Skill Level: Beginner to Advanced

This six-week weaving course begins with an introduction to floor loom mechanics and the creation of a sampler to explore weaving fundamentals. The second half focuses on individual projects, where students design and weave their own textile piece with instructor support. Through hands-on experience, students will learn how tension, sett, pattern drafting, threading, and treadling interact to create textiles. All skill levels are welcome, with instruction tailored to beginners and independent work for experienced weavers.

Course Fee: $150 + $50 Lab Fee + $40 Non-Refundable Registration Fee

Skill Level: Beginner To Advanced

Bring your sunscreen because the future is bright. Come fire our new wood kiln with Aarti Manik from the renowned Golden Bridge Pottery in Pondicheri, India and Sugar Maples’ own Bruce Dehnert. Whether you’re a neophyte to the wood firing genre, or an expert in your own right, this opportunity to work together towards a beautiful result will engage and inspire you in our gorgeous environment. Participants will bring work for the firing, learn techniques for preparing for a wide range of results on surface, learn to load and fire a wood kiln, and then unload works transformed by this dynamic process. During the cooling of the kiln, there will be demonstrations, hikes into waterfalls, enjoying the environs that the Hudson River School of Painters recognized as being an artist’s heaven, learning about Indian ceramics in the world of wood-firing, and time to do your own work.

A professional photographer, Aarti Manik’s creative journey turned towards clay in 2012 at Dharavi, where she learnt from Hanif Galwani, a 7th generation master potter. In 2014, she joined Golden Bridge Pottery (GBP), a studio established by Deborah Smith and Ray Meeker in Pondicherry, India. Since her early studies there, she has helped to facilitate workshops for Bruce Dehnert, Elena Renker, John Dix, and Nick Schwartz. Aarti has assisted British potters Penny Simpson, Svend Bayer, and Clive Bowen, and her work has been included in many group shows in Jaipur, Montana (U.S), Mumbai, Ahemdabad, Delhi, and Richmond, Virginia (U.S) to name a few. Also in 2024, Aarti presented a highly successful solo exhibition at Centre De Art, Auroville, India. A recipient of the prestigious Multicultural Award at NCECA in 2019, Aarti is currently the Director of Golden Bridge Pottery in Pondicherry which offers an extensive educational, wood-firing, and residency program.

Bruce Dehnert has a BA in Creative Writing from the University of Montana and MFA from Alfred University. He has taught at Hunter College and Parsons School of Art and Design, The School of Art [New Zealand], the Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, UMASS Dartmouth, and workshops in New Zealand, China, Japan, Canada, and India. His awards include three Fletcher Challenge International Ceramics Awards, a New Jersey Artist Fellowship, the Settlor Prize in Sculpture, and a Carnegie Premier Award for Works on Paper. His work is held in numerous collections including The Crocker Museum, the Yixing Museum of Ceramic Art, The New Dowse Museum, and The White House [Washington, DC]. Dehnert has written articles for journals including, Studio Potter, Ceramics Monthly, and Ceramics: Art and Perception and co-authored Simon Leach’s Pottery Handbook for Abrams. He is a member of the International Academy of Ceramics and is Head of Ceramics at Sugar Maples Center for Creative Arts.

Course Fee: $600 + $110 Lab Fee + $40 Non-Refundable Registration Fee

Some experience is useful

From the whimsical to the austere, pouring vessels have an outsized place in the pantheon of pottery forms. Using wheel throwing and handbuilding, this intensive workshop will include demonstrations and hands-on work to address creating spouts and handles for all varieties of pottery forms.  Tyler will demonstrate sectional-throwing to increase scale, tips for creating new solutions to age-old questions of how to finish pieces with the additional complexity of appendages, and ways to prepare work for a high-temperature soda firing. Discussions about pottery design, craftsmanship, function, and inspiration will bring new ideas to the table. A soda firing is planned.

Tyler Gulden is a potter from mid-coast Maine. He received a BFA from Alfred University, a MFA from University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, and has been a studio potter for over 25 years. His pursuits in ceramics have included production pottery experience, residencies at Peters Valley Craft Center and Genessee Pottery, and positions as a studio technician at UMass Dartmouth and studio assistant to Chris Gustin. A passionate advocate for the crafts, Tyler has shared his knowledge and passion as a maker during twelve years as an administrator at Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts, through many workshops and teaching positions, as well as roles as a member artist and President of the Maine Crafts Association.

Course Fee: $500 + $75 Lab Fee + $40 Non-Refundable Registration Fee

Instructor TBD

Skill Level: Beginner – Advanced

Using clay to create pottery, sculpture, architectural tile and forms, reaches back as far in time as 28,000 years ago when the paleolithic Venus figurines were sculpted. From the magnificent Native American pots to modern tilework, hand-building processes play an important role in artists’ abilities to express their imaginations and traditions through this most malleable medium. During this exciting course students will learn a wide variety of processes, tools, and approaches for realizing forms. There will be demonstrations of pinch, coil, and slab techniques as well as glazing and firing. This is a fun hands-on course!

Course Fee: $250 + $65 Lab Fee (includes first bag of clay and firings) + $40 Non-Refundable Registration Fee

Skill Level: Beginner – Advanced

There are many reasons why making pottery on the wheel has become so popular. Making pots 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” 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, fun, 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!

Course Fee: $250 + $65 Lab Fee (includes first bag of clay and firings) + $40 Non-Refundable Registration Fee

Skill Level: Beginner - Advanced

Come join us for this rare opportunity to study and work with renowned artists Andrea and John Gill. Held in the highest regard, both artists bring contemporary and historical weight to their ideas, dynamic problem solving, and unique construction techniques. This intensive workshop is guaranteed to alter your trajectories in thinking and creating. Andrea and John are both leaders in our field because of their groundbreaking work and profound abilities to teach, guide, and support others in their creative quests. Working with a blend of focused spontaneity and predetermination, both artists exude a unique gift for communicating what that process looks like. There will be demonstrations, discussions, hands-on exercises, and heaps of individual attention.

Andrea Gill received her MFA from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University and BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. Recently retired, Andrea was a Professor at Alfred University since 1984. Among her many recognitions, Gill has won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and Ohio Arts Council. Her works are in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum, London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Rhode Island School of Design. She has been featured in many magazines and books. Gill’s work was included in the prestigious White House Collection of American Crafts Exhibition in Washington, DC’s National Museum of American Art in 1995.

John Gill earned his MFA from Alfred University in 1975 and BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1973. A member of the International Academy of Ceramics, John Gill has presented lectures and workshops in the United States and internationally for over 30 years. He presented the keynote address at the Seventh International Ceramic Biennale in Korea in 2013.  His work is held in numerous private and public collections including the Brooklyn Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He was elected as a Fellow of the American Crafts Council in 2014.

Course Fee: $600 + $60 Lab Fee + $40 Non-Refundable Registration Fee

Skill Level: Beginner to Advanced

A playful THREE-DAY weekend workshop dedicated to frame loom and off-loom textile creation is about to ensue! Each day will spotlight a unique technique, allowing plenty of room for creative exploration in our beautiful, sun-kissed studio. Students will learn weft-faced tapestry, warp wrapping, textured weaves, lace weaving, and weaving in the third dimension while creating a small series of woven art pieces. Weaving is for everyone, and its possibilities are limitless. The versatile interlocking grid can be used to craft images, architectural structures, utilitarian cloth, and personal keepsakes. Together, we’ll explore these applications and more. Come discover the boundless potential of weaving in our friendly and beautiful studio.

Margot Becker is an artist, weaver, and educator based in Hudson, New York. Through tactile processes she explores sense of place, the natural environment, and the connection between the Individual and the Communal subconscious. Her work has been exhibited in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston. Margot Becker has attended residencies at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, ACRE, Mildred’s Lane, Rabbit Island and AZ West. She received her BA in studio art from Bard College in 2009 and her MFA from California College of the Arts in 2020 where she was awarded the Edwin Anthony & Adelaine Boudreaux Cadogan Scholarship and the Toni A. Lowenthal Memorial Scholarship for Excellence in Textiles.

Course Fee: $300 + $90 Lab Fee + $40 Non-Refundable Registration Fee

Skill Level: Beginner to Advanced

Gel plate printing, a user friendly, kitchen table compatible printmaking technique with NO need for a press is applicable to painters, printmakers, ceramic artists, journal keepers, etc. Once the basics of Gel Plate printing are learned, it lends itself to both home, studio and travel purposes with ease and practicality. Fun and open to experimentation and improvisation - this is a method where artists with any experience level can discover new motifs and approaches for their art practice - and make beautiful, finished prints. There will be many demos including an “invisible” collage technique where your vibrant colorful prints can become raw material for larger works on paper. We will use slow drying Golden’s Open Acrylics mostly printed onto mulberry paper.

Holly Hughes is an artist with her own shorthand, developed to describe both nature and the human-made visual world surrounding us. Hughes, Professor Emerita of Painting at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), works in various mediums - always in conversation with one another. Processed by an imagination raised on Disney, the pictures exude both humor and inspiration from modern culture and the decorative arts. Codes for the idyllic and pastoral slam against a play of repossessed abstract language, with sources ranging from painting history through heraldry to domestic linens. Her practice ranges across painting, works on paper, printmaking, and ceramics. Hughes’ work can be found in many corporate, public, and private collections including Citibank, Pepsico, Prudential Bache, Pfizer Collection, Benziger Imagery Collection, Davis Museum, Dorsky Museum, and Museum of Rhode Island School of Design.

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