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Dimensional Felting Intensive

with Renee Baumann

Next session: July 18th to 20th, 2025

$380 More Info

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

Frame Loom Workshop

with Margot Becker

Next session: June 20th to 22nd, 2025

$430 More Info

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

Cattail Weaving Intensive: Hat, Baskets & More

with Renee Baumann

Next session: September 12th to 14th, 2025

$380 More Info

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

Discovering Your Creativity

with Karin Lowney-Seed

Next session: June 27th to 30th, 2025

$490 More Info

Skill Level: Beginner to Advanced

Discovering Your Creativity is a hands-on workshop in which students dive straight into creating acrylic paintings from initial concepts to a finished piece. Attendees will learn basic painting techniques and will be encouraged to draw upon learned life experiences, new ideas and underlying inspiration. This always dynamic workshop will give the student new insights as to how to take risks, learn from experimentation, and make artistic expression a fulfilling life-long endeavor. The fun is always electric in this very popular workshop at the foot of legendary Thomas Cole Mountain.

Kárin Lowney-Seed is a professional artist and designer whose work demonstrates a bold, confident and colorful painting style. Lowney-Seed’s prolific career has spanned the fine arts and design worlds. Featured as a popular guest artist at The Sugar Maples Center for Creative Arts, Kárin takes personal pride in elevating her student’s artistic talents by sharing her deep knowledge of technique, color and space. She holds an MFA and BA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Karin currently makes her home and studio in New Jersey.

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

Everybody Must Get Stonewared

with Doug Peltzman

Next session: August 15th to 19th, 2025

$615 More Info

Skill Level: Some experience is useful

Pottery as a form of utility and expression has existed for over 10,000 years. Endless iterations have spanned all cultures, and ceramic art embellishes every household in the world. The storage of food and anything else you can think of makes its way into shapes and volumes that are defined by the maker. This workshop will offer discussions, demonstrations, and experimentations with many of the boundless ways we can interpret the concepts and practice of pottery. Cups and bowls form the foundation, the entry point, and from there onward we expand our pottery vocabulary, and hopefully with tireless hours of work and dedication we discover our voice with the material. This workshop will provide a deep dive into the expansive universe of utilitarian pottery. There will be a bisque and cone 10 reduction gas firing.

Doug Peltzman was born in New York City and raised on Long Island. Having a voracious appetite for risk, being a skateboarder and artist, Peltzman has been making pots since 2003 and has been painting and drawing his entire life. Since graduating with his MFA from Penn State in 2010, he established a pottery studio in Shokan, NY. Since that time, he has taught workshops throughout the country, is a founding member of Objective Clay, and is one of the principal creators/organizers of the hyper-successful Hudson Valley Pottery Tour. Doug is the father of three superbly talented and cheerful children, a dedicated husband, and a full-time studio potter.

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

Brush Making

with Miles Gracey

Next session: August 1st to 2nd, 2025

$290 More Info

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

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Weekly Hand-Building Ceramics

Next session: June 18th to August 20th, 2025

$355 More Info

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

Painting Nature through the Eyes of Thomas Cole

with Elizabeth (Betsy) Jacks

Next session: August 1st to 3rd, 2025

$400 More Info

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

Spoon Carving: The Wooden Server

with Miles Gracey

Next session: June 20th to 21st, 2025

$290 More Info

Skill Level: Beginner to Advanced

In this introductory class, students will learn the exciting fundamentals of woodworking by making their own set of wooden utensils. Starting with an overview of the material, principles of grain, and examining spoon design and tool safety, we will explore the essentials of wood carving techniques. This is a lively course for those who are looking for an opportunity to start their woodworking journeys and makes for an idyllic place to start a dialogue between the trees of our glorious Catskills and you, the maker. Come join us in that important conversation!

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

At Scale: Coil-Built Ceramic Sculpture

with Ebitenyefa Baralaye

Next session: June 27th to July 1st, 2025

$600 More Info

Skill Level: Beginner To Advanced

Coil-building is a foundational ceramic hand-building process with principles used to make things that encompass pottery, sculpture, and even architecture. The techniques taught will lean heavily on understanding materiality (clay), the sensitivity of touch, and ideas of structure. In this workshop, students will engage all three of these elements; learning how to coil-build an array of forms, volumes, and structures as ceramic sculpture. In this amazing workshop, issues of intention, scale, and exploration of form will be shared.

Ebitenyefa Baralaye is a Detroit-based ceramicist, sculptor, designer, and educator. His work explores cultural, spiritual, and material translations of objects, text, bodies, and symbols interpreted through a diaspora lens and abstracted around the aesthetics of craft and design. He studied at Rhode Island School of Design and the Cranbrook Academy of Art. Baralaye has exhibited at David Klein Gallery, Friedman Benda Gallery, and the Korea Ceramic Foundation, among others. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Stamps School of Art & Design at the University of Michigan.

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