Skill Level: Beginner To Advanced

This workshop will focus on technical skills, cultivating curiosity, and learning from the surprises that arise in a studio practice. We will spend time making pots on and off the wheel, discuss clay’s material poetics, and will prepare together for a salt firing. Technical demonstrations will include wheel throwing, altering, trimming, hand building, slab making, and slip and glaze considerations. We will fire the soda/salt kiln to Cone 6. Potters of all skill levels are welcome!

Katie Fee grew up in Low Country, South Carolina. Fee earned her BA in Art and Geology from the William & Mary and her MFA from Alfred University. Fee’s work has led her to kiln pads and clay studios around the world - most recently to France and Japan - as a visiting artist, wood firing specialist, instructor, and project manager. She currently works full time as Studio Manager for Theaster Gates Studios in Chicago, Illinois.

Course Fee: $500 + $60 Lab Fee + $40 Non-Refundable Registration Fee

Skill Level: Beginner to Advanced

This class will explore the world of plaster mold making! We will cover every step of the mold making process from start to finish. To begin, the class will discuss prototype selection and development. Utilizing found objects or sculpted clay forms, students will explore a myriad of mold making methods including draft molds and multiple part molds for complex objects. To finish out the week, the class will learn the process of slipcasting and how to make multiples at home. Mold making is a series of problem solving opportunities and this class will be catered to the students' individual goals - the more complex the better!

Jackie Head discovered her love of slipcasting porcelain tile forms and mold making while studying abroad in Jingdezhen, China in the summer of 2014. This experience heavily influenced the work she would go on to make while obtaining her BFA in Ceramics from Indiana University and MFA in Ceramic Art from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. Jackie has completed residencies at The Archie Bray Foundation, the Cité Internationale des Arts, and the Morean Center for Clay. She currently resides in her hometown, Indianapolis, where she maintains a private studio.

Course Fee: $500 + $90 + $40 Non-Refundable Registration Fee

Skill Level: Beginner To Advanced

The use of locally sourced, or “Wild Clays,” is hugely popular. Unlike commercially produced clays, wild clays can be highly variable and often possess properties that are uncommon, offering significant challenges to the production of studio art. This workshop will systematically demonstrate, step by step, how to characterize and incorporate wild clay into processes that can be duplicated in the studio. This workshop will address the unique properties of wild clay, blending with other raw materials to improve behavior, addressing problems, and frank discussions regarding whether the clay is worth trying to tame. For the first time in a workshop, students will be invited to bring samples of wild clay and have them scientifically analyzed so their local clay can be integrated into a Unity Formula. How exciting is THAT?! Don’t worry if you can’t find clay. This workshop has you covered. Come join us in the Catskills at the eastern terminus of the Ceramics Corridor!

Dr. William Carty retired in 2020 from Alfred University after 27 years as a Ceramic Engineering professor focusing on ceramic processing, traditional ceramics, clay bodies and glazes. He is now a consultant to the ceramic industry, lives in New Hampshire, and still teaches “Ceramic Science for the Artist” in the summer. He is a world-recognized ceramic expert and conducts research and advises graduate students at Alfred University. Dr. Carty is noted for his exceptional, and much appreciated, work providing links between artists and materials science.

Course Fee: $500 + $105 Lab Fee + $40 Non-Refundable Registration Fee

Some experience is useful

Come join Aysha for a three-day intensive workshop that will emphasize her unique approach to imagined space, scale, and the poetic properties of wheel-thrown and altered clay. Suggestions of terrain, body in motion, and flora will be explored through discussions, demonstrations, and hands-on exercises. Specific features of pots such as rims, feet, lids, volumes and form will be covered during this unique workshop opportunity. Students will be introduced to dynamic techniques for altering freshly thrown forms, expanding on their own conversations with porcelain.

Aysha Peltz received both her BFA and MFA degrees from Alfred University. A gifted teacher, she has led workshops all around the country including at Arrowmont, Alfred University, Haystack, Harvard University, and Kansas City Art Institute. Peltz has lectured at the Shelburne Craft School, Huntingdon Museum of Art, and at Jingdezhen Ceramic Institute in China. A prolific artist, she has exhibited throughout the United States in both group and solo exhibitions. Aysha’s work is in many collections including AMOCA, the Schein-Joseph International Museum of Ceramic Art, Jingdezhen Ceramic Institute, and the Huntingdon Museum of Art. Peltz’ awards include the Walter Gropius Master Award, and Emerging Artist Award from NCECA. Currently Aysha holds a faculty appointment at Bennington College in Vermont.

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

Skill Level: Beginner To Advanced

Concentrating on life-size portrait busts, we will learn to sculpt facial and upper body expressions, depict advanced emotions, and create a narrative. The foundations of academic proportions will be used as a gateway to construct invented figures! Exploring impressionistic gesture and color theory we will underglaze our completed sculptures in the greenware state. Learning the “inside-out” building technique we will endeavor to manipulate the figure from both sides of the clay wall so the artist can express the influence of muscle and bone and skin. Come study with one of the country’s preeminent sculptors.

Arthur Gonzalez is an internationally recognized artist with over 60 solo shows in forty years, including nine in New York. Awards include the Virginia Groot Foundation and a four-time recipient of the National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship. Public collections include the Museum of Modern Ceramic Art in Gifu, Japan and the Smithsonian Archives of American Art. His many Artist-in-Residencies include The Tainan National University in Taiwan, The Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, Montana, and the Pilchuck Glass School in Seattle, Washington. Gonzalez is a Professor of Art at the California College of the Arts.

Course Fee: $500 + $60 Lab Fee + $40 Non-Refundable Registration Fee

Beginner – Advanced

Handbuilding exquisite pottery forms is as ancient as the Craft is. This workshop is perfect for students who want to take handbuilding and creating dynamic surface decoration to a new level. Come study with this rising star of ceramics who will lead you through wonderful construction techniques that celebrate minimalist form thereby providing perfect planes for bold surface decoration using digital and analog approaches to pattern-making. Explore the power of line, negative space, contrast, and tension and their relationship to the forms you make. Analog and digital pattern design will be introduced, as well as embossing as an under-overlying detail. It’s complex and that’s exactly where we want to be. There will be demonstrations, discussions, hands-on work in our beautiful studio, firing, and heaps of individual attention. You can apply this to wherever and whatever temperature you want to fire.

Yael Braha is an artist of North African descent who received her BA in Graphic Design and MFA in Cinema. She has been an artist-in-residence at Arrowmont, Watershed, Haystack, Starworks, and in Shigaraki, Japan. Yael’s work has been exhibited in museums and galleries in the United States and Japan and is in permanent collections in the United States. In 2021, Braha received the coveted Multicultural Fellowship Award from the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts.

Course Fee: $500 + $90 Lab Fee + $40 Non-Refundable Registration Fee

Skill Level: Some experience will be useful

This is an intensive workshop for the potter who wants to gain the ‘chops’ necessary for throwing larger pots with greater volume. We will focus primarily on functional forms like pitchers, casseroles, jars, and bottles as forms with which to explore more advanced wheel throwing techniques. There will be discussions about shapes and forming, demonstrations of clay preparation and throwing large, and trimming/finishing. Attention will be given to the parts of pots that provide generous containment of space, and those parts that help to define or accentuate. Also, a range of types of appendages, like handles, spouts, and lids will be explored. Participants will get heaps of hands-on time, exercises for keeping the focus, and the always important individual attention. Come join us for this first-time hyper-focus workshop in our beautiful studio!

Harry Kunhardt received a BA in Philosophy with an Art History Minor from Skidmore College. A professional production potter, Kunhardt has produced work for Jono Pandolfi and Brad Lail, and makes commissioned works as an important part of his living as a studio potter. Harry has deep experience in wood-firing and has been on firing crews for many potters including Jack Troy, Susan Beecher, Pascal Chmelar, William Baker/Joy Tanner, and Arlene Shechet. His work has been in many national exhibitions including the Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show, “The Dirty South Cup Show” in Louisiana, and “Twin Cups” in Illinois for which he was awarded Best In Show. Harry teaches wheel throwing for Byrdcliffe Art Center in Woodstock, Kingston Clay Studio, and at Sugar Maples Center for Creative Arts where he was an Intern in 2016. Currently, Harry and his wife Meredith maintain a home, studio (28a Clay), and wood-kiln near Woodstock, New York.

Course Fee: $300 + $30 Lab Fee + $40 Non-Refundable Registration Fee

Beginner - Advanced

Explore the connection between form, narrative and surface design by drawing, painting and carving on leather-hard clay. Bring a sketchbook of your favorite source material and be ready to incorporate old and new influences to create a library of imagery that is uniquely yours. Participants will be guided in the process of distilling these ideas into dynamic, colorful surface design; giving individual stories universal appeal. This workshop is appropriate for makers of all levels. Participants should be comfortable constructing simple vessel forms or tile—hand-built and/or wheel-thrown—to be decorated in the leather-hard state using sgraffitto and painting techniques.

Sue Tirrell was born and raised in Red Lodge, Montana. Receiving an AA degree from Cottey College and BFA from Alfred University, Sue’s work draws inspiration from life-long experiences in the American West. She is passionate about folk art, vintage kitsch, and western art and culture. Tirrell has exhibited widely in the United States as well as Canada and Australia. A former Resident Artist at the Archie Bray Foundation, she has taught workshops across the US and Canada in community art centers, college classrooms, retirement homes, and one-room schoolhouses. She currently makes her home and studio on the banks of the Yellowstone River.

Course Fee: $500 + $80 Lab Fee + $40 Non-Refundable Registration Fee