I‘ve finally come to the end of my two-week stay at the Dorland Mountain Arts Colony. This picture will give you an idea of how remote my cabin was, though it’s a little misleading. The city of Temecula is only about a fifteen-minute drive Dorlandaway. Also, there’s another cabin up the hill as well as an office that part-time director and full-time visual artist works, a place where resident artist and caretaker Robert Willis and his wife Janice Cipriani live and another one where they watercolor. I once called in the only writing colony in Southern California, but I’ve since learned it’s one of very few–there are some smaller ones here and there.

I’m happy to report that while I was there talk was underway about a new cabin for visual artists they plan to build soon. The focus of the new cabin will be that it’ll be designed for a visual artist, though it hadn’t been decided yet whether it might also house a writer sometimes if a painter wasn’t there. The point is that the existing cottages, new and adorable, are great for writers and one of them is great for a composer because it has a piano in it, but there’s nowhere for a visual artist to really comfortable splatter paint or clay or other medias. This new one needs big empty walls for that, walls that can get all kinds of materials on them, and probably floor that are also fine for the same. As I mentioned in an earlier blog post about Dorland, the place is in the process of very slowly being rebuilt after a terrible fire burned the whole place down some ten years ago.

A third cabin would be wonderful not only because it would provide a great working place for a visual artist, but it would also provide slightly more of a community for the artists who are at Dorland at the same time. The same colony rules that must colonies use would apply–you never knock on anyone’s door unless you’ve cleared it ahead of time, any kind of loud noise is prohibited–but if some of the three people in the cabins wanted to plan a meal together, say, they could do so, or share work among the three.

Thank you, Dorland for, a great stay!