Courses

Cranks wind, gears turn, dragons chomp and birds fly. Welcome to the whimsical world of automata: simple wooden machines that delight and amaze. Join Cecilia Schiller for a four-day exploration of the art of making wooden machines and the mechanisms that make things move. Starting with the design process in…

This course will introduce students to the world of bird carving. This is a great class for beginners and experienced carvers alike. We will focus on song birds commonly found in the sub-boreal forest of the Lake Superior region. Of course, each bird is different but the general form, anatomy,…

The shrink box is a wooden container that relies on a simple trick: Freshly cut (green) wood and dry wood behave differently. The body of the vessel is made from green wood that changes in size as it dries (putting the “shrink” in shrink box). The bottom of the vessel…

The timeless beat of the drum stems back to a time when we made our own music literally from the ground up.  Before drum shops and before Putumayo, materials were hand-harvested from the forest to create wonderful sounds and were used to find rhythm in the world. In this course…

Break out the v-gouges and chisels! This tutorial format course is a great opportunity to get going on a new carving project or finish up something you’ve already started, all under the expert guidance of instructor Phil Odden. Phil specializes in Nordic-style carving and will have a variety of projects…

Carving wooden spoons is a tradition in Scandinavia, where carvers crafted spoons for home use, for seasonal income, and to give as gifts. The techniques, designs, and embellishments commonly used today are deeply embedded in centuries of cultural history, but spoon carving is also a vibrant and growing craft tradition…