Last summer, I had the great privilege of attending the Haystack Mountain School of Craft in coastal Maine for a three weeks period. First there was a three day summer conference:Craft Thinking: Ideas on Making, Materials, and Creative Process, featured presenters who came from a variety of creative disciplines in art, design, and science. The focus was on how we think through craft and how creative processes and materials inform the work that we make. Craft is a place where innovation and tradition, skill and intuition, exist together. Whether makers are growing their own plants to make indigo dye, or programming machines that can assemble themselves, ingenuity and creativity are at the heart of what they do.
After that, I attended a two week ceramics workshop with Chris Staley. Chris Staley is a potter-philosopher and I greatly appreciated his teachings. We were 22 participants in this inspiring hands-on workshop. We experimented with salt-firing. The ripple effect is in action this fall and my teaching has been invigorated by my adventure at Haystack.
I would like to thank CUPFA, the Concordia University part-time faculty association for their financial support through a professional development grant.