Visiting Artist Workshops for Winter 2025
This winter, join us for inspiring and compelling Visiting Artist workshops with esteemed makers from across our region. Registration opens Tuesday, November 12. Check registration page for more information.
Zoomorphic Vessels with Katherine Maloney
Friday, 2/28/25 from 6:00 – 9:00 PM and Saturday, 3/1/25 from 10:00 AM – 5:00 PM
$225.00
Ceramics Studio
Seasoned beginner to advanced
In this hands-on workshop, Katie will demonstrate and guide students in creating animal sculpture and zoomorphic vessels that contain personal meaning and narrative. Using techniques of throwing and hand-building, students will form vessels that incorporate animal figures by sculpting, carving, and alteration. Instruction will cover basic sculpting techniques such as the hollowing method and how to give the animals expression and defining characteristics such as eyes, ears, and motion. Katie will work individually with each student to help create pleasing composition, structural integrity and visual interest in their piece. Class will also include guidance about different ways to glaze and fire the finished work. Students will complete class with work in process and one completed, along with technical and conceptual information to go forward in creating zoomorphic ceramics!
ABOUT YOUR INSTRUCTOR
Katie Maloney grew up in Southeast Virginia on an organic vegetable farm among a family of entrepreneurs. Her early years of tromping around the woods fostered a deep admiration for the natural world, which continues to inspire her ceramic art. During high school, Katie spent three years as an assistant to potter Elizabeth Krome. She later received her B.A in ceramics at Guilford College and has participated in artist-in-residence programs, including STARworks Ceramics. Katie teaches workshops regionally and has exhibited work nationally at galleries and fine art shows such as the Smithsonian Craft Show. In 2021, Katie purchased property next to the family farm and set up a permanent home studio where she creates wheel thrown and hand-built animal vessels and sculptures.
Visit her website at katherinemaloney.org
Sculptural Basketry with Sarita Westrup
Saturday + Sunday 3/29/25 – 3/30/25
10:00 AM – 5:00 PM
$280.00 / $252.00 for members
Wood Studio
All skill levels
Explore basketry as a medium of free form sculpture in this special visiting artist workshop with contemporary basketmaker Sarita Westrup. Sarita will demo the tools, materials, techniques, and approaches she uses to twine arched baskets. On day one, we will cover prepping reeds for spokes and weavers, twining, starting an open bottom basket, starting a closed bottom basket, and backward twining wedges. Day two we will explore finishing the lip of the basket and have a show-and-tell. Other materials/media for twining and surface will be briefly discussed. No experience is necessary. This class is designed to focus on a learned skill rather than a final product and the possibilities are endless! Time outside of class may be needed to finish your basket.
Sculptural Basketry can take your work in surprising new directions! View the class description to see work by some of Sarita’s past students.
ABOUT YOUR INSTRUCTOR
Sarita Westrup is a craft-based artist who lives and works between TX and North Carolina. Westrup was raised in the Rio Grande Valley of the south Texas borderlands and earned an MFA in Fiber Arts from the University of North Texas in 2016.
Most recently her work has been shown in “The Weight of Wonder” at the Penland Gallery in Penland, NC, and in “Holding Space: Woven Works” at Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, NY. She was awarded a Nasher Artist Grant in 2023, a semi-finalist for the Nest Heritage Craft Prize in 2023, and a $10,000 grant through the Teaching Artist Cohort from the Center of Craft in 2024. Westrup is currently an artist-in-residence at the Penland School of Craft in Western North Carolina and is represented by Cluley Projects Gallery in Dallas, TX.
You can view more of her work at saritawestrup.art
