The Artist Date is a dream-child of Julia Cameron. We’ve discussed her book, The Artist’s Way, and highly recommend both the book and the weekly date. It can be life-changing. It can open your creativity like nothing else. This week, we’re tagging along with Monica Sharman for an impromptu artist date. Come, get lost in a back storeroom.
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Meininger Art Supply is almost as old as Colorado. In 1876 the Centennial State was admitted to the Union, and five years later Emil Meininger came to Denver and established Colorado’s first art supply store. That was in the days of wild-west cowboys, pioneers, and the steam-locomotive railroad boom. Today, fourth-generation Meiningers still own and operate the H.R. Meininger Company, now one of the biggest art suppliers from here to the Mississippi. When it comes to fine pens, paints, and papers, you might say Meininger is the best in the west.
But I didn’t know any of this when I first walked into the Colorado Springs store on South Weber Street, I was there because my “artist’s bookbinding” instructor recommended their paper (and I was up for an outing).
Meininger’s paper.
I don’t mean the standard pastel copy sheets or white card stock you find at Office Depot. This paper is exotic. In a back storeroom that looks like it takes up a third of the building, they keep their paper supply in shelves custom-built to fit sheets two or three feet wide in the shortest dimension. Thicker parchments drape over spiraling rods like some kind of regal staircase. Customers can flip through smaller samples bound with rings, Rolodex-style. Browsing the paper selection left me literally salivating as if I was peeking into a pastry-shop window instead.
Each paper sample came with a brief description. Wood-shreds, cotton, flax. Grass, kozo, gold. Hemp, mango leaf, mulberry. Every kind of texture, pattern, color. No wonder I was practically drooling. But new, blank paper, yet without creases or marks, also makes me hungry because it represents words not yet written.
Photo by Neighya (Elné), Creative Commons, via Flickr. Inside photo by Meininger. Post by Monica Sharman.
Take an Artist Date? If you write about it, drop your link here…
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After reading this the other day (getting ready to prep it), I took an Artist Date. It’s been a while.
I lay, for a long time, under the big pine tree, and watched its needles feather the sun.
Any dates should be regular and frequent! Did you have tea with you?
not this time.
I just watched the pine and the hemlocks. Mesmerizing. Mind-freeing.
Wonderful to tag along and take a peek, Monica!
I love stores like this. I went into one in Santa Fe on the plaza (back in 2002) and spent several hours there. All the paper is handmade and comes from Africa and other places around the world. I bought sheets of different papers for gifts (I also saved some for myself).
Maureen, I’ve heard a lot about the wonderful art in Santa Fe. You make me want to go there even more!
This leaves me with a deep longing for an artist’s date for me, to me, with me. My first time, it would be. Thanks for inspiring.
It’s a wonderful idea, isn’t it?
Funny. I am wishing I had a blog. So I could blog about an Artist Date. And drop my link here.
I know. I have a blog. But I don’t blog anymore.
Maybe I will Facebook it.
Wait. This means I need to plan a date…
I was just thinking about that word, plan. Yes, there’s such a thing as a spontaneous date. But really, I need a plan…
“words not yet written…”
isn’t that what the date does? stir them up? feed that muse
. loved going with you, Monica.
You can be my muse.
Oh wait, you HAVE been my muse!
Meininger’s Art Supply…that was where I went on my play date…a place I’d stumbled into where time is suspended in wonder.
I’m not sure how long I wandered up and down the aisles but I do know that when I left there, I was coated in creative dust and bursts of hope.
Reading this post, I know what my artist date of the week will be…I’ll pull out some of the paint and paper and swirl colors around. That ties in well with the just-completed weekly assignment for the Poetry Workshop on color.
Thank you for the post!
Joyfully,
Lane
Oh! You’ve been there! Ah, we must be kin.
I’m so pleased to meet you here, Lane. And when you said “artist date of the week” I thought, “of the WEEK?!” I love that you do this once a week!
Monica…I’m local to Colorado Springs…are you as well?
And yes, artist date of the week used to always be my habit..
Of late, it’s slipped into the rather fickle date of now and then when I was in the mood…
But, I’m thinking that the mood best appears when I make it a habit to show up for it…so I’m aiming to reclaim a weekly habit of acting like I’m an artist…
A bit like cross-training does for the body, I’m hoping that dabbling in paints and paper again will strengthen and stretch my core joy of writing novels, poetry and, from time to time, essays and nonfiction.
I am! So if you know Meininger’s, do you know the other big M in town—Marigold? They don’t sell paper, but they know what to do with dessert, let me tell you.
I, too, have multiple interests, but I’ve never thought of dabbling in different art forms as being like cross-training. That’s exactly right, though, now that you’ve got me thinking about it.
Love this Monica and I knew it would stir me so have been consciously waiting… waiting to read it for a day when I knew I could maybe just do it… get up and go… somewhere… anywhere… in search of sensory nourishment. It did, and I will. I wish I were near to Meiningers because that’s where I would go to see this paper staircase and maybe get lost for a few minutes in a dream of where the rainbow climb could take me.
I am so out of the habit of the Artist’s Date as well. Cross Training calls to me. Off I go… somewhere.
Donna, I’m so glad you will! Off you go! You’ll share about your “somewhere” in the link-up?
Finally…. phew! Good thing my Artist didn’t break up with me after putting her off for so long! http://thebrightersideblog.blogspot.com/2013/03/artists-date-long-time-coming.html
Miss Monica – what did it smell like? All that paper? Libraries, book stores, even my bookshelves, have their own scent…
And, what color did you buy? (Will you share a peak of your book?)
questions, questions, so many questions!
Blessings.
With everything else in the store, nothing really stood out in terms of scents. I bought lots of colors and will try to dig up photos. (I gave all the prettiest ones as gifts.) Anyway, I think I can find some. Just gimme a sec here…
Love that last line, Monica!
Thanks for making me smile, Megan!