Wild Pages with Sue Schlabach!
Hello, friends! Have you heard?
We've added yet another artist retreat to our already bustling 2026 calendar:
Dates: September 13-16, 2026
Wild Pages is a four-day immersive art retreat where painting, memory, and handmade books come together. Through layered work in watercolor, gouache, ink, and simple printmaking, you’ll create a series of expressive pages inspired by place, home, and your own visual storytelling.
Guided prompts, demonstrations, and open studio time help you build depth and rhythm in your work before you bind your painted pages into a one-of-a-kind book with handmade flax covers. Come gather images, experiment boldly, and leave with a finished Wild Pages book that holds your marks, your stories, and your sense of place.
More about Sue:
Sue is a Vermont-based plein air painter, photographer, and fiber artist living and working in the tiny village of East Barnard. Her studio—housed in the former taproom of an 1830s brick home—informs her connection to place and history.
Inspired by the landscape just beyond her front door, her work explores shifting light, expansive skies, and the rhythms of the natural world, with birds frequently appearing as quiet markers of movement and season. She begins many paintings outdoors and completes them in the studio, working quickly with wide, flat brushes to capture atmosphere and energy.
Her work has taken her to Europe, India, Mexico, and across the U.S.—experiences that subtly appear in her approaches to color, pattern, and perspective.
A lifelong artist who enjoys artful collaboration, Sue has spent recent years growing her creative business—making art, teaching, designing, and building community. With more than 25 years of experience as a designer, art director, and creative director in art publishing, she brings both technical depth and warmth to her teaching. Her current practice includes plant-to-linen flax work and fiber exploration. She leads workshops in acrylic and watercolor painting, sketchbooking, flax sculpting, and visible mending.
Last summer Sue photographed a day in the life at The Smiley Manse for a feature article in Where Women Create magazine that was published in December, 2025.
