Category: Art

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Local Art Gallery is About to Happen!

The registered name & logo.

Lots of meetings, government regulations, fees, expenses, rental space, requirements and limitations, plus how a cooperative will work together as one, all seem to make it complicated, but it is slowly coming together! 🙂 Thanks especially to Elisa & Margaret, the leaders of the group! We communicate with each other on a private WhatsApp page and now have a gallery FaceBook page (public) with not a whole lot for the public yet. 🙂 And we will be the location for this year’s JIT – Just in Time for Christmas Art Fair which uses the same FaceBook page as last year and is now set for December 8, 9 & 10, 2023. In Calle 2 Plaza Atenas!

TENTATIVE OPENINGS are a “soft” opening on October 4 and a “Grand Opening” on November 9 with the Christmas Art Show a month later, December 8-10. BUT, note that there are many things that could delay the first two dates, though Christmas Show is pretty solid! 🙂

The registered name & logo.
The registered name and logo.
7 of the 10 to 12 participants we can never get all together! 🙂 By one of the flower murals outside our gallery space in the new Calle 2 Plaza, next to Linea Vital Clinic.
A shelf set up by some of the ladies as an example of how pottery may be displayed in the gallery.

Please Remember that Everything is Flexible now . . .

Meaning that the opening dates and the participants could change in the next month or two as we struggle to put everything together. But a very fine art gallery is coming to Atenas soon! 🙂

¡Pura Vida!

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A Call from My Friends at Maquenque

Today I received a phone call from the wonderful family that runs Maquenque Eco Lodge just checking on me and how my health is doing. They are so nice to me in every way and I count them among my best friends in Costa Rica. Then they sent me this photo of the table in their lodge lobby covered with my photo books that they continually thank me for and tell me how much their other guests enjoy them! 🙂 Just one more reason that I enjoy my retirement life photographing nature! 🙂

Charlie Doggett Nature Photo Books in lobby of Maquenque Eco Lodge, Boca Tapada, San Carlos, Alajuela, Costa Rica

¡Pura Vida!

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New Photo Book in Spanish

And if you don’t read Spanish – no problem! It’s a photo book! With only the title and introduction in words! 🙂 Preview every page by clicking the cover image below or going to: https://www.blurb.com/b/11661183-el-encanto-de-las-hojas

¡Pura Vida!

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Art Gallery Coming Behind Calle 2 Boat!

Calle 2 Plaza is under construction and could open within the next month or so! One of the 5 shops will now be a new Atenas Art Gallery, the name of which can’t be published until it is registered. So keep reading this blog for more information and see photos of the under construction Calle 2 Plaza and its flower murals below these first two shots . . .

Old land-locked boat on Calle 2, Atenas between Linea Vital & Calle 2.
7 of the 10 local artists opening a new art gallery in Calle 2 Plaza. Meeting here at the gallery location.
Continue reading “Art Gallery Coming Behind Calle 2 Boat!”
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Thank you! – ¡Muchas gracias!

My WordPress host, DreamHost, and a service company, Jetpack, just released the July stats for my blog “Retired in Costa Rica” and its related website, charliedoggett.net. And I say “THANK YOU” to the 501 subscribers of the blog, 650 FaceBook Friends who receive a link and hopefully follow it, 🙂 the 2 thousand views of my website/blog in July, the 95 comments on blog posts and the 158 “Likes” in July, which can only be made by other WP Bloggers, making those likes special! 🙂 I am fulfilling my dream of retirement with nature in Costa Rica that began with the adventurous move here in 2014 and the start of this blog. Thanks for coming along! 🙂

My site header pix of the valley town where I live, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica.
The feature photo at top is of Arenal Volcano.

I’m an old man of 83 years, retired from a publishing business in the U.S. who left the states in 2014 to live out retirement with the beautiful natural worlds of Costa Rica and its loving people, reporting in this blog. Even after a year-long battle with cancer, I’m having the best times of my life, my final years immersed in nature! I hope you will continue following my stories and photos! Your presence delights me! 🙂

That’s me planting an Almond Tree for the Great Green Macaws in the Maquenque Reserve, Boca Tapada, San Carlos in 2023.

¡Pura Vida!

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Gracefulness in Nature

This Heliconia Leaf seems to me to be gracefully bowing its head as the first signs of deterioration begin it’s final days with only a little touch of brown now and the folding of the once tall and straight green leaf. Nature as Art continues to inspire me as I find my own life slowing down and less capable than before. May I conclude my life as gracefully as this Heliconia Leaf! 🙂

Nature as Art

¡Pura Vida!

See another Heliconia Leaf in a further stage of death that I used on the cover of a recent photo book titled Designed by Nature which you can preview for free online. Nature is truly graceful!

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New HAIKU Photo Book!

A nice little 24 page book of Haiku Poetry printed over my nature photos and available to the public at https://www.blurb.com/b/11644063-nature-descriptions-haiku

Or click this book cover image:

Free preview of every page at online bookstore!

¡Pura Vida!

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Friends Find My Books all over CR!

Because I give copies of my photo books to hotels where I stay, friends who stay there later find one of my book like with this photo of a friend’s daughter holding up one of my books at Hotel Cristal Ballena, Uvita, Costa Rica. And if you ever stay at Xandari Resort in Alajuela, they are the only hotel that has a complete set of all my Costa Rica Photo Books! 🙂

Friend holding up one of my books found at Hotel Cristal Ballena, Uvita, Costa Rica.

¡Pura Vida!

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New Esquinas GALLERY is finished!

Check out the now finished gallery of photos from my latest Costa Rica Adventure and second visit to Esquinas Rainforest Lodge by clicking the first page image below or go to this link: https://charliedoggett.smugmug.com/TRIPS/2023-July-1-6-Esquinas-Rainforest-Lodge

CLICK this image of the 1st page of my ’23 Esquinas Rainforest Lodge GALLERY to visit it.
Continue reading “New Esquinas GALLERY is finished!”
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Atenas Artists Get Together!

Yesterday (July 9, 2023) I participated in a meeting of local artists with introductions and discussions on how we can increase local interest in the arts. It was held at the “Art House” downtown where a local couple give painting art lessons to all ages and are adding other teachers with different art skills, mostly Ticos participating there. The meeting was co-sponsored by the expat ladies who sponsor the “Just In Time for Christmas” Art Show each year. Plus a man was there who plans to open a little theatre in Atenas for plays and musicals, adding to the hopes for a growing “art community” in Atenas.

Those attending were about half Tico and half extranjeros or expats from all over the world. So it was a very interesting group and enjoyable to visit with after everyone introduced themselves with two interpreters available. Then we had a potluck brunch and visited with each other, when I particularly enjoyed a Tico young man and university student born in Atenas who is studying photography and he showed me his first photo books and shared about his work. Then near the end, Larry shared his drumming skills that led into a little impromptu jam session with others joining in. I am hopeful about the future of the arts in this small farming town! 🙂

Everyone briefly shared about themselves and their art in the “Art House” in Central Atenas.
Then Larry shared his drumming skills which led into . . .
An impromptu jam session at the end of the get together.

See the Art House Video of The Get-together!

Yes, I’m the funny-looking old man in the bright blue shirt! 🙂

¡Pura Vida!

My photo galleries relating to the arts in Costa Rica are mostly found in the folder labeled: PEOPLE, FIESTAS & ARTS Costa Rica with others in every trip gallery created because all lodges and hotels have art displayed! 🙂