Upcoming Workshops
Intro to Weaving with Willow
In this two day basketry class we will weave simple round base baskets, taking our time to understand the funamentals, from base to rim. This class is entry level, you do not need to have experience to start!
This class is in conjunction with the Willow Relationship series offer by wetlands permaculture expert Kara Huntermoon at her Eugene Wetlands home in Eugene, Oregon. She offers a five part series over seven months on planting a living willow fence, streambank stabilization, animal integration and fertility, as well as basic weaving techniques. We will be weaving willow cultivated and cured from her land.
Taught by Hosanna White, Ryder Coen, and Kara Huntermoon at Center for Rural Livelihoods, Cottage Grove.
Sliding scale $300-150. Overnight lodging is available for an extra $20 per night.
For Registration email karahuntermoon@gmail.com
Earth Pigments & Paintmaking Studio
Earth pigments are accessible wherever we live and travel, connecting us and our art to the landscape around us. What is available for our use in the natural world has its limitations, but it offers us an opportunity to reimagine a creative practice that is embodied and relational with the land.
During our pigment and paintmaking studio, we will get to know some of the local geology that determines the colors we can forage on the landscape, how to find and ethically harvest rocks and soils, as well as how to transform them from crude to fine paint. We will mull pigments in watercolor binder and discuss other natural binders and applications in the arts. At the end of the day, there will be time to play with our paints. Everyone will get to take home a pan of paint from the color of their choice.
All materials are provided.
If you would like to purchase a paintmaking starter kit to take home at the end of class they will be available for $55. Kit includes a sample 7 color pigment pack, watercolor gum binder, mixing tile, palette knife and mini-muller.
Hosted by Wildling Collaborative Arts in Eugene Oregon
Earth Arts Summer Camp (Ages 8-12)
Monday July 22nd - 26th from 10 am - 3:30pm
Join us for a fun filled week of nature immersion, creativity, and group games at the forest and gardens of Center for Rural Livelihoods in Cottage Grove, Oregon.
Each day will have a dedicated craft, including clay sculpture, rock pigment paint making and painting, wool felting, and plant fiber weaving. As well as time to explore the landscape, playing games, and taking time to notice the sounds and sights of the summer! A few days will end with a spacious swim at the spring fed pond.
For kids ages 8-12 years old
Day camp hours are 10am - 3:30pm with drop off and pick up at CRL, as well as carpool to and from a central Eugene location each day at 9-9:15 and 4:15-4:30pm, which will be coordinated with Eugene families.
Registration and payment are a combined form below. Full tuition is $300 and is due by the beginning of camp. If you would like to make monthly payments, please choose the $50 monthly payment plan option in checkout. There may be some a small amount of scholarship funds available, please use the contact page to inquire.
Hosanna White of Whitesnake Arts, previously a co-director of Nature’s Mystery Awareness School is lead instructor for this camp, along with the support of two other assistant instructors.
There will always be a 1:6 instructor student ratio with a max group size of 12 kids.
Earth Pigments & Paintmaking Studio
Earth pigments are accessible wherever we live and travel, connecting us and our art to the landscape around us. What is available for our use in the natural world has its limitations, but it offers us an opportunity to reimagine a creative practice that is embodied and relational with the land.
During our pigment and paintmaking studio, we will get to know some of the local geology that determines the colors we can forage on the landscape, how to find and ethically harvest rocks and soils, as well as how to transform them from crude to fine paint. We will mull pigments in watercolor binder and discuss other natural binders and applications in the arts. At the end of the day, there will be time to play with our paints. Everyone will get to take home a pan of paint from the color of their choice.
All materials are provided.
If you would like to purchase a paintmaking starter kit to take home at the end of class they will be available for $55. Kit includes a sample 7 color pigment pack, watercolor gum binder, mixing tile, palette knife and mini-muller.
Hosted by Wildling Collaborative Arts in Eugene Oregon
Cocreating with the Land: An Earth Artist Retreat and Paintmaking Studio
The creativity of the natural world is infinite and effortless. We also inherit this creative sense from birth, but often suppress our innate freedom as creators through judgment, critique, and attachment to outcome.
Intimacy with the land – the subtleties of shape, movements, textures, sounds, and colors of nature – can help us remember that expression is our birthright and deeply satisfying.
Cocreating with the Land is a two day retreat to drop into a creative dialogue with the Earth, through exploring earth pigments and found materials, reading textures and patterns of the land, and gathering insight and creative revival from the practice.
We will spend time on the land, introducing ourselves to our foraging place before gathering materials. Returning to the studio, we will process our foraged pigments into paints (start to finish), which we will then take back to the foraging place for an extended studio session in the elements. In spaciousness with each other and the land, we will share and move through creative blocks with guided practices to embody our wild and innate creative spirit.
Communing with the Land
Earth pigment processing and paintmaking
Experimenting with natural mediums and canvases
Spacious outdoor studio time
Creating without inhibition
Group dialogue and guided embodiment practices
Workshop is Saturday, April 21st from 10:00 - 5:00pm, followed by a nourishing dinner at the Center for Rural Livlihoods in Cottage Grove and Sunday April 22nd from 10:00- 5:00pm. Overnight lodging is availible in the CRL dorms (twin size bed with sheets) for $40 or car/tent camping on site for $20. If you would like to stay on site Saturday night, please select that option when registering. A full kithen will be availible for lunch and breakfast if you do choose to stay overnight.
Molly Abromitis
Molly is a self-taught woodworker, painter, and Earth artist living off-grid in Northern Washington. Her path to becoming an artist became a journey of remembering and reconnecting to the place within that lives beyond the stories, experiences, and identities of her personal life. Learning to create from this place opened an understanding how to co-create with the Earth and be a clear vessel for Life to create through. This led her to begin communing with trees and using mineral pigments to bring her visions into form. Her and the trees now work together to share energetic imprints of the elemental and spiritual world in each piece, blurring the lines between seen and unseen.
@sitimorba
Hosanna White
Hosanna is dedicated to learning slow crafts like primitive firing, weaving, and foraging that connect her with the source of her materials and the magic that comes from transforming them for everyday use.
Hosanna lives in the foothills of Western Oregon, a geologically rich landscape that has inspired her studio work, Whitesnake Arts. She blends bio-regional history and land stewardship into her artwork painted with a colorful collection of hand gathered earth pigments.
Got a question about this retreat, contact us here!
Intro to Pit Firing
Pit firing is an invigorating practice of sculpting with fire while attending our delicate greenware through every step of their transformation to ceramic. Pit fire is an ancient technique practiced around the world with infinite variations, it is essentially a bisque and does not reach glaze melting temperatures. This simple, low-tech approach to firing has clear stages as well as guidelines that make it accessible to learn for anyone excited to integrate this method into their pottery practice.
Firing on March 30th from 10am - 4pm at Mandala Sanctuary, Eugene Oregon
Note: The firing on March 30th is weather dependent. If it must be rescheduled, a backup date will be determined.
Make a wild clay creation for the firing:
1) Attend an in-person handbuilding class with Nicole Hummel and Hosanna White on the evening of Thursday, March 21st from 5-7:30pm at Wildling Collaborative Arts in Eugene, Oregon. Cost for two part class: $165
2) Have clay shipped to you (register no later then 3/14) to make on your own. Simple handbuilding instructions will be included with the clay. Bring your piece(s) fully dry to the firing. Cost for at home option: $145
Place-Based Pottery Series: Wild Clays of the Nortwest
Pottery has always been an art and science of the earth. Foraging for local clays begins a conversation with our local landscape in which our understanding of the geological narratives and mineral personalities in our hands deepens with time and experimentation.
This four part series explores the complex chemistry and creativity of working with wild clays of the Pacific Northwest and how to integrate them into your pottery practice.
Saturdays - March 16th, 23rd, and April 6th, 13th from 11-3pm
$295 -$400 sliding scale
Register through Wildling Collaborative Arts webpage below!
The first two classes will include a hands-on exploration of the different clay personalities one finds when foraging, how to identify appropriate places for foraging, basics of blending theory, additives, and how to process clay for best results.
Everyone will make small pinch pots and tiles for testing, which will then be bisque fired and mid-ranged fired for the third and fourth classes. In the third class, we will discuss techniques for bisque firing earthenware clays and discuss the basics of natural glazes and slips.
Our final class of the series will be shorter than the others, we will look at our results and share final questions and reflections.
While our greenware is drying and firing, on the weekend of March 30th, between classes two and three of the series, there will be a pit fire demonstration. Pit fire is an elemental and engaging low-tech firing method to achieve bisque results. If you are interested in handbuilding a piece for this or participating in the firing, check out this additional offering here: Intro to Pit Firing
Pit Fire Immersion
During this immersion, we will explore many aspects of earthenware pottery; an approach to pottery that connects us to the clays of our landscapes, to community as we make beauty together, and the fire which transforms what we’ve created.