Fire Survivor Support Group for Women in San Diego

FREE
Fire Survivor Support Group for Women
Restoring Our Balance and Sense of Safety after Loss

Open to women who have lost their homes in the recent wildfires.
Within a safe and supportive group of women, recover a sense of self and gather practical and emotional resources designed to nurture you through this important work of rebuilding your life.

Wednesday Evenings
7:00-9:00pm
beginning November 7, 2007

Location:
Pamela Underwood Studio in Poway
Pamela lost her homes/studio to two fires; the Cedar Fire of 2003 being the most recent.

Join a distinct community of women who have survived the San Diego County Firestorms and now must navigate the aftermath. During this 2 hour group we will devote time to discussion, resource sharing and networking.
We will focus on taking our thoughts, feelings and concerns into the realm of art making, poetry, movement and drumming. These arts promise to ground us in the here and now even while walking through sorrow and grief, anger and fear. In this group we will begin to trust the arts to bring insight and change.

No art experience is necessary!

Please Call Pamela to Register: 619-857-8820
You may join the group on any Wednesday….just call first!
Located off of Hwy 67and Mina de Oro
Poway, Ca 92064

About the Facilitators:

Pamela Underwood BFA, MA: Pamela Underwood has vast knowledge of how it is to navigate through rebuilding with the help of the arts. With her masters in Expressive Arts Therapy and BFA in art, she is devoted to other’s facing this Firestorm crisis. http://www.pamelaunderwood.com/

Kat Kirby, MEd: Kat is an Art Therapist with a private practice in San Diego. She leads creative workshops and groups nationally and is confident in the healing power of the arts.
http://www.2katstudios.com

Jane LaFazio, BA: Jane, a Rancho Bernardo resident, is a full-time artist, sometime art teacher and compassionate volunteer. http://www.plainjanestudio.com/

Coming Soon!

Remember my DVD? Well, it's almost ready! I hope it will be out before the holidays.....You know I'll keep you posted!

My DVD

The WonderChannel will be distributing it.

Poppy Landscape

I'm in a flurry of finishing projects. This is from the online Art Quilt class I've been teaching.

Black Bird

Also from my online joggles.com class. I'll be teaching it again next year.

Buddy

Buddy, 'helping' out in the studio. That's not a halo or a cone behind his head, it's my lamp.

No Day but Today

I created this quilt earlier this year, and just finished the binding.

Pumpkin

A watercolor sketch! Ah, it's been too long.

A new week begins.

My husband, kitties and home are safe. Tomorrow begins a new week in Rancho Bernardo, and I will go back to posting the creative side of my life. Do know that Husb and I will seek out opportunites to volunteer in our community, to help a few of the 900 families who lost homes in the Witch Creek Fire, just one of 6-8 fires burning in San Diego County this past week.

Witch Creek Fire.

This is the definitive image in my mind of the fire in San Diego. The red sign 'condemns' the property. The wooden frame with pink note below is a sifting screen, for the occupants to use to sift through the ashes of what remains of their home. The screens, we read on the attached tag, were made by nearby high school students...the swim teams, the basketball teams, and the soccer teams built these and distributed them to the burned out homes. The hand written pink note, tells the 'home owners' not to give up hope and to persevere.

Witch Creek Fire.

One of the lucky ones, in the Trails of Rancho Bernardo... Homes all around them were burned to the group by the capriciousness of wild fire. We spoke with a few residents on our walk, and the fire fighters were there, saving many homes and neighbors as the fire raged in the early morning of Monday, 10/22.
One women told us how she and her family members had evaucated their 8 horses, by walking the horses 4 miles to the nearest safe place. Her home, and all her animals were spared.

Witch Creek Fire. Rancho Bernardo. San Diego

The remains of a home and an orange tree. Over looking San Pasqual Valley.
This route is another of my regular walks, near my home. In January, I took these photos of what I called "The Hilly Walk."

Witch Creek Fire.

What was once someone's home in The Trails in Rancho Bernardo. The red sign, taped on the post, tells the owner of this home the obvious."Unfit to occupy." Not that it matters, at this point, but the homes in this neighborhood, which are just a few blocks from our community, are 1-2 million dollar homes. But the occupants are just as devasted.

Witch Creek Fire

While we were staying at Virginia's house, I had to have something to do with my hands. She let me use her fabric stash and I came up with this. You can guess what all those tiny red stitches and french knots represent. Husb and I spent 4 days sitting and watching the news about the fire. All our local tv stations showed only news, and with no commercial breaks.
Speaking of TV. When husb and I evacuated on Monday morning, and started driving and wondering where we were going. We thought of our friend Virginia because she lives in an area (North Park) that we didn't think would be threatened by the fires, and she had kitties. Husb suggested we go by her place of employment, since it was on the way, and get her house keys. Virgina (and dear friend Andy) work at Channel 8 TV. Well, while we were there, I was interviewed on the air at 6am. So there I was, only recently out of bed, hair stickin' up all over, and yesterday's eye makeup, chatting with the news anchors while our kitties waited in the car. Friends who know me were not surprised I ended up in front of the camera!
If you would like to make any donations to help the San Diego fire victims, I recommend the San Diego Foundation. They've started an After the Fires Fund 2007.

San Diego/Rancho Bernardo fires

These are the pages and pages of home addresses that burned in Rancho Bernardo, a community in San Diego where I live. It's how we found out our home was safe.

Husb and I were able to return home Thursday, 10/25 about 1:00pm. (Right after Pres. Bush left our community.) Our home was amazingly untouched. Very little ash or dust. We have electricity, TV everything. We are soooo lucky, and so thankful that our experience of evacuation and return was positive.

this morning.

This is me this morning. My husb and I walked a portion of the route that we walk several times a week. With the fires, and the soot, everyone was advised to wear masks.

the fires

I have referred to my morning walk many times on this blog. I walk about 3 miles through an area in Northeast Rancho Bernardo and Northwest Poway. Today, on only a portion of that walk, this is what we saw. Just one block east and one block north of our house, on the route of our walk, we saw 19 homes burned to the ground.

just one block north from our house

Another home gone. This area is called The Trails.

Looking east from Rancho Bernardo Trails area

We spoke (and hugged) two different families this morning as they stood in front of their burned out homes. One was very positive and spoke of rebuilding and being thankful they were all safe.

The front yard wasn't touched

This is the front yard of a man we spoke with this morning. He had just recently re-landscaped it, so beautifully. You can see his burned home in the center.

the fire

Here's another view of that home above..........He told us he came back today to try to find some cast iron frying pans that were one of the few mementos of a recently departed family member...nothing else was left.
He also told us that on Monday morning, 10/22/07, about 4am he awoke to the fire. Police sirens were blaring to evacuate, there were fire fighters in his back yard, telling him to get out.

Witch Creek Fire

The fire raged up from the valley below, burning many homes along its edge.

Day 4

Thanks so much for you kind comments of support and caring. It means a lot to me.
We are still at Virginia's with hopes of returning today to our home, which thankfully was spared. Thanks again to Virginia, for hosting us and to her cats Oobie and Rudy for sharing (though not voluntarily) their home and kitty litter.

San Diego Fires

As many of you may know, I live in San Diego, specifically the community of Rancho Bernardo. San Diego is in the midst of a nightmare of wild fires. My husband and I were awoken by the police department on Monday morning, 10/21/07 at 5am and told to evacuate our home. With just 5 minutes to 'pack' we gathered our two kitties, computer hard drive, our binder full of insurance papers. I grabbed just one other outfit, sweatpants, a sweatshirt and 2 right shoes.
We are staying at our friend Virginia's, about 20 miles south of home. We are 85% sure our house is okay, but can't go back untill the authorities say it's okay--tomorrow or the next day. We are very comfortable, and blessed to have the safe home of a good friend to stay with our kitties.
Keep everyone in San Diego in your thoughts. Over 1,000 homes have burned, 500,000 people evacuated, and more than 200,000 acres burned as of this moment.

PS my plainjanestudio.com website seems to have been hi-jacked or something. I'm hoping my dear website guy and friend, Fred, can get it back.

fabric book workshop

I taught a Fabric Book workshop yesterday at the Ink Spot, downtown San Diego. Six wonderful women and I spent the day playing with fabric. The location was really perfect, as you can see, we had lots of space. And, we were surrounded by my artwork on the walls, since I'm currently exhibiting there. Very nice day, and I hope everyone enjoyed it.

fabric book workshop

pomegranate dream

Every year I organize my local artist friends to paint/collage or mosaic mirrors for the annual San Diego Brain Injury Foundation. The event is this Sunday, so I thought I'd better finish mine! It's collage and stamped, using techniques I learned at the Traci Bautista workshop. Obviously, I'm still deep into my pomegranate phase.

BeBop

BeBop likes to be right next to me as I work on my computer.
Check this out: Janey on the East Coast already did a drawing of BeBop!

pumpkins

I did these as demonstrations for the kids I teach at Mundo Lindo. Soft Pastels are waay fun! I did these on colored construction paper in about 10 minutes each.

and another pumpkin

and one more pumpkin

Ellen's

Two of my little demonstration watercolors from the workshop I taught on Saturday.
I'm now teaching a mixed media collage class through the La Jolla Athenaeum! Well, at least for the next 5 weeks. I'm filling in for a instructor that had to drop out. Ideally this means I'll be able to offer my own mixed media class in the spring of 2008, so that's a good thing.

Saturday workshop

I taught another workshop at California Center for Creative Renewal on Saturday. Ellen's gorgeous garden is the perfect setting for my "Painting your journal with Watercolor" workshop. We had 22 wonderful woman attend, and the experience was excellent. So excellent, that Ellen has asked me to teach two workshops a year. I'll be doing the next one on June 7, 2008.
This is the labyrinth, covered in a red succulent.

Demo

We started the workshop inside the studio, since it was an (unusual) rainy morning. Here's my demo.

Saturday's workshop

Thank goodness the rain cleared to a gorgeous day, because it would have been a little crowded in Ellen's studio.

painting the pink flower

Afternoon sunshine.

painting the landscape

Sketching and painting in the garden

Fabric Book Workshop

I'm teaching a Fabric Book Workshop next Saturday, and there's still openings. Here's the scoop. [Email me if you want to attend.]

Saturday, October 20 downtown San Diego
10am - 4pm (bring a sack lunch)
Sponsored by San Diego Book Arts
$65 SDBA & SDWI members/$85 nonmembers, plus $10 materials fee
Create a small fabric book containing your story or poem. As you create your book from your fabric, you’ll learn transfer techniques to get your words on to fabric, basic sewing and embroidery techniques, and hopefully the joy of creating with cloth. Jane will supply the stiff interfacing for the book pages, a few book designs to choose from, fabric scraps, threads, and buttons. You bring an assortment of small pieces of fabric (4 or 5 ‘fat quarters’ (a fat quarter is a piece of fabric18x22”) sold at craft or fabric stores would be enough) sewing needles, scissors, and most importantly, your short story or poem. (Optional: sewing and embroidery thread, ribbons, buttons, charms or anything that fits the theme of your text.)

Video Debut!

I made this video from my digital camera ages last year, but only now figured out how to put it on my blog. It's entitled "Buddy & the OfficeJet." I'm sure you'll be seeing it at the Sundance Film Festival very soon!

journal cover

One of the volunteer projects I do, is to create journals for caregivers for SCRC. Here's the cover. It's made from lime green dupioni silk and a vibrant purple thai silk. In fact the thai silk is from an old, beloved blouse of mine, and that's the blouse pocket on the front of the journal. It's hand and machine stitched.

painting with wine.

Lucinda saw an article in the newspaper about a woman who painted with wine (like, dipping her brush in wine) so we all had to try it last night. We painted with and consumed it...at our 10 North meeting.

Mundo Lindo

The newspaper article on my children's art program, Mundo Lindo, was reprinted today in the Union Tribune North County Inland section. You can read it here.

JanesVille

hmmm, do you suppose it's a suburb of JaneVille?
(Thanks Kat, for the pic!!)

A girl's gotta have fun!

Yesterday, we spent a gorgeous day with our dear friends Dick and Kitty. Then rented a sailboat and we sailed around San Diego Bay all day and into the evening. Dick taught my Husb to drive, and I was very proud of how well he did. Here's me and Husb, I'm pretending to drive.

sailing san diego bay

Our hosts and long time friends, Dick and Kitty. We had lunch while sailing. Wine, cheese, bread and fruit--what could be better!

sailing san diego bay

Husb, enjoying himself! It was a perfect day! 75-80 degrees most of the time.

sailing san diego bay

Life is good!

sailing san diego bay

We anchored and enjoyed dinner and the sunset.

sailing san diego bay

Here's the 36' brand new boat we were on. We got back to dock around 9:30pm. Dick and Kitty rented it for the day. Dick is a very experience sailor. We had a beautiful and amazing and glorious day. Yea, life is good.

A few of my watercolor journals

I've spent a good part of the day, creating proposals to teach at Art Unraveled, an annual retreat held in Phoenix, Arizona in August 2008 (in an air conditioned hotel.) I hope to be accepted to teach a couple of workshops. I'm proposing "Sketching & Watercolor in your Illustrated Journal" and two art quilt workshops. Wish me luck, and I'll keep you posted.

Yellow Bird

More work on my Art Quilt Exploration class on joggles. Bird themes are week 4, and here are some bird line drawings, compliments of Martha Stewart.

Buddy in Pink and Orange

My online 6- week Art Quilt class started yesterday on joggles.com. Barb tells me I have over 30 students, but I haven't met them all yet. Here's a sneak peak at the project for lesson 3!

flowers from husb

Casual pencil sketch.
Hey, my Mundo Lindo kids art program was front page news in our local paper. Read the article here.