Cafe Tissardmine

If you’re considering attending an artist’s residency at Café Tissardmine, I recommend you find somewhere else to go because Karen – the owner of the residency – is a deeply unpleasant person. She’s far more interested in correcting, contradicting, and mocking her guests with a regular mealtime barrage of barbed comments than she is in getting to know them and creating an atmosphere of warmth and kindness. In my residency of five artists, three left early. There were a variety of reasons for each one’s departure, but all included Karen’s abrasive personality and her disinterest in her guest’s comfort. The scenery is impressive, though, and the locals she hires to work there, it should be said, are generous and gracious. Things her website does not mention which may or may not be a deterrent: the plumbing may be iffy and correspondingly aromatic, you may have a parade of Sahara-sized cockroaches in your bathroom, the windows of guest rooms do not have screens and the flies, including the biting ones will visit, there are no fans in rooms to disperse the heat/flies. All this may be fine with you or it may be bothersome, but what is galling is that Karen treats the whole thing like an episode of Survivor and behaves as if anyone not as tough as she believes herself to be is weak and in need of verbal punishment. Leaving felt like getting out of a brief and abusive relationship for which I travelled a great distance and spent plenty of money.

This was a paid opportunity to inspire writing/creativity with a mentor. I found Jan and Karen fabulous as host and mentor, and the time there was exceptional in releasing new creative potential.