Folk Art & Living Simply 2023

Thursday was an explosion of color! As people arrived, they selected from a rainbow of embroidery flosses and revisited the childhood craft of making friendship bracelets. How appropriate for an IL centered around simplicity. Then we cleared our work areas and set out blank cotton sheets, because it was time to try out the...

Folk art’s day, to put it simply: “We dug a hole.” More to the point, we dug out a large hole in the field by the Gaga Pit, which is not something you see every day! But let’s start at the beginning. After the success of the past two days of macrame and baskets,...

Here’s what some of our group had to say about our third day of Folk Art & Living Simply … We used natural dyes to create imprints of flower petals and leaves. I used the red cabbage dye, hibiscus dye, and salt to create my patterns. I also used batteries to flatten some of...

Our day started by taking a walk together to gather materials to use over the next few days. Tomorrow we are going to weave baskets from a bunch of materials, so we stripped leaves off English Ivy and cut back some long grass outside. Viv knew how to braid together the ivy stems, and...

On Friday, (3/24) the Folk Art and Living Simply group learned how to weave paper baskets in preparation for weavings they will make with natural supplies in the upcoming week. Some students also began experimenting with clay, getting a head start on the rest of their learning. We also started making dyes from plants...