So often pottery is presented in a classroom environment with commercial bags of clay and pre-programmed kilns, making the source of our materials and the lineage of the craft invisible. Pottery is an ancient art, intrinsically tied to the land, inspiring our belonging to it as we shape the things we need up from the ground. For this very reason, using local clays in can be profoundly meaningful. It slows down our “production” mindset and allows us to tune into the immense ecological and geological narrative we are apart of.
Because we are earth. We are shaped by our choices, becoming vessels that can hold our deepest prayers. Clay is a powerful medium for intuitive exploration of the soul, because it grounds us to the material world as we face the transformative fires of life.
Shaping Earth and Fire immersion is a devotional week of wild embodiment, creative exploration through clay, and community ritual.
Our full five day retreat integrates the creative process with informational hands-on learning. Having a full week to ground together gives us time to dive into wild clay processing and all the things one needs to know to begin working with foraged clays at home, as well as practice various hand building techniques with space and time for the creative process to move through us. We will integrate indoor and outdoor studio time, group time, and solo time.
Week Overview
Sunday afternoon/evening: Arrival & settling in, dinner
Monday - Wednesday: Time on the land, foraging, processing and handbuilding
Thursday: Clay lecture and hands-on experimentation: clay chemistry, geological narratives, blending theory, addatives, firing ranges, troubleshooting, and more!
Friday: All day pit firing ceremony
Saturday Morning: Sealing pottery, closing & departure
Center for Rural Livelihoods is an alternative living, natural building and sustainable forestry research center with strawbale facilities. They offer overnight dorm rooms that are “summer camp” rustic for $100 for the entire week. Tent or car camping on site is available for $50 for the week. Dinners Sunday through Friday night are provided, but breakfast and lunch will be on your own. There are full kitchen and fridge amenities on site. The registration form will confirm your lodging preference and payment, as well as food restrictions and preferences. Camping or dorm room payments will be made day of at the retreat center.
Full Workshop Fee is $500, but a $100 desposit will hold your place, with a monthly payment option. Please be in touch to arrange monthly payments.
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 and place based pottery.
Chonkush Tusa dePalatine
“Tusa” loves working with her hands, coaxing connection from the loam of human and Earth as a body-worker, artist, and builder. Her 15+ years of relationship with wild clays began with home construction and now extends into pottery.
Tusa lives in the Salish territories of the interior tip of the Olymics Peninsula in Washinging State, where mountains meet sea with marvelous marl. She tempers her passion for somatic connection with nature and the healing arts through the practices of ancestral skills, as an amateur herbalist, fiberist, foodie, composer, and instrument maker.