Skill Level: Beginner to Advanced

Learn to transform lusciously soft wool felt into three-dimensional forms. Over three days we will explore various contemporary techniques for creating three dimensional shapes, including wet felting on a resist as well as needle felting. While you might assume that your imagination is the limit, you will enjoy being in a supportive and experimental environment where anything is possible. You will create several small projects as well as at least one garment or vessel. This workshop is a first for Sugar Maples, and we are excited to host you and our incredibly talented Instructor for three days of discussions, demonstrations, and in-depth making of objects pertinent to you.

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 crafting 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 to sculptural felt and spinning foraged fibers. Renee teaches workshops on identifying, cooking with, and even weaving with plants and fungi growing in the Catskills.

Course Fee: $300 + $40 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

Skill Level: Beginner to Advanced

I say, “ALPHABET  SOUP!” You might think, “I ate that just yesterday.” This is important because fonts rule our world now. In the good old days, fonts were the realm of specialists. With computers, we cross paths with endless riffs on fonts. If you’re interested in this weird artistic science of aesthetic living, writing to your grandchildren or whoever, letters can be drawn in many ways. And in this case…YOUR WAY. Cyrus Highsmith’s approach is based on the importance of white space and sensitivity to shapes. It’s a method he applies to type design as well as image-making of all kinds. For Highsmith, it’s a way of seeing the world. This workshop will be a messy, hands-on, and computer-free exploration of us; drawing, making, and thinking about letters. Students will explore techniques involving stencils, mono-printing, and making their own drawing tools. We will venture to say, if you’re an artist working in ANY medium, this workshop in the beautiful Catskills is for you.

Cyrus Highsmith is a letter drawer, teacher, author, and graphic artist. He teaches type design at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). He wrote and illustrated the acclaimed primer, “Inside Paragraphs: Typographic Fundamentals.” In 2015, he received the Gerrit Noordzij Prize by the Royal Academy of Art; the Hague, for extraordinary contributions to the fields of type design, typography, and type education. Highsmith’s inventions in typeface design extend to Ford Corporation, Martha Stewart Living, the Wall Street Journal, Men’s Health, Star Wars, and many others. One of Cyrus’ most well-known typefaces are Zocalo, used by the Mexican daily El Universal and the Antenna Series. In 2017, he became Creative Director for Latin Type Development at Morisawa USA.

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

Skill Level: Beginner to Advanced

In this exciting 2-day introductory workshop, students will be introduced to the now esoteric art of brush making. While in modern times the brush has been relegated to “the oh so familiar,” this object has enjoyed a beautiful and rich history as one of humanity’s most useful tools. Through emphasis on natural materials and traditional techniques, this class will cover materials, binding methods, and several handle and decorative options to make the humble sweeper both highly useful AND exquisitely aesthetic. The woods of these glorious Catskill Mountains make for the perfect starting point learning this ancient craft.

Miles Gracey is a furniture/cabinet/object maker, working primarily in wood. His work explores storytelling, ornamentation, and narratives amongst objects— all predicated on touch. Miles received a BFA in sculpture from Otis College and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art. Gracey has been in residence at Houston Center for Contemporary Art, the Center for Furniture, and Haystack. His awards include Anderson Ranch, Berkshire Woodworkers Guild, and the Jackie Romine Scholarship at the Krevov School, among others. Miles has participated in numerous important group exhibitions.

Course Fee: $200 + $50 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: Beginner to Advanced

Renowned painter Thomas Cole was in awe of the beauty of the Catskill Mountains and created some of the most iconic landscape paintings in our country's history. In this workshop, our instructor, a Cole expert, will guide students through his images and methods as well as his journal entries, poems and essays. Students will then create paintings that stem from their own passions and responses. We will explore our magnificent mountain landscape, pause for Cole quotes and imagery, and capture the parts of nature that most excite, using both sketching and photography. Back at the studio we’ll create compositions on canvas using a method that Cole used: tracing. After a demonstration and exercise about color, we will begin painting onto the prepared canvas. Our goal will be to empower students to express the story and beauty that is inside them.

Elizabeth (Betsy) Jacks was the Director of the Thomas Cole National Historic Site in Catskill, New York, from 2003 to 2024, and previously worked at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Her paintings have been exhibited in New York City and in the Hudson Valley, and her written work has been published by both academic and commercial Presses. Betsy is featured regularly in documentary films and radio programs and recently hosted a 10-part series by NPR on Thomas Cole, the foremost landscape painter of the 19th-century and founder of the art movement known as the Hudson River School. Jacks has Degrees in both Studio Art and Art History from Duke University.

Course Fee: $300 + $60 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