made themselves visable to me. They gave me new hope for my daughter. I knew they were the Holy Spirit, made visable.  I recognized that the Holy Spirit had come to visit the Sleeping Princess that afternoon and that this would be the afternoon when Heidi would begin to recover. I was assured at that moment when I saw this vision that my daughter would heal and that she had experienced a miracle.

Today, Heidi remains free of ovarian cancer, even though the tests done in surgery had shown that the cancer cells were throughout her entire body. She undergoes tests and scans all the time in Pittsburgh. She has an entourage of doctors who are keeping a close watch on her. She has side effects from her surgery and her long recovery time. Her body remembers the trauma, and her body is still responding to it. Our bodies carry memories, and those memories in the entire body continue to have a response to the trauma it went through.

         Heidi with one of her art works, May 2012

Heidi is an artist who has a studio on a mountain top, in the woods of Pennsylvania. She actively works at her art, and is in exhibitions including an international invitation one that her work is in right now.

Shortly after she recovered,  she organized The Sleeping Princess Team with her friends. The team raises money for the Ovarian Cancer Coalition of Pittsburgh. This is the fifth year that the team and Heidi's family will walk with her at the Walk to Break the Silence in the fall.  Our little team has been able to raise over $20,000. in funds to contribute to the cause.

Heidi wearing her SURVIVOR T-Shirt - Sept. 2011

Yes, butterflies are harbingers of renewal and transformation, and healing. 

They are a reflection of the Creator.

Butterflies come to bring us joy and healing.

Like God, they are right on time! Every time!