Sketching is better
When you are with good people
Poets are the best

As you can see, my haiku skills are not the best.  The same cannot be said for the very talented haikuistes I met recently when they came together with sketchers for a wonderful, mixed-media creative day.

The idea for this venture came from Mark Brennan, the cemetery director of Mt Herman cemetery.  He contacted me and the haiku group leaders and began to pull together the details of a truly unique event.  The basic idea was that we sketchers would start sketching and the haikuistes would draw inspiration from our sketching the subjects of our sketching or some combination of the two.

We arrived at the cemetery in the morning, said hi and chatted as we waited for everyone to get there.  Then Mark explained what we were going to do, enticed us with the promise of soup for lunch, and in the photo he’s showing us where the bathroom was (grin).  Once fully informed, off we went, a bunch of creative people enjoying the day and each other.

  There we twenty of us involved.  I believe the haikuistes outnumbered sketchers, but it didn’t seem to matter.

I guess I was feeling lazy this day, or maybe the pain in my knee was talking, but I decided to draw only paces away from the site of the photo.  I decided to draw the cemetery admin building.

I was happy with my sketch but the time passed too quickly.  It really needs shadows to bring it to life.  But it was time for lunch and sharing.

We gathered inside where Mark had provided chairs and soup and we couldn’t have been be more content.   This was where the unique nature of the event took place.  We’d show a sketch and pass it around the room.  While that was happening, haikuistes read poems they’d written.  Bringing these two creative forms together was really special and I hope we can do it again sometime.  Thanks to Mark for his hard work bringing together and to all the participants who made it such a great day.