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Explorations in Natural Paints, Dyes & Pigments

with Patricia Miranda

Next session: August 15th to 18th, 2025

$490 More Info

Skill Level: Beginner To Advanced

This workshop is an exploration of color using natural dyes and pigments. Participants will create color from raw materials such as cochineal, malachite, clay, oak gall, and black walnuts, for use in a diverse group of water-based binders, from gum arabic to distemper to egg tempera. We will explore the potentials of color, and how materials carry content through history, context, physical and aesthetic properties. Considerations of the environmental impact of materials will offer a framework for maintaining a sustainable safe painting practice. Participants will create a set of handmade watercolor paints, a color swatch book, and exploratory paintings on paper, textile, and panel.

Patricia Miranda is an artist, curator, educator, and founder of “The Lace Archive,” “The Crit Lab,” and “MAPSpace.” Grants include the Ruth and Harold Chenven Foundation, Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance, Arts Westchester, Anonymous Was a Woman Relief Grant, and a NEA grant working with homeless youth. Solo exhibitions include Olin Fine Art Center, 3S Artspace, Jane Street Art Center, and group exhibitions Spartanburg Art Museum, Dunedin Fine Art Center; Lyman Allyn Museum. Recent reviews include Art New England and Brooklyn Rail.

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

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Intro to Plaster Mold Making & Slipcasting

with Jackie Head

Next session: July 4th to 8th, 2025

$630 More Info

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

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Firing “Julia” the Train Kiln

with Aarti Manik and Bruce Dehnert

Next session: May 28th to June 2nd, 2025

$750 More Info

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

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Growing Constructing Wheeling: C6 Salt Firing

with Katie Fee

Next session: July 4th to 8th, 2025

$600 More Info

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

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Field Notes: A Writing Workshop

with Vince Montague

Next session: August 22nd to 24th, 2025

$370 More Info

Skill Level: Beginner to Advanced

A three-day generative writing workshop for artists and writers to explore and engage together in a supportive environment. Making notes and lists of the raw materials of our surroundings in the Catskills, we will transform those delving’s into short forms of poetry or prose. Workshop includes in-class prompts, explorations of landscape and objects to inspire new methods of harnessing creativity, and roundtable discussions of student work. The goal of this workshop is to open new doors, draft new beginnings, and return home with writing inspired by our experience together in these fabled mountains. With this beloved instructor, we offer one guarantee: all minds will be opened.

Vince Montague is a maker and a poet. Receiving his Master’s Degree in Creative Writing from NYU in 1989, Montague began publishing short stories in literary magazines including, California Quarterly, Westwind, The Florida Review, Nimrod, and Green Mountain Review. For 20 years, he has taught at colleges and universities throughout the Bay Area and has been an artist-in-residence at Carrizozo AIR, Playa Summer Lake, and Willapa Bay. Montague has been a professional studio artist since 2014, and recently, Latah Books published his memoir, Cracked Pot.

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

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Introduction to Wood Splint Basketry

with Amy Krone

Next session: August 22nd to 24th, 2025

$590 More Info

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

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Introduction to Oil Painting

with Nathan Loda

Next session: June 20th to 22nd, 2025

$400 More Info

Skill Level: Beginner to Advanced

This introductory course will provide students with the basic principles and techniques when working with Oil Paint. Students will be introduced to paint-handling and application techniques, color mixing, composition, and different methods for developing a representational painting. Using an exciting direct method of applying paint, and the indirect method of monochromatic underpainting prior to color application, participants will learn how to construct a dynamic image. Favorite photographs will be used to learn fundamentals of observation and alla prima landscape painting. Throughout this enjoyable workshop, emphasis will be placed on lots of individual support. All levels are welcome to come learn from this always popular Instructor.

Nathan Loda is an American realist oil painter. Nathan received an MFA from George Mason University in 2015 and a BFA in painting from Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, West Virginia in 2011. His work is playful yet painstakingly detailed and steeped in American history and landscape painting from observation and imagination. Loda’s current work explores the mystery and magic of landscape as homage to art history and the Hudson River School of painters. Recently, Nathan and his young family spent a semester in Italy where he taught for the University of Georgia’s Cortona Studies Abroad Program.

Course Fee: $300 + $60 Lab Fee + $40 Non-Refundable Registration Fee

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Stories Around the Table: Ceramic Surface Design on Handbuilt Pots

with Sue Tirrell

Next session: August 8th to 12th, 2025

$620 More Info

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

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Weekly Wheel Throwing Pottery

with Meredith Kunhardt

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

$355 More Info

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