Let Me Bloom festival – calling all artists and teachers

Calling all artists, performers and teachers to attend our very first art festival. LAST CALL! Deadline: 28. FEBR, 2022.

Camino Art House is inviting artists, performers, instructors, teachers and coaches to participate in our Let Me Bloom art and self-improvement festival in Vega de San Mateo, Gran Canaria, on March 18 – 20, 2022.

Vision

Let Me Bloom is a mini art and self-improvement festival in the wild valley of Los Mireles, in Vega de San Mateo. Spring is the time when nature blooms and a new era of growing and maturing starts. We, as humans, need this growth more than ever. We need to unlearn our toxic habits and makespace for real, original values, like empathy, care, creativity, synchronicity and learning to live in harmony with nature and other beings around us.

Two essential tools on this journey are art and education. You can be creative or just let yourself take it all in; everyone will be part of the whole. We are inviting you – as an artist, performer, teacher – to use your skills and connect with our participants in your special, unique way so we all can enjoy and grow in different skills, like communication, creativity or empathy.

The festival will bea small, but inspiring three-day event in our magical valley. The venues of the different events, performances and workshops will be hidden in the land, in the caves, and under the trees. We imagine beautiful, inspiring and meaningful moments that we share while taking in, practising, or performing art in nature. The te mini stages will host all kinds of activities, they might be performances, where the audience is observing, interactive shows where the audience is involved, or workshops where the participants learn something new, or practise a special skill. The artists, performers, and teachers might perform their own show at one time and teach a connecting (or totally different) skill at another time in a different venue. We are all artists, and we are all students. Teaching and learning, performing and in-taking art are almost the same, we all meet in the beautiful line in the middle.

We invite all of you in the following areas of expertise (these are just ideas, suggestions, we are happy to enlarge the list):

Theatre / Theatre improvisation / Singing, singing classes and practice / Drawing / Painting / Free painting / The extraordinary world of illustration / Natural art making / Handpan music / Playfight, a playful method of connection and cooperation / Zen writing / Leaded meditation and visualisation / Collage making / Gypsy music / Jamming / African drumming / Dance / Free movement / Treasure hunting / Herbal medicines / Wild teas / Cooking workshops (vegan and raw) / Nutrition workshop / Food analyses / Enneagram and the art of acceptance / Whispering and storytelling / Men’s and women’s circles / Yoga as a whole / Asana practice / Mindful meditation / Music theory, where the trance comes from / many more..

Camino Art House

Camino Art House opened its doors in 2015. Since than we have offered accommodation and have run different projects with artists. This includes exhibitions, workshops in art, health and lifestyle topics, and many more events. We welcome travellers who are always happy to be involved in our daily life and share their own experiences with us.
We have an old building, which is the central house, and a large land, where the festival will take place. We have caves, meadows, and terraces to use. The house itself will not accommodate all of us, so we will open a special camp site for visitors and a special camp site for artists/performers/teachers.

Stages

We are planning to have ten mini stages. We have four caves that we can use for concerts, jamming, meditation, or other activities. The timing of each stages won’t overlap significantly, so participants can visit more activities/shows. We are located in a valley, but we have to be very careful with sound limitations. Our good relationship with our neighbors is very important for us We will have on-site supervisors, who will be responsible for safety and acceptable sound levels. .

Challenges

We are challenging you to keep the following recommendations:
1. Avoid drug consumption
2. Avoid excessive alcohol consumption
3. Avoid loud, aggressive behavior
4. Avoid creating dangerous, reckless situations in nature
5. Not build fires or use open flames
6. Avoid littering
7. Avoid abusing nature
8. Be patient and understanding
9. Be careful when walking around in the valley or in the house (including the patio and the terrace)
10. Be helpful and courteous
11. Be quiet and caring
12. Be an considerate smoker. Please be polite and caring when you choose to smoke cigarettes, and always collect your cigarette butts in your personal ashtrays.

We are sharing a small space in these three days, and the space will be filled with a wide variety of activities, so we all need to be attentive and patient.

Toilets/showers

The toilet facilities are limited in the main house. Please use the dry toilets and pop up showers. Please leave the places clean after yourself.

Quiet hours

From early morning until the end of breakfast we will follow the rule of quiet hours, which means that talking, using the phones or other devices are not allowed , so we can enjoy the sounds of nature and our inner silence. We can take a moment to look back to our last day and take in all the benefits of our participation in the festival.
In the night we need to finish all loud activity before 11pm.

Accommodation//food

We offer free camping to our artists/performers/teachers. The area will be separated from the visitor’s camp site. We provide complimentary food three times a day. Drinking water is available all the times.

Benefits and Pay

We offer 100% funds from ticket sales to our artists/performers, instructors/teachers/coaches. This means that this 100% will be shared with all of you who are willing to participate/perform in this festival. Beside this, you will enjoy accommodation and food for free. Alcohol is not included in our hospitality, but coffee and tea are 🙂 Please bring a sleeping bag, as blankets are limited.

How to apply?

If you are interested in participating in the festival, please write an e-mail to bea@caminoart.org, or contact via whatsapp or phone on +34 633339903. Please briefly introduce yourself, your project(s), and write a few sentences about why you would like to participate in the festival. Please attach your portfolio or website. We are happy to see references of your work, if you have photos, sound recordings or videos of your earlier shows/performances/workshops please attach them or send a link.

The call is open until 15. February, 2022. Please send your application before the deadline.

We hope to see you at Camino Art House!

Narrative writing: going deeper

– a 2 days creative writing workshop –
Camino Art, Vega de San Mateo
10-12th December, 2021

Want to shape your experiences into effective stories you can share with the world?
Work with experienced storyteller and published author Philip Charter to unlock your authentic voice. This narrative writing workshop is your place!

Located in the beautiful surroundings of Vega de San Mateo, this weekend writing retreat will get your head out of the city and your stories onto the page.

It doesn’t matter if you are a first-time writer or an accomplished storyteller, an English learner or native-speaker, these inclusive and practical workshops will inspire you to get writing and stay motivated. Transform your work and reach your writing goals.

What you’ll get:

Four 60-minute writing workshops: Narrative Time, Real-Life Dialogue, Framing Stories, and Sound in Writing.
Campfire storytelling group session
Book exchange and discussion
A one-to-one feedback session with Philip
The opportunity to read at the story performance event
All accommodation included (shared or private)
All meals included (vegan options available)
Morning yoga session with Bea

Benefits:

Improved understanding of writing technique and story
Opportunity to meet and inspire other writers
Feedback on your work and tips for steps toward publication
Reading recommendations
Increased sense of focus and connection with nature

Schedule:

Friday 10th December

6pm Registration
7pm Dinner
8pm Story campfire session

Saturday 11th December

8 am Yoga
9am Breakfast
9.30-10.30am Workshop: Using Time in Narrative (60 minutes)
Break
11am – 12am Workshop: Real-Life Dialogue (60 minutes) – write and perform two-minute plays.
Lunch
Individual feedback sessions / personal writing time (all afternoon)
7pm Dinner
8pm Book exchange + reading from Philip’s book The Fisherwoman and other stories.

Sunday 11th December

8am Yoga
9am Breakfast
9.30-10.30am Workshop: Framing Stories (60 minutes)
Break
11am-12am Workshop: Sound in writing (60 minutes)
Lunch
Personal writing time.
4pm Story Performance event – Reading of final pieces. (6pm finish)

Hosts:

narrative writing workshopPhilip Charter is an award-winning author and writing coach who teaches non-native speakers. He has authored two collections of short fiction, Foreign Voices and The Fisherwoman and other stories. His debut novella will be published by V Press in 2022. He hates oranges, but likes orange cats.
Website: philipcharter.com

narrative writing workshopBea Baltavari is founder of Camino Art House, hatha yoga and vipassana meditaion teacher, traditional thai masseur, passionate cook and art lover, enjoys to create space to inspire others, also enjoys to bring people out from their comfort zone.

Prices:

Two nights accommodation – shared – 99 Euro per person
Two nights accommodation – private – 139 Euro per person
(2 x Dinner, Breakfast, Lunch + tea/coffee and snacks included)
Limited to 12 people (Covid compliance)

What to bring:

Warm / waterproof clothes
Books to exchange
Notebook + pen
Alcoholic / non-alcoholic drinks

How to book: email caminoarthostel@gmail.com to reserve, then confirm by paying a deposit of 50 Euros.

Create to Connect: a journey of self-expression

We invite you to explore the beauty and the power of your Creative Energy to discover and nurture your Authentic Self and enjoy your self-expression. Create to Connect is a Creative Inner Journey of self-exploration, self-expression, and transformation through artistic tools. It will be a journey inside us to process who we are in this particular moment of our life and becoming aware of all the aspects of ourselves.

Expressive Art is a safe and sacred space that allow us to fully explore and express our emotions, needs and wishes. Through the creative process, we can Connect with our Inner self, unlock our full potential and open the Heart for a Personal Re-birth. This can support us in moving forward in our lives, be more aware, use personal resources outside the workshop space, built authentic relationships.

Through this creative journey, we can connect (or re-connect?) not only with us but also with the the others, we can create interpersonal connections and discover our Inner self in the stories of the others and thanks to the process of the the others. The power of the creative energy of the Group is a wonderful gift to experience.

The Process

Our instructor and guide, Flavia Santillo will promote a safe and positive space that helps participants in the creative process, self-expression and the self exploration. All workshops are based on holistic approach where the Body movement and expression are the important key of self development and healing. In each session she will guide you through different artistic exercises and task that combine Body, Creativity and Guided meditation/visualization, in particular they include Intuitive Painting, Expressive Movement, Drama and Journaling.

Every workshop always start with a Welcome Circle , followed by a Body activity (ex. breathing, gentle warm-up, expressive movement) linked by a deep and emotional work through other artistic tools. Guided meditation and visualization help us to be in touch with our Inner world and awake our intuition. Sharing Circle will be an intense end important moment that gently will lead us to the end the session.

The Program

Friday 19.11

17.00-19.00h Welcome Circle and I AM ME workshop
(creative presentation from participants)
Dinner
camp fire

Saturday 20.11

8.30h Breakfast
10.00-13.00h CREATE TO CONNECT workshop
(Guided imagery -Expressive Movement- Journaling)
Lunch
15.30-18.00h LIGHT AND SHADOW: HEALING MASKS workshop
(Drama, Movement practices and Plastic Art (mask)
Dinner
camp fire

Sunday 21.11

8.30h Breakfast
10.00-13.00h INNER SELF AND INTUITIVE PAINTING. Shamanic journey. Workshop
(Shamanic Journey, Intuitive Painting and movement practices)
Lunch
15.00-18.00h ACTS OF FREEDOM: CREATIVE EVOLUTION workshop
(Medicine Dance, Guided Imagery, Painting)
End of program and greetings

Comfortable clothing is recommended

Our instructor and guide

create to connect
Flavia Santillo therapist
Flavia Santillo, artist, holistic therapist and traveler. She graduated in Clinical psychology in Padua, she had a strong interest in creative therapies and she took a second masters in Drama Therapy near Milan. She didn’t follow the traditional path of psychologist and she started to travel around Europe. She lived in Madrid and then in Edinburgh where she deepened new techniques and practices such as Intuitive painting, Mindfulness, Zen writing, Expressive movement. She promote self-development and healing workshops and individual consulting through expressive arts. Recently she is deepening her interest in Energy therapies especially healing chakras practices, shamanic healing and feather stone energy healing.

Everyone can join this workshop, whatever your skills or age is. You do not need prior experience. 

Contribution:
85€ / person (including accommodation in shared dorm, food and workshops)
115€ / person (including accommodation in private room, food and workshops)

Open Call for Artists – “My Nest”

playing with kids

Perhaps more than ever before, we as people have a powerful desire to return to a NEST,
a sacred, divine, holy place where we feel safe and secure, where we feel powerful, where we feel home. Each and every of us has a place like this, a real, pure, loving and caring environment to become isolated, to recharge and to be loved.

Have you found yours?

We are inviting you to reveal your NEST to the world! The contours of your NEST are limitless. It can be a photo of a real or a symbolic place, it can be a painting, a collage, or a sculpture, a textile, paper, or wood, and beyond. We want you to manifest and free yourself from your precious bubble, and to be proud of your hiding place, the sweet confines that protect you and have been protecting you in these unique times of history.
playing on old tree
Maybe you have not discovered your nest (yet). We challenge you to IMAGINE ONE! To create one! and to share your dream with us! Every nest is a majestic one within itself.

So, we are accepting every type and variety of art piece(s), made with any kind of technique and material, in any size and shape. You can send your work in digital format to caminoarthostel@gmail.com, or bring the original until the 15th February (9pm) to Camino Art Hostel, or we have an address too in Las Palmas.
nesting on the shore

Each and every art piece will be presented. The jury will choose one artwork in each creative category (e.g visual, graphic, plastic arts..). The artists of the chosen pieces are welcome to our Artist Residency program in 2021.
“The Nest” exhibition will be held at Camino Art Hostel, from the 22nd of February, about the opening event we will inform the public later.

We are inviting artists from all around planet Earth, you don’t need to be resident on Gran Canaria to apply.

Art Sale for a new washing machine

Dears!
We need a new washing machine, this is very essential, and well, honestly saying, a bit urgent too 🙂 You know that situation now with all this virus flying around is not easy, and we are lacking of funds. So we came up with the idea to sell some of our great arts, these paintings are from friends who are supporting our projects and are happy to offer their artworks for sale, so we can have a new family member. Yes, we do treat our washing machine as a family, we have to, and you all know this 🙂
Anyways, please have a look at these paintings and consider to buy them from us. This would help us a lot! We need to have 300 euros extra in 3 days, so please don’t think too much! If you don’t need them, please buy them for someone who you love and would be happy to hang them on their walls. They are really worth for that!
Smaller paintings (20x20cm) would be 20€ + delivery cost, larger ones 30€ + delivery cost.
To look at the paintings please go to Discussions.
So… ready, steady, go!

Natural Movement Miniworkshop and Cave Meditation at Camino

We are very happy to welcome Eréndira Reindeer (Mex/Fin) dancer, performer, experimental theatre actress and craniosacral therapist and passionate dance teacher, to Camino Art House.
On Wednesday (22nd January), you can join us for a short introduction to contact dance, and enjoy free movement in our beautiful land. Eréndira will guide you through your doubts and show you the way how you can free yourself, let your emotions drive your body, and express yourself without words.
At the end of the two miniworkshops we invite you to a mediation session in one of our natural caves. These caves are perffectly silent, and perfect little spaces to switch off from reality and bring your focus to your inner peace.
Of course, as always, there will be healthy snacks, good company and inspiring vibes. We finish the afternoon with a magical (controlled) camp fire with live music by Gregory, our sweet guitarist and performer.
If you wish to sleep over, we give you a special price of 10€/person, but you can also catch the bus in the night hours at 9.30pm or 11pm.
TIMING:
1pm _____ Contact Improvisation on The Roof with Eréndira
We will learn our movement range, how to fall in a safe way, sharing weight with confidence, dance using different contact points of our body so we can lift, roll, and enjoy our learning, listening to our partner(s) and softness combined with a flow. No previous experience necessary and neither to be a dancer.
Also apt for those who already dance CI but would like to go back to basics. We will learn by playing and having fun!
Contact Improvisation is a form of improvised dancing that has been developing internationally since 1972. It involves the exploration of one’s body in relationship to others by using the fundamentals of sharing weight, touch, and movement awareness.
2.30pm _______ Snack time and sharing experiences
4pm ___ Natural Dance and Authentic Movement Miniworkshop
We will move and dance in the safety and beauty of the valley, connecting to ourselves, and to our surroundings. In Authentic Movement we move with our eyes closed, always taken care of by a partner, and let our truest dance express itself without pressure, without going after it, it appears when we sink into ourselves.
Nature will always hold us with her earthy smells, poetry, silence, sounds and open arms. Welcome to a different dance, your truest dance, to a deep connection with nature and therefore: yourself. No previous experience nor being a dancer necessary.
6pm _______ Cave Mediation
7pm _________ Music, Camp Fire, Snacks

Contribution for the whole event is 10€

“Spy” for Psychedelic – Daniela Nusitz, aka Kornera about her art making

Kornera - detail

Daniela Isabela Nusitz (aka Kornera), a half Hungarian and half Gran Canarian artist is one of the oldest friends of Camino Art Hostel. She knows our story from the beginning and had been visited events for many years. We were happy to invite her to exhibit her psychedelic art doodles on the “Find love” exhibition in November, 2018.  We asked her about creating art, and about the arty scene of Gran Canaria.

 

Camino: When did you start to create? What do you create? What is the form of your art?

Daniela: I started to draw fantasy worlds and things that were far from reality already in the early years of elementary school. I like to use many different techniques, colour pencils, ink, black pens, acrylic paint. And often I use many of them at once, combined.

Camino: What is the process of your psychedelic doodling? Do you have an idea before you start? Or it just goes with the flow and the spontaneous imagination?

Daniela: Generally, when I am not doing an ordered job I just let spontaneous thoughts and inspirations find me, which might arrive while travelling on the bus, or sitting on a boring mathematics class so I just start to draw. Or I try to create the forms from an interesting dream. These days I make more art inspired by anatomic or natural shapes and forms, and I add my fantasy world while drawing. Usually, I don’t plan, I just follow my inspiration and the flow of creating.

Camino: How can you fit art making in your daily life?

Daniela: Sometimes it happens that I got so occupied with the daily job that I can’t even touch the brushes for half a year. I wish I had time all the time to make art, I could have so many art pieces! But still, I have a sketchbook with me all the time, so when I have a moment, or I have finished with my daily tasks I can draw any time even at my work, or on the bus. I used to work in a tattoo salon when I had much more time for art, and I could spend more time with graphic design and drawing.

Camino: What do you think about the art scene, art making, arty inspiration on Gran Canaria? What is your experience? How do you see the art scene on the island?

Daniela: I live in the south, a little bit isolated from cultural happenings. Most of the time I have to work. Here in the south, there is not really an audience for art, especially not for psychedelic art. It seems that they are more realistic and are more interested in traditional local art.

Camino: You know Camino Art Hostel for a longer time, how do you feel about this place?

Daniela: I know the hostel from the beginning when it was still located in Hoya de Pineda. There are several programs and cultural events in the hostel time to time, and if I have time, I love to participate, I especially like live concerts and exhibitions. I know Bea and her son Benji for a longer time, so I really like to visit the hostel, and there is always a chance to get to know new people and artists.

To see Daniela’s artwork please visit her facebook page: Kornera

AN INSPIRED PHOTOGRAPHER FROM RUSSIA

ALIONA YAROVICH, PORTRAIT AND FAMILY PHOTOGRAPHER VISITED CAMINO ART HOSTEL NOT LONG AFTER IT OPENED. SINCE THAN SHE IS CONSTANTLY PLANNING TO RETURN AND MAKE DIFFERENT PHOTOGRAPHY PROJECTS AT THE HOSTEL. IT SEEMS, THE PLACE INSPIRED HER PRETTY MUCH! LET’S SEE WHAT SHE IS TELLING ABOUT OUR LITTLE EMPIRE:

“Camino Art Hostel is one of the most beautiful and peaceful places I’ve ever been to. Knowing Beata, the owner, I can tell that this place is made with heart and soul and I think that everyone who is tired of busy life and things of that kind can take a break and go to this place. This place really brings you at peace and makes you feel in tune with yourself. This place inspired me to make my photography project ‘Dime’ about people all over the world and their stories that are worth sharing. I hope I can come back there one day and continue my project.”

Aliona Photography

Aliona Yarovich started to take pictures 5 years ago. She did different kinds of photos (events, weddings, children, individual portraits, fashion) and right now she is focused on portrait and family photography. She currently lives in St. Petersburg, Russia and travel quite often.
Aliona Photography
Please visit Aliona’s site on https://www.facebook.com/alionayarovich/ and take a look at her work.