SwampFire
Twelfth Retreat: 2021
Steve Smith’s 4 Corners Gallery, Angola IN
After two years without our retreat, SwampFire members were eager to gather together and share the various ways we dealt with the CoVid pandemic, including starting new kinds of art projects. Both Rachel Baker and Mary Catherine Harper brought bookmark mementos for the retreat, one from Rachel’s 3-D printer and three from MC’s eco-printing process (first slide to the right).
Though we met for just one day (July 17), we produced a lot of interesting texts to share during our closing workshop. Besides hours of intense writing and discussion with others, SwampFire participants wandered freely on the 4 Corners Gallery grounds and enjoyed the beauty of the adjacent wheat field.
Mary Catherine’s three eco-prints and Rachel’s “Swampfire 2021” bookmark 
Dawn, Bex, and Eva loving the camera 
Rachel and Jenni together at dinner 
Sue with Steve, who provides valuable feedback to writers from the perspective of a potter and visual artist 
Alex and Dawn enjoying their time together 
Steve’s used to Mary Catherine going on and on. 
The wheat looks good this year.
Swipe left on phone.
Reflections by retreat participants . . .
SwampFire always surprises me. It always reminds me that thinking and talking about writing makes me love words more and more. Happy to have gathered with writers and artists again.
~Becky Miller
It was brilliant to be here again. I almost forgot the thrill of writing till I came by. Thank you for the great time. ~Jenni Repka
It was wonderful to reconnect with this community—I missed my friends and this creative space. I always end SwampFire feeling creatively rejuvenated, and it’s especially appreciated after a pandemic year.~Rachel Baker
SwampFire gatherings always energize me. But this year’s workshop has done more than invigorate. It reminds me of creativity’s power to sustain us in difficult times. Thank you, Fellow Participants, for sharing your wonderful creative spirits.~Mary Catherine Harper
Magic lives in this space when we gather. We hardly know it when we are travelling but when we arrive, when we gather, we are filled up with and cradled within magic. When we leave we carry it with us out into the world.SwampFire sustains me the whole year long and sometimes for two or three years, including through the year the world was in pause. I’m grateful to be alive and gathered with others, to have the space and time to create, the opportunity to support and be supported, the gift of sharing stories both written and lived.SwampFire is a site of transformation, a thin place in my world reminding me who I am and opening new ways for me to be.Grateful.Ready for what lies ahead.~Dawn Burns
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