Adult Workshops
Mudflat's workshops cover a broad range of topics for everyone from beginner to advanced students. They're a great opportunity to gather with students and clay artists from Mudflat and elsewhere to explore a variety of ceramic art, try your hand at new techniques, or meet visiting artists. See below for upcoming workshop desciptions.
Spring/Summer 2025 Adult Workshop Descriptions
Soda Firing
Learn about soda firing, an alternative to Mudflat’s regular high fire reduction and oxidation kiln firings. This workshop includes an orientation meeting that will discuss clay bodies, best forms to make, application of flashing slips, texture considerations, glaze choice and glazing tips, plus what happens in a soda kiln during the firing. Mudflat’s tech staff will wad, load, fire and unload the kiln. Limited to 10 people for each section
Skill level: Not recommended for beginning students.
Spring/Summer #1
Orientation: Wednesday, April 30, 6-7 pm
Firing: Thursday, June 5
Spring/Summer #2
Orientation: Wednesday, June 11, 6-7 pm
Firing: Thursday, July 31
Tuition: $250, Subscribers $200, Includes one 25-lb clay
Visiting Artist: Heather Hietala
Add Another Layer - Playing with Texture
Surface texture adds another layer of interest to ceramic forms. North Carolina artist Heather Hietala will demonstrate using cloth and found objects, sgraffito, and physical resists like shellac, to develop visual interest on the clay before and after building forms. Students will learn how to piece and collage the clay and use bisque molds to assist in turning textured slabs into sculptural forms and functional bowls, cups, and plates. Students will use hand building and decorative techniques to create one-of-a-kind pieces in this fun and lively workshop. The workshop will be a combination of demonstrations and hands on. Skill Level: All Levels
Heather’s piece 'Inner Light"; is included in the exhibition, Art Evolved: Intertwined, currently on view at the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, MA, though August 31, 2025.
See Heather's work on her website here
Saturday, May 17, 10 am - 4 pm & Sunday, May 18, 10 am - 4 pm
Tuition: $200, Subscribers $150
Making Mini Houses with Amy Sullivan
Make a tiny slab-built stoneware house, 2 to 6" tall. Amy will demonstrate how she creates her little houses, sharing tips on slab rolling, angle cutting, scratching and attaching coils, and decorating with slips and underglazes. She will provide a variety of templates and cutters, as well as stamps for windows & doors. Make anything from a mini-Christmas house to a canal house shaker, or a tealight house, or a clay cottage container, or a brownstone vase! Skill Level: All Levels
Saturday, May 31, 1-4 pm
Tuition: $90, Subscribers $50
Visiting Artist: Jabu Nala
South African potter Jabu Nala will visit Mudflat to demonstrate her handbuilding techniques, making and decorating traditional Zulu ukhamba beer pots. She will show all the steps from coiling and shaping to burnishing and surface designs in this demonstration workshop. Skill level: all levels
Saturday June 7, 10 am-3 pm
Tuition: $50, subscribers $45
Mosaics with Gabrielle Fougere
Use your broken, rejected and discarded ceramic pieces to create decorative mosaic works in this two-part hands-on workshop with Mudflat teacher Gabrielle Fougere. Bring your ideas for a wall hanging, a tray, or a small tabletop. A descriptive handout and a supply list will be sent to registered students. Skill level: all levels
Part 1: Saturday June 21, 2-5 pm
Part 2: Saturday July 12, 2-4 pm
Tuition: $150, subscribers $100
Silicone Moldmaking with Corran Shrimpton
In this one-day hands-on workshop with Corran Shrimpton, students will learn how to create a silicone mold of an object of their choosing**. You will leave this workshop with a flexible, strong and durable mold that can be used to recreate your original object for years to come. Corran will demonstrate how to use a slab-pressing method with your new mold to create copies in clay.
** The object students should bring should be a NON-porous object to make a mold of. This could be an object you sculpted, but no bisqueware. Leather hard or vitrified clay is okay. This could be a found object- but no fabric or absorbent material. In both cases, the object shouldn’t have long/thin parts (for example, a strawberry works, but the leaves would not be successful). Students are encouraged to bring an object with some complexity- the benefit of doing a silicone mold is that undercuts are not a problem; a mold of a simple sphere for example, could be made with just plaster. Object must be no larger than 10" in any direction.
Sunday, June 22, 10 am - 5 pm
Tuition: $200, subscribers tuition: $150
