The Whirlwind of life

Home from Costa Rica mid-February, I hit the ground running and haven't stopped. Ok I flop on the couch every once in a while, and can't move,...

I am disappointed I haven't made it over here to let out those thought balloons and meanderings on all things at Ferraro Creative. My apologies! Much big dreaming going on over here!

Lots of new news, so I will encapsulate the headlines, so as not to bore you. Going chronologically helps me organize. 

March 2015-May 2015               Ferraro at Neat Cafe, Burnstown

Ruths' Blossom, pastel

That means I'll talk about my show at The Neat Cafe, that just went up this week. Karen Phillips Curran is the curator for shows at the Neat, and asked me pre-Costa Rica. It was still a last minute panic about the whole thing though. However, we worked well together, the show is up, and will be up til May 24th or so. 

If you have never been to the Neat Cafe, let me describe it of you. First of all, Burnstown is a small village on the Madawaska river. There's a couple galleries here, lots of artists, nature lovers, rowers, hikers, it's got that kind of feel to it. Recreational definitely, in the summer. 

Other Worlds, Pastel

The Neat Cafe housed in an old school house, where frequent music concerts are held. They are intimate, and of the highest quality. Behind the school room turned concert hall, is the cafe itself. Here they have a wood burning stove for making pizza, the best coffee you will ever taste, fresh baked goods, other delectables, plus local beers. There's lots of windows too in this charming old building. 

We hung the show an a cold but sunny winter day, and let me tell you, this place is so full of character, and warmth. I didn't want to leave when I was done. I just wanted to hang around, and soak up the lovely relaxed vibe. 

The walls are all a neutral colour, and so I brought lots of colour, trying to keep to a theme of red. 

It's always cool to see your work in a new environment. I am pleased.

Thank you to owner Adam, for allowing us artist to join the creative bag of creation that is Neat, and to Karen Phillips Curran for inviting me and helping me to hang the show. 

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My next Haliburton school of the arts gig is coming up Monday June 29nth-Friday July 3

Come and take a refresher and enjoy the summery atmosphere of Haliburton. There's always a lot going on in Haliburton every summer, the classes at the art school, local live theatre, rails end gallery reception, and many other fun and cultural activities. 

When you register for a workshop at Haliburton, they will have all sorts of listings for different types of accommodation. Many people come in groups and rent a cottage for the week. It makes the week affordable, and you can share your experience with all you cottage mates at the end of the day. I find it makes for a fun and rich time! To see those classes and learn more, go to www.hsta.ca .

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There's another announcement almost ready to come out. I will amend this next week if it all works out. What I can say right now, is that I have been asked back to the McMichaels Master class series this coming fall. I'll be teaching a weekend workshop in Pastel and the Figure that I am really excited about. It's a workshop that has been forming in my head for some time. It's about applying pastel in many experimental ways, original mark making, it's about fun with colour, and letting loose.  

The dates for this workshop are Sept. 5th & 6th. Mark your calendars Toronto people!

Of course you all know about my next Italy trip! It's Tuscany and the Amalfi Coast, Oct. 17-31

 Everything about this trip is new, and I'm really happy and looking forward to working with my partners for this trip, Angus and Tanya of Chirriposa Retreats. 

We call them Tangus. Tangus were my hosts in Canaan das rivas this past January/February. Thanks guys, for making me feel so welcome in your community. My visit was a very civilized way of working out all the details for Tuscany. Both Tania and Angus speak Italian fluently and spent lots of time roaming the countryside where we'll be.

Here is Tania, at her birthday party! That smile never left her!!

And here is Angus, the good hubby, delivering what's really important, the cake. 

Further to this, I am hosting an free information evening about Tuscany 2015, at Simply Biscotti, 354 Preston St., on Thursday March 19nth at 7 pm. If you want to come and dream, just rsvp to margferraro@xplornet.ca

Love to have ya there. Plus, Biscotti has serious Italian offerings to tempt you. Cannoli, look out!

Coming to one of these presentations allows you to get a better idea of what we'll be doing, where we will be staying and taking excursions to. It's your opportunity to ask any questions at all, meet the teach, and others who may be coming on the trip. 

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Can it really be happening? Am I already dreaming up unbelievable ideas for travel and art the following year? Just tempting you to stay reading, and get ready for unbelievable journeys with Ferraro Art Workshops. 

You'll be hearing from me soon! In closing, I'd like to share good words for plein air painting from one of the most revered painters of Tuscany, our dear Leonardo.

"Look at light and admire its beauty. Close your eyes, and then look again: what you saw is no longer there; and what you will see later is not yet. " (Leonardo da Vinci)

Travel Day: Talamanca Mountians to OSA

                                       

     Nothing will match the experience of pulling into our mountain lodge, www.dantica.com, and seeing the main lodge at night, all lit up with lovely and unusual wall fireplaces, while observing the full moon and sparklers outside. THAT was MAGIC. Dantica is at a very high elevation, around 9000 feet. Lovely and cool in the morning, hot through the day, and cool again around late afternoon. 

With floor to ceiling windows, this was the view from my bedroom.

Today we had to leave our lovely resort in the Talamanca Mountains. It was three days of spectacular mountain scenery. I’m pretty proud of my students, who tackled deep mountain vistas, flowers, roof tops, bird baths, trees, and forests. It doesn’t take much time to get a lot of work under our belts. Here is some of their work:

 A Little Travel Time,....

Now, we have been on our air conditioned coach, lounging the coastal beaches and lagoons on the west side of Costa Rica, on our way to the OSA peninsula, the southern most Peninsula on the Pacific side. Geography is greatly changed, lots more varied trees, more pasture land, and better roads. We had a very special unplanned experience today. While driving along around 10 am., our driver spotted a Sloth. There are many Sloths in this area, but it is extremely rare for them to leave the canopy of the forest. We found this young guy just on the side of the road. At first I thought he was injured, but no. They are just very slow moving animals. Amazing Martine went right over to him and very carefully turned him away from the road, and he slowly went to a tree and began to climb. The old cameras were a clicking something fierce, as we watched him slowly get through some long grass, then up this tree. 

Martine, deftly directing the Sloth away from traffic

moving very slowly on short hind legs

then quickly up the tree, away from us, and all the cameras.

Sloths are beige coloured, their fur is porous and not soft. They have a brown line down the centre of their back, as this is where water runs off their back, and whole body, in order to keep them warm. The result is the fur changes colour in this area, turning it chocolate brown. There are many more Sloths than Howler monkeys in the area. Why? Because they easily hide with their neutral coloured fur, making them much less identifiable than monkeys. They can even grow moss on their fur, which further camouflages them, and they can even feed off the moss, growing right on them!

Sloths eat many toxic forest leaves, taking 3 weeks to digest their meal and excrete it. They excrete at the bottom of trees that they live in, so as to nutrify their own environment. So the cycle continues,…

On the the OSA

We’ve skipped through climate zones, and now will easily get used to hot and balmy. We’ve just stopped to see these large rock formations, that are perfect spherical balls.  There are different theories as to how they have come about, how they were formed, and how did they get to where they are? Found on Costa Rican Islands, and in southern Costa Rica in general, they have remained a mystery to all. If you’d like to suggest an origin, just e-mail me, and I'll include it on this post. Here they are: 

Here’s Jan, demonstrating how large these mystery balls are,…although there are many of them in various sizes.

Weird Huh?

Ok. Our travel day to the OSA was a big day. Many sights. The sloth was quite the adventure. So was getting to our beach house. The word palatial comes to mind. But I have a serious swim to get under my belt. Adios for now!

Days are flying by, each day, new discoveries. Too many to tell at once! I’ll just have to keep writing about Costa Rica long after I return, like I did last year. 

Yesterday we hiked up to Cloudbridge. I had met Linda Moskalyk at several social events. She is an arborist and artist, and her husband Tom manages Cloudbridge. Together, they own a home and lovely art gallery up there too. She made us tea after the long steep climb up, and was patient as I plied her with questions about Cloudbridge, and culture in general within Costa Rica. 

Basically Cloudbridge is a reserve that used to be pasture land. A lot of work has gone into re-foresting the 700 acre reserve on Chirripo Mountain, the highest mountain in Costa Rica, and the 2nd highest Mountain in all of central America. 

For the reforestation, some of it has been planted, some is natural regeneration, and some is old growth forest.  There is a mix of pioneer (fast growing trees that die and act as mulch for longer lasting trees) and climax species (trees that take longer to grow and eventually become the canopy of the forest).  They plant both.  All trees are native and they are grown in a tree nursery from seeds they collect in the old growth forest.

Linda helps Tom with all of the projects, as her experience as an arborist back in Canada (Saskatoon, Saskatchewan!) comes in handy, especially with the reforestation efforts.  They also use the studio as an information centre for the tourists.  That is why they opened it to the public.  It’s not often they see all of the people out hiking on our trails.  When they stop in at the studio they can give them information about the importance of forests, our conservation projects,and our education programs here.   Many talks are available about everything from wildlife to climate change.

Linda's art is also about conservation and when she has an exhibition she use the opportunity to establish ideals for a healthy environment through art.

To me, this piece of Linda's work really says it all about the whole region. Many trees and forest, but the tinted atmosphere due to clouds moving in at a distance is something we all observe every day and is very beautiful. Linda works in acrylic and uses collage and other manner of handprinted paper and other materials in her collage work. Her gallery is really lovely and worth the climb. Yes, it’s a climb!! 

Tom is the manager and administrator of the reserve.To learn more about Cloudbridge, you can visit their website, www.cloudbridge.org . There you can find out the extent of what they do, and if you're really interested, you can donate money, learn about how to volunteer, and there are a couple of good videos that give great background to what Cloudbridge is all about. Here’s the link: Watch ìCloudbridgeî by Garrett and Garrett Videography: http://vimeo.com/54011065

There are many hiking trails, a labyrinth, and many waterfalls right on the reserve that are really amazing too:

OK, OK, back to ART! Yes, I am painting. Many distractions here too. This painting is a flower that you see all over Costa Rica. A long and large Lily like structure, with either pink, yellow or white ends. The length of them is maybe, 12”? And who knows, maybe they come in other colours as well. I think their shape is elegant, and I like the tiny bit of pure colour showing through at the ends. These flowers were in my garden. It’s not done, but I just wanted to show you that I am working too! And there’s one last photo, and a very special experience I had yesterday,...

OK, here it is. The elusive Blue Morph butterfly. Martine Racette! You owe me a beer! For those of you who don’t know, Martine is my business partner, for all things Costa Rica. She has a running challenge to all, if you can photograph the Blue Morph, she’ll buy you a beer. They flutter very fast, and hardy ever stop and spread their wings, so Martine is pretty safe, as we have all been trying to get this one, every year I’ve been here. She’s a beauty!! Looking forward to my beer!

Busy 24 hours—Random Meanderings and no art

I decided to take it easy for a while, and got into all sorts of things yesterday and today. Last night, a bunch of us went to a community dinner of typical Costa Rican food, accompanied by some local talent, a 4-some of guitars. This is the happening centre of Mountain life here in San Gerardo. Kind of like the idea of these mountain men getting together to practise, probably ll their lives, and playing for weddings, and many community events. They all sang too. We has Plantain, ceviche, rice and beans of course, and two types of empinadas. All delicious. 

It was an easy walk from my house, and after dinner, some of the volunteers from Cloudbridge (I have mentioned Cloudbridge in an earlier post), found a transparent frog outside, so that’s my first photo. If you look at it from certain angles, you can see all it’s innards. It’s about one inch long, sweet! Just a little green, otherwise-it’s see-through! You can’t really tell in the photo but it was cool. Check it out:

This morning I was up early for a good long hike. It was awesome. Waterfalls, absolutely wonderful vistas of light coming over mountain tops, A lone WHITE horse, walking around on its own. What I love about exploring around here is the air quality. It’s just balmy all the time, not dry, not too wet (although Costa Rica does have a rainy season, it’s not now). Just pleasant and lovely most of the time. I try to get my walks down before the real heat happens. This old bod just can’t cope. Heat Rash! 

Back home, there’s coffee, rest, and putting my 5 day art challenge together on face book.

Today we checked out the Trout farm next door to me. This would never exist in Canada, but how sweet! They syphoned off water from my river/waterfall, into a canal/pond system, one bleeding into another. In these ponds are fish, and you can either fish yourself, or have them catch something for you. Cooked right there. It’s quite charming and beautiful, little hand made bridges where you can travel from one pond to the other. Check out my photos:

Miss you Canada! (I can’t believe I’m saying that!) Only 5 more days here, and I’ll be teaching my class. Still many exciting things left to do. Hi Everyone!

Every morning I get up and see a family of birds playing with each other, swooping and sailing around. I’d never seen this bird before and it’s intense colours made it a favourite. It’s taken me 2 weeks to finally get a picture of it, and I gather, this is quite a coo. I 

showed this photo to a local, and she says that although it’s a very rare bird in these parts, the area is part of it’s migratory path. If anyone out there knows more, please share, and I will edit this blog post. 

Apparently this is a baby, as the adult version has a fairly long tail feather. But the head is as intense a red as you can find anywhere, and love the limey green too. This bird comes and sits on my window sill and pecks away at himself, in the reflection-- like he is a wood pecker! Tanya thinks it might be called an Immigrant Bird. That’s it’s name!

Every day I get up early for a walk in the cool morning air. Once the sun comes over the ridge- 8 am., it’s hot. So I am up early, discovering side roads, secret vistas, and one sweet waterfall after another. 

Don’t fool yourselves- these rocks are gigantic! Is this going to become like cathedrals in Europe,….yawning and tired after seeing one more? Not yet,….

sweet side road that could well turn into a painting. Many vistas, many paths,….it’s all in your decisions, as the artist asks the most quintessential question there is,……Who am I?

I’ve had to put the oils painting supplies away and hope that the paintings will all be dry before I have to leave my mountain home. Just can’t travel with wet or even sticky oil paintings. It’s become part of my routine, to lay all the oil paintings out in the sun around 8 am. or 9 am., and let them sun for the day, praying for them to dry. They are getting there! This painting was done in front of a flowering bush, not an uncommon sight around here, in the nearby town of Canaan. Canaan boasts an Avocado farm, a cheese farm, a chocolate place ( where you can take a workshop and make chocolate from cocoa beans!) and of course, a bar.  It’s summer here now, and everything is in bloom. But then, when is it not? Especially flowers. Going for the colour as usual. One more layer and it’ll be done. Check back with me another time. Now it’s time to go back to pastel.

Entry #7 

On a Roll

I forgot how much I like working in oil. Yes, it’s the intensity of colours and smooth blendability. But what I really enjoy, (and oil lends itself to this naturally) is working many pieces at once. Maybe it’s because I have taught for so long. I am used to problem solving at each painting, and enjoy that process. So now each one of my oil paintings is a student of mine. I meet each one, wherever it is, and problem solve from there. Now that I have many on the go, and all at different stages, it’s very fun to review and work a bit on one, leaving it to dry while I go and problem solve somewhere else. It’s a bit frustrating, because pastel is so immediate, but if I keep my patience level in check, in a few days, I should be overflowing in finished paintings.

   Today is my still life day. I’m working 4 paintings, and doing a few tweaks here and there on others. I find the last few layers in oil quite satisfying, and really give work a more polished and finished look. So the patience thing, letting things dry to a certain extent, is really important.  Another skill, requiring that patience again, but also awareness, is knowing when you need to take a break. Making poor decisions from fatigue is a common problem. Keeping your energy at an even keel, allows one to continue being effective, efficient, and allow your motivation to endure til the end. For me, that’s getting these 21 paintings all down by end of work Wednesday. I will keep you informed.  

    So far, I do have some landscape, but a lot of flowers, some with mountains in the background. Three waterfalls, so far. I want the work to reflect the country, Costa Rica. I’ve also just worked out these stills, and I can see this may be a project to work out over many years. Each year, learning more about this wonderful country. 

    Did you know Costa Rica rates first of all countries in the world on the happiness index? The happiness index uses three criteria to judge by: life expectancy, experienced well-being, and ecological footprint. Here in the mountains, watching the local people go about their daily lives, you see people who exist in nature, tightly tied to community, it’s no wonder they are happy. This has nothing to do with how much money they have, or their ability to be independent. Perhaps it’s no surprise that different cultures may have different ideas about what happiness is. 

Rio Chirropa

While walking on the road, I met Frank, owner of Rio Chirrup, a lovely resort up here in the Chirropa mountains. I had a look around, and saw wonderful gardens, pool, and cabins by the water. Really lovely. Frank invited me to paint any time, and I found myself there right away. The Casa Grande at Rio Chirropa is really lovely, and the warm adobe style structure lent a great contrast to the green everywhere. In my first piece, I decided to lick up where I left off last year.For those of you following, here is my latest instalment of seating areas in Costa Rica. I am guessing this is #6. I liked the large window out onto he mountains and the green. Steven, the manager played awesome music while I enjoyed painting this.  

The next painting was as simple as turning my chair 90 degrees. I enjoy he multitude of possibilities without going too far. In this case, I was taken by the change in light affect from one room to another. Also liked the designs painted on the walls, and the warmth of tiles, and coloured chairs. People in central America really have fun with bright sure colour, and I relate. 

After painting for several hours, I was ready for a distraction and a break. Two young ladies showed up that I had met a few days ago, Katie and Christie. They are here at Rio for 3 months of volunteer gardening in exchange for a place to stay. What’s really impressive is their commitment to health, fitness and eating well. Soon, they will give a retreat on raw foods diet. But of now, almost every day, they are training themselves to be acrobats! Lots of you know my obsession with the figure, and my plan in the near future to paint acrobatic figures. There’s an absolutely awesome yoga studio here with high ceiling and wonderful views. Just a feel good place.  I wasted no time is asking if we could do a photo session, and I was rewarded. I’m not working on it at the moment, but you can expect some acro figure work from me in the near future. More impressiveness: these girls are teaching themselves to do this!!  Thank you Katie for you generosity!  Here’s a sample of some of the fun we had.