Posts in Session 4
Theme + Variations on Surface Design
Theme + Variations on Surface Design

This workshop focuses on creative surface design techniques using various objects as drawing tools: cookie cutters, typing press, carving tools, flexible rulers, and other items to decorate the clay surface.  By combining various shapes, colors, and textures, we aim to express a personal meaning or story. We will use different kinds of clay and examine the contrast and variations of mood and effect. Each participant will create a cup or small item of their choice (wheel-thrown or hand-built) which will be used to explore these techniques. All levels welcome.

Masa Sasaki (he/him) is an innovative, colorful, surface design ceramic artist.

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Session 4Molly FlaniganCeramics, Masa Sasaki
Sampling: Experimentation through Material Play
Sampling: Experimentation through Material Play

Sampling: Experimentation through Material Play
This workshop will engage sample-making as a practice of playful experimentation and critical inquiry. Starting with hand weaving techniques on portable tapestry looms and moving to floor looms to explore more complex patterning, participants will create collections of swatches that explore the possibilities within a single loom set-up or material question. Sampling will be supported by guiding prompts, written reflection, and documentation. Participants will be invited to learn from each other through skill sharing and group discussions. All levels welcome.

Etta Sandry (she/her, they/them) is an artist, educator, and facilitator situated in the expanded material practices field between craft, contemporary art, and creative research.

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Session 4Molly FlaniganFiber, Etta Sandry
Immersion into Glass
Immersion into Glass

Through careful observation, respect, and consideration, we will move beyond simply manipulating glass into an exploration of its conceptual value. Various collaborative and experimental demonstrations will delve into how glass relates to optics, sound, and site-specific location to broaden the participant’s understanding of the material’s possibilities. Encouraging investigations into the innate properties of glass will help expand our thinking of its potential. We will explore the environment of Haystack and discern how an artist utilizes creativity to reveal their interpretation of this world. A minimum of one year of glassblowing experience is required.

Bohyun Yoon (he/him) is an artist and educator who explores the conceptual properties of glass. His work exists at the intersection of craft, music, performance, video, and experimental participatory theatre.

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Session 4Molly FlaniganGlass, Bohyun Yoon
Demystifying the Pop-up Book
Demystifying the Pop-up Book

Pop-up book structures can create captivating art for all ages—from greeting cards to room-sized interactive kinetic sculptures. In this workshop, participants will learn the basic elements of pop-up paper engineering and how to combine them to create more complex mechanisms, including platforms, rotating disks, and pull-tabs. Most of all, participants will learn how to effectively incorporate their own art into their structures to create unique pop-up books, cards, and works of art. All levels welcome.

Colette Fu (she/her) is a pop-up book artist who creates sculptural, photo-based pop-up books illuminating cultures and depicting myths and legends.

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Session 4Molly FlaniganGraphics, Colette Fu
Multiples for Installation, Jewelry + Objects
Multiples for Installation, Jewelry + Objects

This workshop will explore both hand and digital techniques to produce molds and dies, allowing for the reproduction of sheet metal components using the hydraulic press. Basics of hand and digital fabrication will be presented between the Metals Studio and the Haystack Fab Lab. Haystack has a limited number of computers, but it is recommended that participants bring a laptop with Adobe Illustrator. Participants will leave with a combination of dies, experiments, prototypes, small projects, and big ideas. All levels welcome.

Lauren Kalman (she/her) is a visual artist, craft artist, and educator.

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Session 4Molly FlaniganMetals, Lauren Kalman
Call + Response
Call + Response

The objects and spaces we navigate are filled with latent potential for redefinition. Starting our session with succinct and satisfying technical explorations and ending with a long form project, we will explore object making steeped in humor, absurdity, and the capacity for transformation. Architecture, the environment, and found materials will be prompts for inventive, improvisational building strategies that speak to specificity of place, partnerships, and people. Using traditional wood milling and furniture making processes as a guide, participants will define the technical parameters of their work based on site and material choices with the goal of finding strategies where a personal and proliferating source of conceptual and technical fodder abound. All levels welcome.

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Session 4Molly FlaniganWood, Ellie Richards
Mapping Tatreez: Understanding the Making Practices of Palestinian Headdresses through Symbolism, Design, + Adornment
Mapping Tatreez: Understanding the Making Practices of Palestinian Headdresses through Symbolism, Design, + Adornment

Throughout this residency, using a selection of five traditional Palestinian headdresses in the Tatreez Institute Collection from Yaffa, Jerusalem, Gaza, Al Khalil, and Bir Saba from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Wafa Ghnaim will create a digital map of the Palestinian embroidery (tatreez) designs and other material aspects that instruct future reconstruction and builds social, economic, and political historical contexts. This material analysis will be a culmination of work that began in 2023 during her fellowship at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Wafa Ghnaim (she/her) is a Palestinian dress historian, researcher, writer, archivist, curator, educator, and embroideress.

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Session 4Molly FlaniganVisiting Artist, Wafa Ghnaim
Craft-Centered CNC Tool Design
Craft-Centered CNC Tool Design

Digital fabrication offers new opportunities for craft, but contemporary digital fabrication technologies reinforce industrial manufacturing conventions. Jennifer Jacob’s research lab seeks to support skilled craftspeople by reimagining digital fabrication machines as extensions of traditional craft tools with a focus on the domain of ceramics. Jacobs’s and Ilan Moyers’s work focuses on developing new clay 3D printing mechanisms that preserve the look and feel of manual pottery tools and new interfaces that allow potters to integrate automated fabrication with manual control. This work situates technologies in craft communities to co-design products and workflows that reflect a craft-centric vision of digital fabrication. During their residency, Jacobs and Moyer will share the work they create on campus, and at times during the two-week session, invite workshop participants to engage with these digital fabrication tools.

Jennifer Jacobs (she/her) is an Assistant Professor at the University of California Santa Barbara and the Director of Expressive Computation. She is developing new clay 3D printing mechanisms that preserve the look and feel of manual pottery tools.

Ilan Moyer (he/him) is a PhD student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He builds digital fabrication tools for craftspeople.

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Session 4Molly FlaniganFab Lab Residents, Jennifer Jacobs + Ilan Moyer