Craft Classes 2024

Michelle Brown

Cajun Cooking

There is a materials fee of $150.00 for this class.

I was born and raised in rural South Louisiana on a farm and I learned to cook at an early age. My mom was a homemaker and cooked 3 meals every day. I watched and learned from her the ways of Cajun cooking. My culture is known for our great food and where there is food there are many friends. We talk about our next meal while we are eating the one we just prepared. I also like to bake and some of my pastries are served fresh at the local coffee shop downtown Eunice, LA. I am a retired school bus operator of 25 years service to rural schools in Acadia Parish. In my spare time, I do sewing and alterations for the public. My passion for sewing began at the age of 9 and is a joyful hobby. Both of my girls wore wedding gowns designed by them and I fashioned the gowns to their unique specifications! I have since taken on quilting and old fashioned tatting. My husband Greg and I have 3 children and 6 grandchildren. Our 2 youngest children Megan Brown Constantin and Briggs Brown are both involved in Cajun music and preservation of our Cajun culture and heritage. I am looking forward to making new friends thru my Cajun cooking demonstration here at Augusta.

Emolyn Liden

Exploration of Fiber Arts: Knitwear design, spinning, and a dye pot on the side 

Emolyn Liden is an artist, musician, and dancer. She grew up in Brasstown, North Carolina and discovered her love of craft at a young age observing the artists in her community. She learned from her mother about raising sheep, natural fiber, and to knit which led her to spinning and natural dyeing. Through her business, The Roving Knitter, she designs knitwear inspired by texture and color, teaches people of all ages to knit, and displays her work at craft shows and exhibits. Emolyn is a graduate of the professional craft program in jewelry at Haywood Community College. She is interested in the cross-section of fiber and metalsmithing, how to create a softness in something structured like metal, and how to create sculptural art with knitting techniques. Emolyn is a community-minded teaching artist who blends her passion of music, dance, and craft to empower others to discover confidence, creativity, connection and understanding. She has danced with the Cane Creek Cloggers of Chapel Hill; the Green Grass Cloggers of Asheville; Cape Breton step-dancing team, The Twisty Cuffs; and has been a dance instructor for kids in public school and at camps around the country. She regularly performs Appalachian old-time music and teaches at Warren Wilson College in Asheville, North Carolina.

Talcon Quinn

Appalachian Folk Craft, Medicine & Lure

There is a materials fee of $65 for this class.

Talcon Quinn is the 8th generation of her father’s family to be raised in Athens County. Talcon has traveled extensively throughout the United States and abroad, developing her skills as an artist, educator, and folk medicine maker. She started beading as a small child and then later as a teenager apprenticed with a local silver smith, Lucinda Moran.

She strayed from “art” for a few years in her early twenties, as she passionately devoted her fullself to ending old growth logging on public lands in Oregon (with success). Her work of protecting the environment lead her to closely examine what the impact of our consumer choices have on the natural world and others. This reflection steered her artistic expression away from silversmithing and beading and toward learning traditional earth based skills such as basket weaving, stone tool making , hide tanning and animal processing. At this time she also dove in deeper to her work with medicinal and edible plants as well as plants for dyes and fibers. After saving the forest, Talcon completed multiple programs in herbalism, wildcrafting, wilderness survival skills, as well as full spectrum doula work. She also dedicated multiple years to community outreach work teaching violence prevention in Southeastern Ohio.

Talcon’s current artistic work links together social and environmental interests as it aims to inspire the development of vibrant, conscious communities through grassroots education, organization, and action. Her jewelry, baskets, hides and herbal remedies are exclusively created from materials she ethically collects and processes herself in her solar powered studio. Her classes and workshops span a variety of health topics and traditional craft making techniques that promote health, well-being, and respect for all living things. This respect is deeply reflected in her own work. Through her teaching and creative practices, Talcon hopes to inspire others to cultivate a deeper sense of compassion, connection, and responsibility to themselves, others and the world around them.

Woody Woodcock

Screenprinting: Exploring Multiples

There is a materials fee of $25 for this class.

Kevin M. Woodcock was born and raised in the suburbs of New York City. After high school he traveled to West Virginia to visit a friend and was attracted to the mountainous beauty of the state. Kevin moved to Morgantown where he received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from West Virginia University. He met his wife, Mel, in Elkins through mutual friends. Kevin and Mel moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana where he received his Master of Fine Arts degree in Printmaking and Painting at Louisiana State University. They moved back to West Virginia in 1989 and currently live in Elkins. Kevin creates his visual artworks at his home studio and at Davis & Elkins College where he is an Assistant Professor of Art and the Chair of the Creative Art Department. Kevin teaches Beginning Painting, 2D Design, Color Theory, Screen Printing, Intro to Printmaking, Senior Seminar, Senior Studio, Advanced Drawing and Advanced Painting. Kevin also is involved with the ArtsBank program where he is a board member.

A lot of Kevin’s work is inspired by hiking and camping trips in the Monongahela National Forest of West Virginia. There is a sense of wonder he experiences that compels him to visually express the emotions he feels at some of these places. He says “When a painting or print is going well I don’t think about my surroundings, I get into the piece as if I were there and lose track of time.” “I am interested in showing the movement of wind, light, water and sound that I experience in nature” Kevin says.” The phenomena of the natural environment intrigues me. When I was young the wilderness seemed like a place of mystery and adventure. This sense of mystery and adventure is still with me when I am creating artwork.” Kevin works in the mediums of screen, block and monoprinting as well as acrylic painting.

Korey Burns

Beginner Jewelry

There is a materials fee of $80 for this class.

Korey E, Burns is currently a full-time Creative Arts Professor at Davis and Elkins Collage. At D&E she is the instructor for the digital media courses and advises students who are enrolled in the Digital Design Minor at the collage.

Korey graduated with a masters in fine arts, concentrating in jewelry and metalsmithing techniques at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, TX. She received her bachelors of fine arts from Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, LA where she contrasted in sculptural designs. Born and raised in Grayson, Louisiana she has always felt a strong connection to the community and culture of Louisiana. Which lead to further interests in human interaction and traditions in other countries. In 2016, Korey participated in a study abroad program that took place in Salvador, Brazil. Then another in 2017 where she traveled to Florence, Italy. She was able to discover different connections that related back to the history of Louisiana. After graduation, Korey was selected by the Friends of the Visual Arts at Stephen F. Austin Statute University as 2018’s recipient of the Gary Parker Art Scholarship which allowed her to move to NYC and accept a position as a assistant jewelry designer for Michael Michaud. After learning further skills about jewelry production, marketing, and craftsmanship she decided it was time to follow her passion of teaching.

More info about Korey and jewelry examples: Here

William Riedlinger

There is a materials fee of $40 for this class.

Teaching this course is William M A Riedlinger, the Craft Consultant for the south- western county of Rogaland in Norway. The Norwegian Folk Arts and Crafts Association, a volunteer organization founded in 1910, employs one consultant in teach of Norway’s 19 former counties. Originally from Rochester, New York William has lived in Norway since August 2016. In 2023 he graduated from the University of South-Eastern Norway with a master’s degree in Traditional Art and a concentration in weaving. Since 2023 he has been working to gather and reconstruct ribbons from Rogaland used in the county’s first bunad.

Shoji Satake

Ceramics: Building skills in Wheel-Throwing and Hand-Building

There is a materials fee of $100 for this class.

Shoji Satake is the J.Bernard Schultz Endowed Professor of Art and area head of ceramics at West Virginia University School of Art & Design and Coordinator of the School’s ceramics in China program. He has taught at Indiana University, Hope College, and Central Michigan University. Shoji has served as one of the Directors-at-Large for the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) Board, he was a co/on-site coordinator (NCECA Pittsburgh 2018), and he will serve in the NCECA Presidential Cycle from 2023-2027. Shoji has conducted workshops, given lectures, and exhibited nationally and internationally. His most recent activities have been included in the 2017 Whitney Biennial, group exhibition at Red Lodge Clay Center, a solo exhibition at the Eutectic Gallery, and the Taiwan International Ceramics Biennale. He is a member of the International Academy of Ceramics. His residencies have included numerous locales in China, Japan, Canada, and in the United States. Shoji in addition to teaching maintains an active studio practice with studios in West Virginia and Jingdezhen, China.

Rachel Poling

Getting Your Start in Stained Glass

There is a materials fee of $70 for this class.

Rachel Poling is a native and life-long resident of West Virginia. Since she was a child she had admired and yearned to do stained glass. The opportunity arose to study under Stellathena Vartheyanyos Gregory and she seized and ran with it. Her obsession for the art led her down a path of dedication and success in stained glass. Her art and her passion is stained glass art in the Tiffany technique using glass from locally centered companies like Wissmach Glass Company and  Youghiogheny Glass. She also tries to use upcycled glass to reduce her carbon footprint.  She also enjoys trying to incorporate other upcycled items like bike gears, rotors and plates to make unique one-of-a-kind items. She does custom orders and sells locally and online. She makes stained glass panels, jewelry, suncatchers, and 3-D pieces such as terrariums, kaleidoscopes, boxes, lamps, Christmas villages and more. She has a tendency to lean to eccentric pieces that catch the eye and make the observer think about the beauty of the light and dark. She is also a full-time registered nurse, mother of two and hobby farmer. Though glass has become her favorite medium she also draws and paints. Her goal is to one day retire from nursing and do stained glass full-time, including classes. She has an Instagram and Facebook page: Red Roof Studios