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Workshops

Gelatin Plate Printing with Natural Materials

In this Nature Printing workshop students will learn how to create original prints using natural plant materials, rocks, bark, stencils, stamps, shape making tools. Nature printing is a process of capturing the beauty of natural objects into art. There are many printmaking techniques and this introductory class will focus on using gel plates for creating prints. All equipment for the class will be loaned by the instructor for use in the class and all materials provided by the instructor. Students are welcome to bring plant materials from their own gardens but the instructor will have plant material available for use.

Date: Saturday, October 18th 
Time: 10:30pm-1:00pm 
Location: Bears Ears Education Center 

 Cost: $25 

 Number of participants: Up to 16 participants 
Participants must be at least 16 years old.
Register Here

Introduction to Figure Drawing

This workshop is an opportunity to learn some basic techniques that make it easier to draw from a model. For those with more experience, its a chance to push your skills further and talk with instructor about different ways to think about space, composition, and contrast for more impact in your drawings. Materials will be provided, or you may bring your own. There will be a clothed, live model posing for the class. No experience required.

Date: Friday, October 17th 
Time: 1:00pm-4:00pm 
Location: The Glass Gallery at Cow Canyon Coffee
 
Cost: $35

Number of participants: Up to 15 participants 
Participants must be a at least 13 years old.

Regster Herei

 

Originally from Salt Lake City, Anthony earned his BFA at the University of Utah in painting and drawing, and his MFA from the University of Montana. While in Missoula he got a taste for community and the rewards that come from being around people who are working to help others. Anthony put himself through school as a bike messenger and mechanic, a ski tech, and teaching drawing and design. In 2000, he reconnected with his college sweetheart and they eventually moved to Bluff, Utah where they raised their two children and a rotating cast of cats, chickens, and a desperately-sweet cow dog. Since 2003, Anthony has been teaching art and emergency medicine at the Blanding Campus of Utah State University.

In the small communities of the desert southwest it is necessary to do tasks for which one might not feel adequately trained or confident. Someone needs to dispose of the trash. Someone needs to keep the books, or show up when a neighbor is sick. Anthony joined the local volunteer fire department in 2006 and works with his colleagues to put out fires or get people out of the vehicles they’ve wrecked. He has discovered, under the stars of the desert and the flashing lights of the emergency vehicles, how important we are to one another – whether it’s an emergency or not. We are interdependent, and each interaction with another person is an opportunity to lightly nudge the world in a healthy direction.
 
 

Salve Making 101

 Learn the art of turning healing herbs into skin-loving salves in this hands-on workshop. You’ll discover how to choose herbs, infuse oils, blend with beeswax, and personalize your salves for a variety of uses — from soothing skin to supporting overall wellness.   No experience needed! All materials are included, and you’ll take home your own handcrafted salve along with the skills to make more. 

 Taught by: Katie Ramos, founder of Mesa Verde Lavender, grower of 15+ varieties of lavender and medicinal herbs, and creator of high-quality botanical products. Perfect for: beginners, gardeners, DIY makers, or anyone curious about herbal medicine.

Date: Friday, October 17th 
Time: 10:00am-12:00pm 
Location: Bears Ears Education Center
Cost: $35 

Number of participants: Up to 25 participants 
Participants must be a at least 9 years old.

Register Here
Katie's portrait

About Katie and her Lavender Farm:

Our family lavender farm is a place where the past and present come together. Our land is rich with sacred history going back to the Basketmaker era which started around 500 bce. As for the lavender, the high-altitude environment adds a unique potency to our oil’s content. We’re dedicated to helping build the legacy of lavender farming in Colorado while also embracing innovative sustainability practices that keep our farm thriving. Lavender loves this climate and we’re excited to help introduce an alternative drought-tolerant crop to an area where water is becoming more and more scarce.

lavender

Nizhóní Navajo Weaving

Participants will learn all the steps of the Navajo weaving process including how to prepare the loom with a warp, how to weave on a vertical loom, and how to finish a small rug. All materials will be included and everyone will leave with a loom, weaving comb and batten. This course is taught by traditional Navajo weaver, Arlene Benally.
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Date: Saturday, October 18th Time: 10:00am-4:00pm
Location: Cow Canyon Trading Post

Cost:
 
Number of participants: Up to 15 participants 
Participants must be at least 11 years old.
SOLD OUT

 

Arlene Benally is a Navajo weaver and Navajo language teacher based in Shonto, AZ.  She has been weaving since she was a young girl. She weaves traditional Navajo rugs as well as Navajo Rug dresses for ceremonies and special events.

Creative Tufa Casting

Participants will learn the art of silver casting using the tufa method which utilizes tufa stone as a mold to produce a finished piece of jewelry.

**Please note** You will need to bring your own silver to this workshop 
details on where to buy silver can be found in the registration section
Date: Friday, October 17th and Saturday, October 18th 
Time: 10:00am-4:00pm both days 
Location: Design Build Bluff, Cedar Hall 

Cost: $125

Number of participants: Up to 10 participants 
Participants must be at least 16 years old.
Register Here

Jonah Hill’s Artist Statement

“Love, light, and happiness are the keys to the universe. I try to express these keys in my artwork. Whether I am working with wood, metal, photography, or printmaking, I try to let these elements flow through me and into my work. Through my efforts I try to produce art that speaks to the inner soul of the viewer, in the hopes that they too will also use the talents they possess to further these ideas. I want to be able to use the creative process to capture the physical being of these elements, as they exist in nature. These concepts live in the hint of a smile, in the leaf of a plant, and in the movement of the wind and water.

I am from the Hopi reservation in Northern Arizona on my mother’s side and Quechan  from my father’s side. To the Hopi and Quechan , water plays an important part of daily life. As dry farmers we rely on annual rain and snowfall to benefit our crops and orchards. Spirituality and ceremony are also a daily part of living, and being connected to place and nature has given me inspiration for my various types of expression. I have a vested interest in water issues as they pertain to native peoples and use the artistic process to express my love and concern for water and the related environmental issues surrounding this most precious resource. I have been an artist for over 20 years, I am a river guide, environmental educator, and ethnobotanist, and have worked with various types of media and have exhibited my work in numerous shows and galleries.”

Writing with Ellen Meloy Winner Debbie Weingarten

Date: Friday, October 18th 
 Time: 9am – 11am 
 Location: Recapture Lodge Outdoor Area 

Cost: $25 

Number of Participants: Up to 15 
Participants must be 16 years old. 
REGISTER HERE

Debbie Weingarten Instructor 

Our lives are complex and layered. We exist in an accordion of time, geography, species, and inheritances, amid shifting global economics, politics, war, and climate. Sometimes an essay needs a flexible container to hold all of these pieces. 

 
The braided essay is one such container—one that weaves together the individual story with that of the bigger wider world. One result of this juxtaposition is enhanced meaning. A braided essay can sometimes speak in a rounder voice. A braid made of multiple strands can often play with nuance more deftly than a single linear narrative. The braided essay can time travel, freeze, speculate, return to childhood, deep-dive into research, reflect and refract, chase its tail, become animal, and delight us with new associations. 
 
We’ll channel our inner packrat to first collect bits and bobbles of shiny interesting things—memories, research, snippets of dialogue, news stories, burning questions, family mythologies, you name it—and then sort through them to develop possible strands. 
 
Come ready to play with fragments, cut things up with actual scissors, and go on a scavenger hunt. Bring a notebook or laptop for generative writing exercises. My hope is for all participants to leave this workshop feeling inspired to continue this page-play and to eventually see their strands through to a completed braided essay.
’m an essayist and journalist who especially loves to explore the seams between lyric memoir and reporting. As a journalist, I often write at the intersection of social justice and rural issues. In my creative writing, I’m immensely inspired by place and questions of memory, longing, and home. My writing has been featured in The New York Times, The Guardian, Longreads, Guernica, The New York Review of Books, High Country News, The Economic Hardship Reporting Project, and many other digital and print outlets, including the 2016 and 2017 Best of Food Writing anthologies. I’m a two-time Pushcart nominee and was a 2019 finalist for the James Beard Award for Investigative Reporting, among myriad other awards and honors. Most recently, I became the grateful recipient of the Ellen Meloy Fund’s 2024 Desert Writers Award. In addition to writing and editing, I have a background in food systems, arid lands agriculture, and community organizing. I write full-time for High Mowing Organic Seeds. For nearly a decade, I’ve worked with award-winning photographer Audra Mulkern of The Female Farmer Project. Our full-length documentary film, Women’s Work: The Untold Story of America’s Female Farmers, premiers on PBS in September 2024. My debut memoir-in-essays is forthcoming from Grand Central Publishing, an imprint of Hachette. In 2021, after sixteen formative years in the Sonoran Desert, I moved back to the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina.

Confidence to Tell Your Story

Date: Saturday, October 19th 
Time: 10am – 12pm 
Location: Twin Rocks Cafe & Trading Post (outdoors)

Cost: $20 

Number of Participants: Up to 20 people
 Participants must be 16 years old.
REGISTER HERE

Monique Alvarez Instructor

Whether you have wanted to publish your story, get on podcasts or be featured in the media, this is for you! Overcome your fear. Stand in your power. Speak your truth. Gain practical steps to get published in the next 12 months or less. Also, learn how to get yeses from podcasts and how to pitch local, regional, and even national media.

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ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR 

Monique Alvarez is the founder and CEO of AMA Publishing. She is a Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author as well as 22 time international bestselling author. She has been featured in Forbes, Inc., Success, HuffPost, The Daily Star, America Daily Post and London Daily Post. She is currently living in the middle of nowhere Colorado where she is renovating her grandparents’ home and learning how to homestead with her husband, Derek and two sons, Sam and Grant. In her spare time she bakes Persian Love Cake and sips rose chamomile tea.

Compassionate Listening: The Foundation of Storytelling

Date: Saturday, October 19th 
Time: 1-4pm Location: Recapture Lodge Outdoor Area 

Cost: $20 

Number of Participants: Up to 50 people 
Participants must be 16 years old.
REGISTER HERE

Bethany Jorgenson Author 

Stories can’t be told if there aren’t people to listen. In this three-hour workshop, we will explore how to tell their stories. We will practice intentional listening techniques that can be used in any circumstance where you want to understand a person more deeply.

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ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR


Bethany Jorgenson is an intensely curious storyteller who loves meeting people and is honored to share their stories as well as her own. She draws from experiences as a traveler, an oral historian, a tour guide, a teacher, a data analyst and a writer. At the University of Washington, she won the Outstanding Senior Thesis award for recounting women’s experiences during the fall of the Soviet Union. Most recently, her story of traveling around the United States and “roadschooling” her children was published in an international best-selling book, Do More Stupid Things.

Imagine, Write, Act: Turning Your Ideas into Reality

Date: Friday, October 18th 
Time: 1 pm 
Location: Cow Canyon Coffee and Trading Post 

Cost: $25 

Number of Participants: Up to 25 
Participants should be at least 15 years old.
REGISTER HERE

Marianne Brenna Kelly Instructor

An experiential workshop on the individual and collective practices to break through stagnant modes of Operandi. Learn to tap into your essence, unhindered by conditioned responses that do not serve unique expression. Engagement, surprise and delight are key components. This workshop is a combination of improvisation, storytelling, and writing exercises.

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ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR

 
Marianne Brenna Kelly is a writer, producer, director of original theatre for the past thirty years. An internationally performing stand up comedian, her work has been featured in the Los Angeles Times. She is passionate for cultivating empowered communicators and deep listeners who change the world through innovative, connected businesses. www.ConspireToInspire.us Owner & Host of Story Tree Guest Ranch. MBK delights in providing engaging vacations for animal lovers. Over 30 animal healers on staff including horses, llamas, a donkey and many other characters.

Edible Art: A Taste of the Middle East

Date: Sunday, October 20th 
Time: 9am – 12pm 
Location: Fire Mesa Kitchen, Bluff Community Center 

Cost: $40 

Number of Participants: Up to 10 people 
Participants must be 12 years old.
SOLD OUT

Edible Art Kourtney Morgan

Learn to make fresh pita bread in a wood-fired oven alongside baba ganoush and fresh hummus all while sipping mint tea at the Bluff’s Fire Mesa Kitchen. This food-focused workshop will be led by clothing designer turned chef, Kourtney Morgan.

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ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR

Kourtney Morgan worked as a cook while putting herself through design school. After 25 years of apparel design at Patagonia, she returned to her roots in the kitchen and her passion and excitement for good food.

“Throughout my years in design, food was always a creative outlet at the end of the day when I just needed to make something physically with my own two hands. I see cooking as an art form that is constantly changing with the seasons “

Currently, she is building a local catering, private chef, and wholesale foods business in the four corners region. She is dedicated to sourcing local and regional ingredients and getting to know the farmers, ranchers, and makers of the area.

Instagram: @free.range.food.co

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