Skill Level: The ability to wheel-throw a cylinder is encouraged

Join us for 5 days of exploring imaginative approaches to creating zoomorphic pottery. Using techniques of throwing and hand-building, students will form vessels that incorporate animal figures by sculpting, carving, and alteration. Instruction will cover basic sculpting techniques such as the hollowing method and how to give their animals expression and detail. Katherine will provide individual guidance with each student to achieve a pleasing composition, structural integrity, and personal meaning in their finished work. The workshop also includes one glaze firing.

Katherine Maloney is a studio artist based on her family’s farm in Southeast Virginia. She received her BA in Ceramics at Guilford College and has participated in artist-in-residence programs, including STARworks Ceramics and as an assistant at Peters Valley ceramics studio. Katherine has taught workshops regionally and exhibited work nationally at galleries and prestigious shows including the Smithsonian Craft Show.

Learn more: katherinemaloney.org

Fee: $570 + $40 Non-Refundable Registration Fee

Skill Level: Beginner To Advanced

This exciting workshop will emphasize ancient Chinese methodologies and concepts for painting and decorating on porcelain greenware, bisqueware, and glaze ware. Processes, that include applying “Qing Hua” cobalt pigment, color underglazes, glazes, computer decal transfers and China paints, will be shared. Students will learn two major brush painting techniques; fine-line brush painting and board brush expression. Ways of painting symbols and patterns, like bamboo, chrysanthemum, orchid, plum blossom, peony, dragonflies, and the iconic goldfish, will be covered. By understanding color field and exploring the subconscious, participants will connect with their body, mind, and soul.

Sin-ying Ho received her MFA from Louisiana State University in 2001. Ho is Associate Professor at Queens College, CUNY. She has taught and presented many international workshops, lectures, and exhibitions including New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, and in China’s preeminent City of Porcelain, Jingdezhen.

Learn more: sinyingho.com

Phil Read received his MFA from Maine College of Art and Design. He has studied the art and techniques of Chinese Brush Painting/Sumi-e for 30 years. Read has presented workshops to artists and students from all over North America and exhibits internationally. He maintains a studio in Jingdezhen, China.

Fee: $595 (includes first bag of clay) + $40 Non-Refundable Registration Fee

Skill Level: Beginner to Advanced

Drawing from traditional English rush weaving techniques, this workshop will delve into working with locally harvested cattail leaves found here in the Catskills. This unique course will extend the student’s basket weaving skills through constructing smaller baskets and culminating with weaving a sun hat. Expect to leave Sugar Maples with the knowledge and practice to harvest, prepare and weave baskets from this abundant wetland plant. No previous basketry experience required! From the knowledge gained, students will be prepared to investigate Nature and select, harvest, and make objects of beauty from what they find.

Renee Baumann is a Catskills-based chef and designer who specializes in working with wild plants and fungi. She rediscovered her childhood love for basketry when she was unhappy with the sourdough bread baskets she could buy and decided to make them herself. She works in many media, builds cob ovens, bakes bread and pastries and obsesses over finding and eating wild mushrooms.

Learn more: instagram.com/renee_makes_things/

Fee: $340 + $40 Non-Refundable Registration Fee

Skill Level: Beginner To Advanced

Sugar Maples is thrilled to announce that for the first time in our history, we are offering an opportunity for those who would like to write. This will be a workshop with one of the country’s most special writers. If you are interested in writing about art, craft, or memoir, this workshop will infuse your thinking and writing with new ways of looking at our world of creativity. There will be discussions and exercises aimed at helping you hone your ideas, sharpen your vision, explore language, and experiment with the infinite ways of words. Learn how to construct and submit manuscripts for publication by journals, online media, and book publishers. Participants will have full access to our beautiful, sunny studio that’s replete with lots of table room, potters’ wheels, WIFI, art/craft library, and a supportive atmosphere. Note* You don’t have to be an artist to take this workshop!

Vince Montague received his Master’s Degree in Creative Writing from NYU in 1989 and soon after began publishing short stories in literary magazines. He also enjoyed a twenty-year career as an adjunct instructor of writing at colleges and universities around San Fransisco Bay Area. His late wife was a filmmaker and potter who died tragically in a car accident in 2009. During her lifetime, he never touched clay but after her death he began to study clay on his own. In 2014, he left his teaching career, reopened his wife’s ceramic studio and began making art for a living. Since that time, Vince has become a noted sculptor and ceramicist.

Montague’s stories and poems have been published in literary and academic journals, including California Quarterly, Westwind, The Florida Review, Talking River Review, Other Voices, Nimrod: An International Journal, and Green Mountain Review. He has been an artist-in-residence at Carrizozo AIR (New Mexico), Playa Summer Lake (Oregon), and Willapa Bay (Washington). His hybrid memoir, Cracked Pot, a broken chronicle of grief and art, was recently published by Latah Books.

Learn more: instagram.com/vincemontague

Fee: $325 + $40 Non-Refundable Registration Fee

Skill Level: Beginner

Last year, this revolutionary way of learning to work with clay was invented right here at Sugar Maples Center for Creative Arts. Have a blast getting creative in this workshop with three Dynamos! Come be a part of a new paradigm in learning how to work with clay ... under the guidance of three amazing artists. Students will learn wheel throwing, hand building, glazing, and raku firing ... each technique important to building skills and knowledge quickly. You’ll feel like you’re in excellent hands with these Instructors who know how to work with clay, enthusiastically share their knowledge, and set the right pace and atmosphere for learning.

Marilyn Katz has been studying both hand built, and wheel thrown ceramics at The Art School at Old Church in New Jersey for many years. She currently has a studio in her home where she builds sculpture and throws pots. Marilyn is a member of the “The Firing Squad” at Old Church, helping to fire the community’s gas kilns. Marilyn has taught ceramics at Gilda’s Club of Northern New Jersey. Katz is an attorney, environmental advocate, and citizenship volunteer.

Gail Rutigliano is a mixed-media artist who works primarily in ceramics. "I find clay to be a meditative guiding force in which I also use paint and collage to express how I feel about current events." Gail has been part of the community at The Art School Old Church (NJ) for over a decade. Currently a member of the school's "Firing Squad" helping to fire the gas kilns, she creates porcelain jewelry, and hand built, or wheel thrown, pots for home and garden. Rutigliano is on the Board of Directors of The Art School in Demarest, New Jersey.

Karen Stern is a part-time potter and full-time clay enthusiast from northern New Jersey. She has been making pottery for 15+ years, with a focus on wheel thrown functional ceramics. She has studied at The Art School at Old Church, Penland School of Crafts, Snow Farm and Sugar Maples. Her work has been exhibited at Old Church, The Belskie Museum, the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, and Noyes Arts Garage. Stern is a TV Producer with a pottery addiction and is on the Board of Directors at The Art School at Old Church.

Fee: $350 + $40 Non-Refundable Registration Fee

Skill Level: Beginner To Advanced

Learning to sculpt the figure is a process that is both exciting and challenging. With good instruction, you will enjoy the process of creating a torso that tells your own personal story In this workshop we will construct the torso using slab construction. Emphasis will be on the face and hands, giving expression to your piece. The incorporation of metal and fabric dipped in slip will give your work another level of freshness and excitement. Surface treatments will be explored on wet clay as well as glazes and post fired finishes, giving you many possibilities to enrich your final sculpture.

Lisa Clague is an internationally known sculptor. She received her BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art and her MFA from California College of Arts and Crafts. She has been the recipient of the North Carolina Arts Council Fellowship Grant and twice received the Virginia Groot Foundation Grant. Clague's work has been exhibited at the Macon Museum of Art, Georgia; the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Massachusetts's; the Udinotti Museum of Figurative Sculpture, Arizona and the John Elder Gallery, New York.

Learn more: lisaclagueart.com

Fee: $565 (includes first bag of clay) + $40 Non-Refundable Registration Fee

Skill Level: Intermediate To Advanced

This workshop explores a technique called "volumetric image transfer." We'll start with wheel-throwing and tile demos, then move on to creating silkscreens with your own designs. By the end of day one, you'll have your own silkscreen and understand how to set up a low-tech darkroom. We'll also explore form and function, and you'll gain a deeper understanding of wheel throwing and design principles. There's plenty of time to develop your work and incorporate image transfer into your studio practice.

Forrest Lesch-Middelton, a California potter and educator, found his passion for clay at 14. His functional pottery and tiles are infused with rich political and cultural themes. Lesch-Middelton is renowned for his inventive "volumetric image transfer" technique, where he screen-prints patterns onto wet pottery. He's a recipient of the distinguished Ceramic Artist of the Year award and holds an MFA from Utah State University and BFA from Alfred University.

Learn more: flmceramics.com

Fee: $610 (includes first bag of clay) + $40 Non-Refundable Registration Fee