And we're off...

Map to YOGA GARDEN

HERE WE GO!!

Hanging wall garden arrived Monday, mats arrived Tuesday, Hugger Mugger order and postcards to be here any day now. We are good to go.

Dressing room should be up in time for class on Sunday and there is a bathroom right around the corner of our suite. Signage should be up by Sunday but just in case...We will be in Suite #140

Move in date is this Saturday. All classes move to the new location on Sunday. My website www.laurelvanmatre.com and YOGA GARDEN's website www.yogagardenmpls.com will be up starting tomorrow (you can find both in the upper right hand corner of this blog). I've left a map here but you will find all the info. on the websites as well.

My schedule will stay the same with the addition of a Thursday night class 6:30 - 8:00 starting next week.

Below is a map to YOGA GARDEN. 1229 Tyler Street Northeast, Minneapolis, MN 55413. Park anywhere you like...I hope to see you soon.


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My first Murti

My first murti from my friend Kristin who lives in NYC.  Kristin has been a major part of my yoga studies in NYC - taking classes together, letting me stay with her in her sweet little apartment in Greenpoint and has just been a very encouraging and supportive voice for me along this adventure.  And it's perfect that it would be Ganesh as I am having to step up and cross a new threshold to create a space for myself to expand as a teacher and student in an effort to do the same for all of my students.  Jai Ganesha!!

Gita

I got back late last night from a fantastic 5 days studying with John Friend and the Iowa kula and many of our very own from the Minneapolis crew.  I'm looking forward to unpacking what I learned from the Bhagavad Gita in class as we move into a new space.  It's perfect timing as the Gita in some ways is about the choices we get to make with the space we've been given to be in our lives as who we are here and now.  The pics are of a book I'm making based on the key words that summarize the teachings in each chapter.  I like creating a project out of my studies to give it meaning in my own life and teaching.  And I'm obsessed with making pictures out of type.

AND last class at the co-op tonight!  So I hope to see you - if not we will be in our new space starting this Sunday 10/2....details to follow!!!

I've been having fun framing drawings I've gotten as gifts from friends for the studio.  I love the drawing of the poodle.  It was a bday gift from my friend Janet who just moved to NYC and helped me out with some of the initial artwork I used when I was just starting out as a yoga teacher.  We also spent about 5 years gardening together when we had both recently moved to Minneapolis.  The clothes line and green man where drawn by her daughter Stella.  They are just really sweet and make me laugh.  The hands are a drawing I made in school.  

YogaGardens Gardens

Here are some photos of the beginning of YogaGardens gardens.  It's going to potentially get really cold tonight so I am pulling containers from my back garden to put inside and keep protected for the studio.  I love succulents and we will have lots of beautiful, bright natural light to keep them happy (as well as us!) through the winter.

I Got A Couch!!

I ended a long, epic journey in search of a couch yesterday.

At the beginning of every semester when I was in school for art we would set up our studios for the year.  The rooms were just big open studio spaces with partitions that held canvases for our paintings on both ends that divided the studio up into 3 spaces.  2 spaces for drawing classes and just one big open area in the middle for painting.  So, on the first day of the semester we chose from a pile of chairs, easels, tables and only about 4 couches to set up our individual spaces.

If you got a couch, you scored.   As I said there were only 4 couches and they were in high demand.  There were at least 50 - 75 students taking painting and milling around the painting/drawing studios every semester.  Having a couch meant that everyone congregated to your area.  It meant having 1 or 2 studio mates to share your space with.  It meant community and everyone wanted to be a part of it and loved it when they were.  It meant influencing and encouraging and conversing about each others desires in their work.

My intention for YogaGarden is the same.  To create and share a space/studio where people feel comfortable to be together as a creative community.  So, you see finding a couch can be an epic journey for the right reasons.

Here are some pics including said couch.  The couch and rug are for the dressing room, the chairs are for the waiting area and the table is for my office which will be in the way back of the studio.

More pics soon.

Come Together

It's all coming together.  I'm so excited.  My good friend Ave Shalom, who was also one of my very first students, has been working away designing my logo.  She is also responsible for my current website.  She is an incredibly talented designer and I love working with Ave because we sync up so easily.  We met to discuss about two weeks ago and talked about combining an idea I had drawn out for a mural for the space and incorporating that into a logo and designs for the YogaGarden website, the LaurelVanMatre website as well as my blog and for flyers.  So, the pics are of a rough draft I drew out for the mural and some prototypes Ave came up with.  I'm really into the lighting bolts and stars that are meant to look like flowers.

YogaGarden Coming Soon!

Hello.

Thanks for checking out my blog.

I am in the process of opening a yoga studio - YogaGarden - in NE Minneapolis.  I will be posting here several times a week to show the progress of the studio as it comes together.  I'm having a blast shopping for furniture, playing with the layout, painting new signs and just doing as much as I can until I take the space.  YogaGarden will be opening in October and I can't wait for all of us to get in there and get started!

So, the pics below are from a photo shoot with Shelly Dixon of the Sunday evening class fame.  Paul came along as my assistant.  We had a really fun day at the Eloise Butler Flower Gardens and at Crosby Farms Park in St. Paul.  I needed to get some new images for the YogaGarden website (www.yogagardenmpls.com - coming soon!) for flyers so we decided to make a day of it and see what we could do.  I'm really happy with the results.  I hope you like them.  Shelly did a beautiful job and thanks to Paul for hauling our gear around.

New images tomorrow!