If you want a break from the daily grind, you could take a vacation. Maybe sit on a beach somewhere or tour foreign lands. But if you’re seeking a trip with intention, with a goal of inspiration, rest or healing, maybe what you need is a retreat.
Retreats are a way to recharge, heal from a life transition, grow and transform, or simply reconnect with ourselves. There are all kinds of wellness retreats, offering much-needed time and space to work on our spiritual, emotional and physical selves. In recent years, a different kind of escape — one that combines creativity, connection, and the chance to learn something new — has emerged: crafting retreats.
Crafting Retreats Are for Everyone
While having an artistic inclination helps, you don’t need to have any particular skills to enjoy a crafting retreat. Experienced quilters, amateur photographers and people who’ve never even picked up a paintbrush can take the opportunity to step away from the daily routine, spend time with like-minded people, and immerse themselves in a hands-on activity.
Craft retreats can run the gamut from a lighthearted escape to a deeply focused wellness journey; what you take away from each retreat (in addition to your finished projects, of course) will vary, depending largely on the intentions you’ve set for the occasion.
Before signing up, remember that there’s a very fine line between “craft” and “art.” Many art retreats bill themselves as craft retreats — and there’s nothing wrong with that! — but they might differ in the same way that a square can be a rectangle, but a rectangle isn’t a square. Crafts are encompassed within the definition of art, but the same isn’t necessarily true vice versa.
Camp Wonder Wander, for example, in the high forest of mid-south Tennessee, welcomes all creative types to congregate at the Lemon Lodge on their 5-acre retreat, “whether you are an expert crafter, or just want to get your besties together for a ‘stitch and bitch,’ or a coloring-book marathon for a special birthday.” They offer workshops in pattern design, scrapbooking, cyanotyping (a beautiful way of using UV-sensitive paper to take a “photograph”) and cooking classes, but they also encourage visitors to use their space in whatever way they’d like.
Hemlock Neversink in the Catskills specializes in more therapeutic art-making, offering art retreats and creative workshops that explore painting, mosaic art, candle-making, and botanical crafts “designed to promote mindfulness and self-expression without the pressure of perfection.”
International Options
Whether you’re on an inward or outward journey, the idea behind craft retreats is to seek inspiration. You can gain some profound insights by attending a retreat organized by Texas-based Dr. Ellen’s Tin Can Art, but places like Fleuropean — a chateau in Belgium offering “immersive experiences in the magical world of floral art” — tend to appeal to a different demographic. If you’ve got a case of wanderlust and have been blessed with deeper pockets, a number of organizations can help curate and plan international art retreats.
Groups like UpTrek offer upscale experiences in places like France, Spain, Greece and the U.K., featuring workshops in everything from watercolors and landscape painting to abstract art and whatever “creative awakening” entails. Similarly, The Blue Walk features travel journal art vacations, with daily classes inspired by stunning locations.
Wandering Women Retreats offers experiences with a more distinctly Bohemian vibe, emphasizing exploration while highlighting local women artists and craftswomen to get a better feel for each location’s culture. In addition to hosting a guest artist to accompany every small group’s journey, the retreat focuses on visiting and learning from a variety of creative disciplines and instructors.
Finding Inspiration at Home
Art and crafting retreats offer the irresistible combination of creativity, camaraderie and travel, but that doesn’t mean you can’t seek inspiration at home. If you can’t manage to get away for extended periods of time, you could benefit from the same sense of creative exploration by signing up for a local craft workshop.
For example, the Saratoga Joinery has fabulous classes, workshops and events that offer instruction in the art of woodworking, like framing, wood turning (on a lathe!) and the basics of the power tools often used in the craft.
The Arts Center of the Capital Region similarly offers classes and events for all kinds of disciplines: fiber arts, mixed media, printmaking, pottery, sculpture and stained glass, among others.
Many of the same artists that lead workshops for retreats offer instruction online, as well.
For example, it’s no Belgian chateau, but The Art Studio NY offers online art classes that are taught live, so anyone can benefit from the social connection and creative engagement of small-group art classes and tailor-made individual instruction. Signing up means you can attend a craft retreat from the comfort of your own living room.
Top image: Yan Krukau from Pexels, via Canva.com
