Patricia Harrelson

Recently, I mentioned Julia Cameron’s idea about Artist Dates, and it seems the mere mention of this idea manifested one big fat date for me. According to Cameorn’s description, the Artist’s Date is a block of time especially set aside for nurturing your creative consciousness–an excursion, a play date that you take all by yourself–quality time in which you open yourself to insight, inspiration and guidance for your art form.

My block of time was 5 days long. The excursion was to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland. The playdate involved 15 students from Columbia College and their instructor who invited me on the spur of the moment to fill a vacant seat on the trip. Let me add that the students with the exception of one were all under 30. Everyone was energetic, intelligent, imaginative, spontaneous, crazy to play, talented in a multiplicity of ways, and above all generous and joy-filled.

For 5 days, I cavorted with this group, sleeping little, playing lots, seeing fabulous plays and spending time in workshops with bright, incredible members of the OSF theater company. I’m saturated and sated with   “insight, inspiration and guidance” and plan to describe some of the relevant experience here over the next few days.

This was my third trip to Ashland and last year, I wrote about the trip on my other blog Twilightme in a post called Shakespeare TaDum. Take a look at that post for the kind of material such a trip offers in the way of an Artist’s Date.

In writing about this year’s trip, I’m going to break apart the experience, writing here about the parts that I think will serve as fodder for other writers while I report more personal insights on Twilightme.

Today, I will simply say that whether you take 5 minutes, 5 hours, or 5 days, I recommend consistently making room in your life for such dates. They stretch your perspective beyond the perimeter of your notebook or computer screen, offering incomparable color, texture, and novelty.

Expand our possibilities for such experiences by dropping a note in the comments about your most recent Artist’s Date.