Indigenous people in California have a long legacy of producing baskets of great diversity and beauty. Baskets hold a utilitarian purpose and are beautifully woven celebrations of expression, culture, and kinship. In this workshop, you will learn about the highly regarded and exquisite work of Cahuilla Basketry from Cahuilla basketmaker Rose Ann Hamilton. Over the last three decades, the Cahuilla people have experienced a revival in basket making as an art form and form of personal expression. Utilizing traditional methods, you will learn to create a Cahuilla-style coiled basket using yucca, Juncus, and Deer Grass.
In a virtual and screen-obsessed world, get hands-on and learn how to harvest and make clay, then create the beautiful ollas used by the Cahuilla people of Southern California to store food and water.
Explore Indigenous ingenuity and learn how to cast jewelry utilizing compressed white volcanic ash called Tufa stone. Hopi jeweler and artist Roy Talahaftewa will lead you in a one-week session exploring and using a variety of Tufa stone found specifically in the southwest. Tufa casting is a labor-intensive process involving many steps, but the reward of creating a truly unique piece, never to be duplicated again, will leave you and your work with a lasting imprint and insight into a special technique in Hopi silversmithing.
In this workshop, you will explore the traditional Hopi-Tewa method of creating polychrome pottery. This method includes coil building with Hopi gray or yellow clay, sanding, burnishing with riverbed stones, designing and painting pots with natural pigments utilizing handmade paint brushes. Finally, you will learn to traditionally fire your pieces in open-air kilns using sheep dung as a heating source.
