Two-Day Creative Process Workshop
March 18 & 19, 2023, 10am to 4:00pm
at my West Linn, OR studio
Discover and work with your own personal and symbolic imagery with focused explorations in collage, doodling and claywork. Set aside what you do and don’t know about technique, deepen your relationship with the materials and yourself as an artist, and practice ways of mining the riches of the unconscious. We begin with nearly a full day of collage, exploring image vocabulary and discuss how to make the most of your creative process. A sequence of doodling exercises invites essential artistic style expressed in the language of line, color and shape. Clay exercises build on vocabulary and style in 3-dimensional form. We complete and integrate the workshop experience with deeper clay exploration or by making an image journal. Be prepared to come away with a blast of creative momentum! All levels. No experience necessary.
$300 includes materials. Limited enrollment. Full vax required.
Info & registration: sara.swink@gmail.com.

4-Day Sculpture Workshop: Finding & Making Meaning in Clay
May 18-21 (Thurs thru Sunday), 2023, 10am-3 or 4pm plus open studio hours at my West Linn, OR studio
Practice the basics of sculpture while making pieces that carry meaning for you. Be it a figurative piece, a shrine or other object of contemplation, clay offers the potential for an artistically satisfying way to express esthetic inpiration and personal narrative, and a way to honor spirit through artmaking.
We lay the foundation with collage on paper, exploring and identifying image vocabulary as we collect and play with images, ideas, stories, forms and surfaces that you might want to incorporate. From these source materials, we’ll develop clay sketches to test out ideas, which you can then bring into larger form. You may end up with a number of standalone pieces, a multipart shrine. You are invited to scale your work to a size that best suits your objectives for the week and experience level, and within that scale, I will provide guidance and suggestions to help you construct your vision.
Handbuilding experience is recommended. (You're familiar with pinch, coil, slab)
$550 includes materials and bisque firing. Limited enrollment. Full vax required.
Info & registration: sara.swink@gmail.com.
Please note: pieces will be bisque fired after the workshop when they have had a chance to fully dry. Bisque-fired pieces will be kept for a limited time. You’re welcome to come back for one or more studio classes or for a scheduled session to glaze your pieces. Post-workshop class time and glaze firing are additional.

Totemic Sculpture, Stacking & Narrative Clay Sculpture 4-Day Summer Workshop
July 15–18 (Sat–Tues), 10 am–3 or 4 pm (plus open studio hours) in West Linn, OR
A totem is one or more objects that helps tell the story of an individual or group. Totems, like shrines and other empowered objects, are a way to zero in on what inspires you and is meaningful. In this workshop, we will employ exercises such as collage on paper and sketching in clay to collect and play with images, ideas, stories, forms and surfaces that you might want to incorporate. From there you will develop design directions for totems to make during the workshop and beyond. You may end up with a number of standalone sculptural pieces or pieces and parts for a stacking totem, and certainly ideas for future creations. You’re invited to scale your work to a size that best suits your objectives for the week and comfort level, and within that scale, I will provide guidance and suggestions for construction. We’ll look at a couple of approaches to stacking totems that are key to the design process.
Handbuilding experience is recommended. (You're familiar with pinch, coil, slab) Limited enrollment. Full vax please.
$550 includes materials and bisque firing.
Please note: pieces will be bisque fired after the workshop when they have had a chance to dry fully. Bisque-fired pieces will be kept for a limited time. You’re welcome to come back for one or more studio classes or for a scheduled session to glaze your pieces. Post-workshop class time and glaze firing are additional.

My piece "Domestic Production" appears in Ceramic Sculpture: Making Faces, Lark Crafts Books, 2014

500 Figures in Clay Volume 2, Lark Crafts Books, 2014 features "Tiger Buddha"

One of my pieces, "Don't Feed the Hand That Bites You" is featured in Humor in Craft by Brigitte Martin, Schiffer Publishing. Available through amazon.com.

"Contemporary Wildlife Art", Schiffer Publishing, May 2015 features three of my pieces.

"Art Themes: Choices in Art Learning & Making", a textbook scheduled for publication by Indiana University Press in 2016