Camphill Village

I won't forget the last day I went to work with Eva. She was working in the house for the older villagers who require more care and the sun cast beautiful shadows on the comfy furniture within. Eva proceeded to start dusting everything in the room, as the house mother indicated, and I took a seat in one of the chairs and photographed her working in the sun. When she got to one bookshelf, I realized it held several memorial books of past villagers. I remember Eva had told me her boyfriend, Herb, died a few years ago and realized his memorial book was there. I started looking through it, learning about his childhood, when he came to Camphill very young (around the same age as Eva, between 17-19), and looked at pictures of his adventures.

Here is a piece of art that Eva did while we were at Camphill, showing a tea set-up.

Here is the portrait I made of Eva having her snack in the house in which she works. Eva is constantly checking in with others to make sure they are okay, providing hugs and always making sure she knows everyone's name. She is well loved by the House Mother in the house she works in (Eva is very good and thorough at her jobs, which include cleaning and cooking) and is always so polite, excusing herself whenever she burps or accidentally bumps you. Her joy is infectious, only complimented by the bright colors she wears. I will miss her. She wanted to make sure I included a vase with flowers and a cat, potentially Pickles, who also lives at Camphill.

I wish I had had more time to be with Charlene. I only felt as if I had just started to get to know her when we had to leave, but such was the structure of our course.

Much of the time I spent with Charlene was in silence. She’s a very friendly woman, and has a lot of questions, but she can’t always put them into words. She is strongly opinionated too, and has a lot of beliefs about the right way to do things, and gets perturbed when people don’t respect each other.

Mark did several drawings while we were together. The first one below is a drawing he said was of Sunshine and me (Sunshine is on top, with the purple/pink shirt and glasses, I'm on the bottom in green and brown). He later changed his mind and said it was of Sunshine and Jill, his house mom. 

Mark just turned 37 and is passionate about music, his work – especially in the orchard –, Harry Potter, and pesto pasta. He and I worked collaboratively on this; he had so many ideas and was so fun to work with (he drew the apple tree in the background, the apples, and Harry Potter in the tree). He keeps it real and never forgets to remind me: "You're a turkey!"

For my Camphill portrait project I worked with Gaby. She is a 44 year old villager at Camphill, she has been there since she was 21 years old. Gaby works in the bakery, weavery, and in the afternoon she manages the recycling of several households. Gaby loves to read and play softball. When I visited Gaby's room she proudly showed me her softball trophies and I included one of them in our portrait. Due to my extremely limited artistic skills Riva suggested that Gaby and I work together on her portrait. I came up with the idea to draw Gaby's lyre and let Gaby draw herself. Gaby also drew some of her favorite things like fall leaves and I traced over them. After we left Camphill I added rainbow strings to the lyre like the strings that Gaby has on her real lyre.

Here are some pics from today! They're a little blurry so I hope Anne can post the ones from her camera too!

I had been working in the CSA garden with Beth, pulling weeds in a light rain. I was happy to be working outside and getting my hands dirty because I had spent the majority of the previous day inside. I had told DD that I wasn’t sure if I would be meeting her to help out at one of the houses before lunch or if I would spend some time with Beth. She said she was okay with me not making up my mind, but that she would come get me wherever I was. I didn’t quite know what that meant because I didn’t have my cellphone on me and I was pretty sure she didn’t have my number. So there I was, working away, having the occasional short conversation with Beth, and I hear “Honey! Hey honey!” off in the distance.