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

Skill Level: Beginner to Advanced

The Catskills are alive with nature. Learn to embroider 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. Drawing from her work in veterinary clinics and the Bronx Zoo Exhibition Department, her art examines how people consider, use, and disregard animals. Her sculptures and paintings of animals have been exhibited around the world, most recently a solo show, “Embroidered Morphologies” at the International Museum of Surgical Science in Chicago, Illinois, and in “Lagomorph: Rabbits and Hares in Contemporary Craft” at the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, Massachusetts. “White Rabbit”, a solo window installation was featured at AHA Fine Art in New York City. 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.

Course Fee: $300 + $40 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

These beautiful Catskill mountains abound with the cattail. An iconic plant, this monarch of the marsh has been used to fashion containers and coverings throughout the history of the region’s human habitation. This popular workshop will introduce you to several fundamental weaving techniques that utilize cattails including, twining, plaiting, weaving on a mold and hand forming cordage and netting. Over the course of this exciting intensive, you will try out several techniques and select one to work on for a larger project. There will discussions on how to find, harvest and prepare cattails, demonstrations, and heaps of individual attention provided by our amazingly talented instructor.

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

Skill Level: Beginner to Advanced

Join us for a four-day basket weaving workshop with award winning weaver Cael Chappell! This hands-on experience will take you on a creative journey, where you'll learn the art of twined basketry using waxed linen thread. Each day will be filled with in-depth instruction to create unique, personalized baskets. Cael's expertise and passion will guide you through the process, from planning your project to completing beautiful baskets. Whether you're a beginner or a seasoned weaver, this workshop promises to be an enriching experience.

Cael Chappell has been working with basket weavers in Africa since 1991. In 2017 he started weaving his own baskets. Because of his deep understanding of basketry, he quickly developed his own unique style of whimsical weaving. His baskets exhibit personality and life which engages viewers. His work has been featured in many exhibitions and publications. Cael enjoys teaching and is writing a book on twining baskets with waxed linen thread. He has presented many lectures to weaving guilds and groups across the country.

Course Fee: $400 + $50 Lab Fee + $40 Non-Refundable Registration Fee

Skill Level: Beginner to Advanced

Turn a tree into a basket in this 3-day, beginner-friendly course, where we will learn wood splint basketry. We will begin by exploring different methods of processing various hardwood trees from the northeastern forests, with a deep dive into white oak and white ash processing while also touching on other types of hardwoods suitable for basketry. Using wood that we split together, as well as pre-split wood, we will learn the ins and outs of frame style, wood splint basketry as we weave a beautiful 10" basket together utilizing a white oak frame, and hand split white ash weavers. Some hand strength for weaving these beautiful materials is needed, but friendly assistance is assured.

Amy Krone is an artist living and working in the forests of the Catskill Mountains. Her project, Cambium Lost Arts, is one dedicated to the revival of dying or forgotten practices of traditional craft. Currently, her focus is centered on the practice of hand-split white oak basketry in the Appalachian style—a journey that began in a used bookstore. “Finding meaning in my art through these woods is a gift the land has given me.” Krone’s approach is disciplined, mindful, and exquisitely detailed.

Course Fee: $300 + $250 Lab Fee + $40 Non-Refundable Registration Fee