Artist's
Weekend
at
The Balsams
with
Peter Granucci
| Thursday | Friday | Saturday | Weather Changes |
The Balsams:
meeting room and Mrs. Granucci's accomodations
Dakota Pastels:
12 Sample packs of 8 x 10 Wallis sanded paper for pastels & oils
Back Room:
12 Frederix 8 x 10 Archival panels & Princeton Brush
RayMar:
12 Raymar 8 x 10 panels
Sharon:
bags, visors, dropcloths, nametags
Another view from The Panorama Golf Course
Thursday, October 19
We arrived on Thursday afternoon to glorious
sunshine illuminating the buildings and the landscapes with a wonderful
glow. I think we all probably took about 50 pictures each!
Everyone took time to explore the vast hotel and the grounds, and we met
for dinner at 6:30. Dinner was a fabulous 5 course (Appetizer, soup, salad,
entree and dessert) gourmet extravaganza with plenty of variety to please
everyone and accompanied by fresh baked breads. I wish I'd thought to
ask for a copy of the menu each night because now I can't remember all
of the choices that were available each night. I do remember that on Thursday,
a good number of us ordered the chilled pumpkin bisque and the white chocolate
mousse. We were a bit slow with dinner and got a late start for our orientation
meeting in The Wood Room, where Brenda and Patricia, our "day trippers"
joined us for the session. Peter had asked that we bring photos of our
best works so that he could assess our needs as a group. Sharon gave out
goodie bags with items donated by art supply companies (see Thank You
poster) and sections of plastic dropcloths and sunvisors with our names.
We discussed our expectations for the workshop and adjourned at about
10:30 PM.
At about 11 PM the hotel's fire alarm had us all scrambling to cover our
jammies and jump into shoes, but we didn't need to leave the floor. Good
to know it works and we could all hear it!
Friday, October 20
In addition to the fire alarm, rattling windows woke up a few of us during the night. The wind had picked up and rain had moved in during the night! Early Birds met in The Sunroom for coffee at about 7AM and then headed into breakfast at about 7:30. Breakfast was a table groaning buffet with everything from cold and hot cereal to freshly made donuts, muffins, and pastries, bacon, sausage, ham, salmon, scrambled eggs, pancakes, toast, english muffins, assorted jams and syrups, hash browns AND a separate table with an omelette chef and an amazing array of ingredients!
Did I miss anything folks?
After breakfast we headed to The Wood Room for our morning workshop session. Peter explained the importance of values and their relation to each other, and we then worked on Peter's own design for value charts and a picture using just 3 connected values. We all found the session frustrating but very helpful. Our assignment for the afternoon was to do a painting based on the morning's lesson. The session ended at 11, at which time we ate our boxed lunches (who was hungry after that breakfast?) which could have fed 2 people each: ham and cheese sandwich on a hard roll, deli pickle in juice in a bag, string cheese, crackers, a piece of fruit, two freshly baked cookies, and a brownie!
After lunch most of us headed out to the porch to brave the rain and paint the view of The Notch. It was a challenging afternoon, with clouds moving down the slopes, then back up, then into the notch and back out, colors of foliage, rocks, and bare trees changing with the movement of the clouds and fog. Chilled from the wind and blowing rain, several of us headed to The Tavern for Snow Snakes (hot chocolate with Peppermint Schnapps) and other hot drinks before heading back to The Woodroom at 4 for our afternoon critique and discussion of the day's experience. Peter was gentle but right on target in pointing out how each of our paintings could be improved, and he made us explain our plan in applying the morning's values lesson - it's difficult to explain what you were thinking when you were painting! Sharon had extra materials from donors and made up (extremely difficult) quizzes. The person with the highest score would receive an extra goodie bag. This night's quiz was a matching test of 25 common (and not so common) painting terms that had similar definitions. The winner for this night was Paula P with a score of 14 out of 25.
There was a wine and cheese hour in
the parlor before dinner and dinner was another five course gourmet
extravaganza, but with a completely different menu from the night before.
After dinner, Sharon & Eileen went to see "March of the Penguins" in The Balsams' movie theater, and everyone else headed to The Tavern for cocktails and live music by the Rick Erwin Band. We were all surprised to learn that over 2 inches of snow had fallen in the meantime!
We all headed for our respective rooms at about midnight, and had no sleep interruptions (other than wind rattling the windows) this time.
in a great spot in the main parlor!
Saturday, October 21
On Saturday the early birds again met
in The Sunroom for coffee, and then we all met for breakfast - a repeat
of yesterday's extravagant buffet but with some different menu items.
In our morning workshop, Peter had us set up a new and different value
chart, and we had to take each of our normal palette colors and match
them to the values, then lighten the darkest ones to match each of the
lighter values. Our assignment for the afternoon was to apply what we'd
learned to our paintings for the afternoon.
Most of us chose to remain indoors, several worked in The Sunroom which
has wonderful views of outdoors. Only Elizabeth and Sharon braved the
cold and blowing snow to work on paintings outdoors, and the housekeeper
for the sunroom area actually went out to check on Sharon an hour later
to make sure she was "still moving and not frozen in place on the
spot"!
We managed some fairly successful works and in our afternoon critique
session Peter commented that he was fairly amazed at the caliber of the
artwork that we produced in such a short time on both days. He was, again,
right on target in pointing out ways that each of our paintings could
be improved. Tonight's quiz was a matching quiz of quotations by artists.
It was so impossible that no one even handed it in! CHICKENS!
We adjourned at about 6PM and met for dinner at 7 PM, with Brenda and
Patricia joining us for dinner on our last night. See previous days for
comments on dinner - this was no different, just different menu items.
Even though the dining room was more crowded because of an increase in
the number of guests at the hotel, our waiter(s) on this night did their
best to keep us entertained and laughing. We kept teasing Fred, a baby
faced young man, asking if he was old enough to be serving alcohol. He
was proud as a peacock each time he said he was just barely 18 and was
a really good sport.
After dinner, most of us headed back to The Tavern for some social time and fun, again with live music by the Rick Erwin Band.
Addendums:
- On Friday and Saturday evenings,
there was a display table showing the presentation of virtually every
menu item from appetizer to dessert.
-On Sunday morning many of us again met for the breakfast buffet. Sunday,
of course, was a brilliantly sunny day. We had a bit of unpleasantry,
with several of us agreeing to be interviewed by the hotel detective
because Paula P was missing two pieces of jewelry and reported that
they had been stolen, possibly by the maid. There is a happy ending
because Paula found the missing items when she unpacked her bags at
home.
- Peter & Paula Granucci enjoyed a wonderful and relaxing weekend of
quality time spent together in a gorgeous location. With their schedules,
it's not often that they can just get away together for some quiet time.
In the free time between workshop session, they explored the property,
hiked up to a nearby waterfall, and did fun and relaxing things in the
area.
-Ditto on the rarely found alone time for Sue and Scott whose wedding
anniversary was the week before. They enjoyed a relaxing weekend without
the kids (although they did miss them)
