Skill Level: Beginner – Advanced

This course takes place in our beautiful, well-lit, dedicated 2D studio, designed specifically to inspire focus and creativity. This 8-week course is for artists of all levels. Each week, you will work on individual projects, moving from initial vision and foundational skills to material exploration and style refinement. Under guidance, you will navigate technical problem-solving, finalize a cohesive body of work, and participate in a final studio showcase. Whether you are a beginner or a seasoned artist, this supportive environment is designed to expand your vocabulary, polish your skills, and (re)discover your unique style.

Fee: $335 (Course Fee: $275 + Lab Fee: $20 + Non-Refundable Registration Fee: $40)

Skill level: Beginner - Advanced

There are endless reasons why making pottery on the wheel has become so popular. The process puts us in touch with our ‘elemental selves.’ Creating forms with our hands and minds serves our desire to invent and realize our imaginations. The ‘farm to table’s movement has made us more aware of the relationships between locally grown foods and handmade wares. At Sugar Maples we celebrate this relationship by offering this dynamic and meaningful course. Students learn how to prepare clay, make pots, glaze, and fire. Also, because we have a beautiful organic farm right here on campus, you can fill those bowls you make with fresh veggies!

Fee: $385 (Course Fee: $275 + Lab Fee: $70 [includes first bag of clay] + Non-Refundable Registration Fee: $40)

All levels welcome

Nothing could be better for the ways you think about thinking, making, and being an artist, spending the 250th anniversary of the 4th of July with these two renowned and remarkable artists. You will experience fireworks in the studio and over at the Mountain. Learn dynamic problem solving, unique hand-building techniques, and this year, surface development, decoration, painting.

The Gills are both leaders in American ceramics because of their groundbreaking work and abilities to teach, guide, and support others in their own creative quests. Using focused spontaneity and predetermination, both artists exude unique gifts for communicating what a creative process can look like. There will be demonstrations, discussions, hands-on exercises, and heaps of individual attention.

Fee: $710 (Course Fee: $600 + Lab Fee: $70 [includes first bag of clay] + Non-Refundable Registration Fee: $40)

Some throwing experience necessary

Upon arriving at our beautiful studio, roll up your sleeves and get ready to dive into the worlds of the Moon jar and Tsubo jar, both important vanguards of ceramic history. This workshop will be a great opportunity to expand your wheel-throwing skills, achieving spherical forms through technique and shaping strategies. We’ll start with small volumes and find our way to larger sectional throwing/building. Rims, bases, and trimming will be important aspects of our exploration. To top off the week there will be a salt firing that offers students the experience of utilizing glazes that accentuate these voluptuous forms.

Sophie Kang Min Yoon is a first-generation Korean American ceramic artist from Queens, NY. She received her BA in art education with a studio art concentration in ceramics from CUNY Queens College. She has taught art within the NYC public school system and has assisted workshops at numerous studios in the metropolitan area. She has been employed as a ceramic technician, studio manager, and production potter. In 2025 Yoon established Long Island Clay - Ceramics Studio in Huntington, New York.  

Fee: $670 (Course Fee: $550 + Lab Fee: $80 [includes first bag of clay] + Non-Refundable Registration Fee: $40)

For Ages 5-14

Look, Listen, and Land: A Sensory Adventure

Look, Listen, and Land, is a transformative program where play and discovery take root in the heart of the Catskill Mountains at Sugar Maples Center For Creative Arts, a program of the Catskill Mountain Foundation. Guided by our team of inspiring instructors, young Explorers will journey from our spacious, light-filled studios to our stunning campus grounds to observe the intricate patterns of nature, tune into the rhythms of the wild, and ground their imaginations through art and creativity. Whether they are peering at the microscopic world or building interactive sculptures in the fresh mountain air, your child will thrive in an environment that seamlessly blends creative exploration with the joy of the great outdoors. Come build, listen, and play in a place where curiosity truly finds its home.

Fee: $240 + $35 Non-Refundable Registration Fee

SCHOLARSHIPS ARE AVAILABLE!!!

Scholarships are available to students enrolled at Windham-Ashland-Jewett Central School or Hunter-Tannersville Central School Districts.

To apply you will need to provide a copy of the student's most recent report card or school evaluation and a recommendation letter from a teacher.

Scholarship requests must be received by June 15, 2026

Fee with scholarship: $65 + $35 non-refundable registration fee: Total $100

If you are interested in a scholarship, please fill out this Scholarship Application Form BEFORE YOU REGISTER

If you have questions, please contact us at administrator@catskillmtn.org

All levels welcome

The Catskills are alive with nature. Learn embroidery and sculpt those complex, buzzy, harbingers of summer. And while we might not want to admit this, bugs are among our most important cousins on this planet. As you know, they do a lot for us. Now let’s do something for them! Students will learn to create wings embroidered on fabric and wire and then sculpt them into an insect body to create a three-dimensional sculpture of the beautiful, sometimes annoying, invertebrate. Students will be taught basic and complex embroidery techniques. There will be fun discussions and demonstrations on how to analyze the subject matter and then create a strategy for sculpting the object. This workshop is perfect for those who want to learn embroidery and for those who want to sculpt.

Deborah Simon’s art focuses on humanity’s discordant relationship with animals. Her sculptures and paintings of animals have been exhibited around the world. She has received numerous fellowships including the Chulitna Lodge Creative Summer Residency, Vermont Studio Center, Saint Ann’s Warehouse Puppet Lab, Sculpture Space, Marie Walsh Sharpe Space Program and the Cultural Space Subsidy Program. She has received grants from the Ruth and Harold Chenven Foundation, the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation and NYSCA. Following studies at the Repin Institute of Art in Leningrad, USSR, Simon received a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and MFA from New York’s School of Visual Arts.

Fee: $390 (Course Fee: $300 + Lab Fee: $50 + Non-Refundable Registration Fee: $40)

All levels welcome

This class will concentrate on combining hand building techniques to construct sculptural pottery forms. Enjoying working with clay will be our central focus in making forms in innovative ways. We will do a glazing intermission in the center day of the course where I will demonstrate my glazing technique and participants will have a chance to try their hand glazing on tiles that we will make at the very onset. Students will be introduced to classic “feeling” forms as well as going farther into more sculptural vessel forms that take into consideration abstraction and tension. Relationships to space, volume, and activated form will be emphasized.

Donna Polseno is a studio ceramic artist living in the mountains of Virginia, as well as in Liguria, Italy. She has maintained two parallel careers in decorative/functional pottery as well as sculpture, which has an emphasis on the figure and “still life”. She is the recipient of two NEA Fellowships. Her work has been shown in various museums and galleries both nationally and internationally. The most recent comprehensive exhibition of her pottery and sculpture was at the Huntington Museum, WV. Donna has taught at many schools including Haystack, Anderson Ranch, Penland School, and La Meridiana in Italy. Donna has been a visiting artist/teacher twice at Jingdezhen University in China. She taught part time for many years at Hollins University, where she created the annual symposium “Women Working With Clay” which she continues to help organize as the Founding Director.

Fee: $655 (Course Fee: $550 + Lab Fee: $65 [includes first bag of clay] + Non-Refundable Registration Fee: $40

All levels welcome

This three-day workshop offers an immersive introduction to cattail weaving, you will be exposed to some of the various methods of working with this versatile native plant, then apply them to a larger project. Working in a supportive studio environment, you’ll receive hands-on instruction and individual support as you work on a project of your choice. Suitable for complete beginners as well as experienced makers interested in working more deeply with cattails. All materials provided.

Renee Baumann is a Catskills-based designer, chef, and nature enthusiast with a passion for wild plants and fungi. Trained as an architect and a chef, she brings a creative, interdisciplinary flair to everything she does—whether she’s weaving baskets from local plants, illustrating mushrooms in watercolor, or whipping up delicious meals from foraged ingredients. Renee teaches workshops and techniques working with local fibers, with an emphasis on creating three-dimensional forms from bioregional components. Her work varies from traditional basketry using cattail and willow to sculptural felt and spinning foraged fibers. Renee teaches workshops on identifying and cooking with plants and fungi growing in the Catskills. 

Fee: $415 (Course Fee: $330 + Lab Fee: $45 + Non-Refundable Registration Fee: $40)