Writers, artists travel to woods for weekend retreat

By Kathleen Grohman

It was past midnight when several brave literature-loving Santa Clara students trekked through the dark woods with only two flashlights in search of a cargo net on the first annual Santa Clara Review Writers and Artists Retreat.

After mistaking a pile of branches for a tree house, and finding a real tree house complete with a basement, we made our way across a rope bridge over a ravine.

This rope bridge was made of a plank of wood placed at the bottom of a loosely knit net. We assumed this was the cargo net, until someone caught a glimpse of what looked like a huge hammock in the narrow beam of a flashlight. This was our real destination.

The cargo net stretched across a ravine and could hold up to 40 people. We got onto the net using the jump-and-roll technique and played some word games before heading back to our cabins. And that was only night one of our

Senior English major Julie Jigour, the editor in chief of the Santa Clara Review, planned the retreat in collaboration with the rest of the Review staff.

"I thought it would be a good opportunity for writing and art students to take some time to focus on their work and to collaborate with each other," Jigour said.

Fifteen interested students, including myself, drove up to the Westminster Woods Retreat Center to participate in art, poetry and prose workshops, as well as sessions led by professors.

English professor Rebecca Black lead the first session titled, "the integrity of the imagination," in which we searched through various books and magazines to come up with a word hoard (a list of 50 words we liked from the material).

Marina Shterenberg, an accomplished San Francisco artist, led the second session. Shterenberg's art is based on the concept of spaces and how people perceive them. After a presentation about her work, we all created sculptures out of rolled newspaper.

This session was senior Chad Eschman's favorite part of the retreat.

"I liked the way we all had to work together and how that shaped the project," he said.

The third session, led by English professor John Farnsworth, was about prose poetry. After hearing a few samples, talking about breaking the rules and collaborating with a partner, we each wrote a prose poem of our own and then read them aloud to each other.

That evening we had all of our workshops. A workshop consisted of students displaying their work or reading their piece aloud and then getting feedback about what worked well and what could be improved.

I was impressed both with the high quality of work and with the caliber of the comments people made. This was my favorite part of the retreat.

Jigour also enjoyed the workshops.

"It was fun to see how engaged everyone was and to see everyone's work," she said.

Afterward, we had a campfire, complete with s'mores and music.

The last day of the retreat, the group went to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The museum has three floors and displays paintings, sculptures, videos and photographs.

At the very top of the museum, there is a walkway surrounded by colored glass.

When you first walk through it, the walkway is very colorful, but when you turn around to go back, it is all black. You can see through the grated floor all the way down to the lobby three stories below. After having lunch in the café, the retreat ended.

Retreat participants were mostly seniors, but there were representatives of other classes as well.

Freshman Anna Paustenbach said she wanted to come on the retreat so she could meet other people with similar interests and be inspired by them. Her favorite part was Shterenberg's session -- and the midnight hike through the woods.

Jigour said that she hopes the retreat will become an annual tradition, but that it is up to next year's Review staff to plan it.

Contact Kathleen Grohman at (408) 551-1918 or kgrohman@scu.edu.