• Workshops

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    5-Day Figurative Sculpture Workshop with Kelsey Bowen
    June 6–10, 2025 at Sara's West Linn studio
    Learn Kelsey’s approach to coil building, hollow forms, gesture, figure sculpting, hands, textures, building an animal head, creating narrative through object & pose
    $750 plus approx. $27 materials fee
    Limited to 10 students • Handbuilding experience is helpful, but not required. Everybody is welcome!
    To register email sara.swink@gmail.com


    •••• 2025 WORKSHOPS WITH SARA at Clay Circle Studio ••••

    Make-a-Wally Workshop WAITLIST
    Two Saturdays, November 9 & December 7, 2024
    10 am-2-ish pm at my West Linn, OR studio
    $175 includes all materials + two firings
    In the first class you’ll learn to make a Wally in clay step by step.
    In the second class we’ll glaze our bisque-fired Wallies.
    They’ll be fired in time for the holidays.
    All levels welcome. No experience necessary. Limited enrollment.

    Two-Day Creative Process Workshop
    March 15-16, 2025 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 welcome. No experience necessary.
    $350 includes materials. Limited enrollment.
    Info & registration: sara.swink@gmail.com.

    Stacking Totems & Narrative Clay Sculpture Summer Workshop
    Part One: two days, Dates tba, 10 am–3 or 4 pm (plus open studio hours) in West Linn
    Part Two: one day, dates tba, 10 am–3 or 4 pm
    $495 includes materials & firing
    Totems, like shrines and other empowered objects, are a way to zero in on what inspires you and is meaningful. In part one, 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. We’ll look at a approaches to stacking totems that are key to the design process. I’ll provide guidance and suggestions for construction. You will develop your design direction for totems to make during the workshop and beyond, and make a small-scale totem. In part two we will glaze the bisque-fired pieces from part one.
    Some familiarity with pinch, coil and slab handbuilding techniques is recommended. Limited enrollment.