Workshops

A Studio in the Woods hosts workshops where the public can experience a kind of mini-residency — creating in the woods!

• November 2005
  Rebuilding Without FEMA led by ASITW Environmental Curator, botanist David Baker
  A workshop for the Lower Coast Algiers community devastated by the extensive loss of large trees from Katrina in the bottomland hardwood forest on their properties. The convention wisdom was to cut, burn or chip and discard the downed trees. David taught property owners the positive aspects of the hurricane effect on the forest, namely the opening of the canopy to sunlight and resulting stimulation of new and diverse species very valuable to the future strength of the woods. He advocated allowing downed tress, not blocking egress, to remain as they fell to provide nutrients to the soil for the growth of original species such as the Live Oak.
  
• May 2005
  Conjuring A Sense of Place: A Creative Writing Workshop
  led by Sheryl St. Germain (May 2005 artist-in-residence)
  This workshop focused on writing that takes its primary energy from a strong sense of place, including genres of poetry and creative non-fiction, with special attention given to the Louisiana landscape. “Birthplace, cityscape, even a Web site – whether gloriously wild, fulsomely peopled, or ruinously barren, any place that’s been important to us can fuel the narrative and lyric elements that make up the genre we sometimes call nature writing or writing of place.”
  
• October 2004
  PILGRIMS AND PLATFORMS: Rituals and Relics in the Woods
  This weekend art experience will offer instruction and information regarding collaboration, intermedia and site installation. Participants will produce individual works in collaboration within the group and in response to the site. No experience in artmaking is required, as this work will appeal to all levels. Evidence of this project will be presented to invited family and friends of participants upon conclusion of interaction. Led by Multimedia artists Jan Gilbert and Kristen Struebing-Beazley, both founding members of the 20 year old arts collaborative The VESTIGES Project, are arts educators and have co-produced a variety of interdisciplinary projects funded by such sponsors as the Rockefeller and Warhol Foundations, NEA Program for Interdisciplinary Artists, National Association of Artists' Organizations and The Trust for Mutual Understanding. Their works often employ ritual, relics, and the act of commemoration with attention to a sense of place.
  
• April 2004
  Ikebana the ancient art of Japanese flower arranging with Betty Butz
  Betty Butz is a certified ikebana teacher from the Sogetsu School and a well-known instructor and practitioner of Ikebana in the New Orleans region. She is currently First Vice President of Ikebana International Chapter 97 New Orleans, a non-profit organization that promotes the study of ikebana through workshops and exhibits.
  
• Summer 2003
  Self Portraits in Clay with MaPo Kinnord-Payton
  Participants cast self-portraits in clay and then decorated their masks with plant pressings and carvings. Ma Po Kinnord-Payton, the workshop instructor, is assistant professor of art at Xavier University and will work with both beginners and experienced potters. She is a nationally recognized ceramist and has recently traveled in Ghana , West Africa , where she studied indigenous and architectural uses of clay.
  
• Summer 2002
  Stationary Making with natural materials led by Nikki Jackson
  Nikki Jackson teaches ceramics at NOCCA Riverfront and has taught students from elementary school age to the college level in California , Alabama , and New Orleans . She came to the US in 1990 from England where she got a B.F.A. from the Bath College of Higher Education. She is a longtime friend and advisor to A Studio in the Woods and taught a kiln-building workshop on site in 1998.

• October 23, 2004
  PILGRIMS AND PLATFORMS: Rituals and Relics in the Woods
  This weekend art experience will offer instruction and information regarding collaboration, intermedia and site installation. Participants will produce individual works in collaboration within the group and in response to the site. No experience in artmaking is required, as this work will appeal to all levels. Evidence of this project will be presented to invited family and friends of participants upon conclusion of interaction.
  Led by Multimedia artists JAN GILBERT and KRISTEN STRUEBING-BEAZLEY, both founding members of the 20 year old arts collaborative The VESTIGES Project, are arts educators and have co-produced a variety of interdisciplinary projects funded by such sponsors as the Rockefeller and Warhol Foundations, NEA Program for Interdisciplinary Artists, National Association of Artists' Organizations and The Trust for Mutual Understanding. Their works often employ ritual, relics, and the act of commemoration with attention to a sense of place.
  
• April 2004
  Ikebana the ancient art of Japanese flower arranging with Betty Butz
  Betty Butz is a certified ikebana teacher from the Sogetsu School and a well-known instructor and practitioner of Ikebana in the New Orleans region. She is currently First Vice President of Ikebana International Chapter 97 New Orleans, a non-profit organization that promotes the study of ikebana through workshops and exhibits.
  
• Summer 2003
  Self Portraits in Clay with MaPo Kinnord-Payton
  Participants cast self-portraits in clay and then decorated their masks with plant pressings and carvings. Ma Po Kinnord-Payton, the workshop instructor, is assistant professor of art at Xavier University and will work with both beginners and experienced potters. She is a nationally recognized ceramist and has recently traveled in Ghana, West Africa, where she studied indigenous and architectural uses of clay.
  
• Summer 2002
  Stationary Making with natural materials led by Nikki Jackson
  Nikki Jackson teaches ceramics at NOCCA Riverfront and has taught students from elementary school age to the college level in California, Alabama, and New Orleans. She came to the US in 1990 from England where she got a B.F.A. from the Bath College of Higher Education. She is a longtime friend and advisor to A Studio in the Woods and taught a kiln-building workshop on site in 1998.