What to bring:

Overnight guests must bring their own camping gear including tent, tarp, sleeping bag, pillow, towel, and biodegradable toiletries. Porta potties and outdoor showers are available. We also suggest participants bring closed-toed shoes, dress in natural fiber only, bring clothing layers for varying day and night temperatures. Specific items recommended include a warm jacket, hat, gloves, and rain gear, and extra pairs of wool socks.

Friday September 20–Sunday September 22
Registration Includes camping & meals

Early Registration:
$125, Deadline June 1

Standard Registration:
$150 per person

Additional Days:
$50 per day (camping & meals only)

Upgrade to an Arthouse:
Support SAW and stay in an artist-made Arthouse!
Registration PLUS $75 per night per person

Workshops

Intro to Blacksmithing
Friday 9–12 PM, $75

Blacksmithing Pass
Friday 9 AM–Sunday 12 PM, $125

Doodle Bowls
$50 each

Sand-Mold Making Rental
Tuesday 9 AM–Friday 9 PM, $25/ day

Iron Pour
$25 furnace fee, ¢ 25 per lb sand, ¢ 50 per lb iron

Small Wood Kiln Building Symposium
Friday 9 AM–Sunday 3 PM, $585 per team up to 5 ppl

Glass Blowing Workshop
Thursday 9 AM–Sunday 9 AM, $275

GROUPS

Groups may register and pay directly through our website, or email us to register to pay by invoice.

Volunteer

Volunteers receive a reduced rate. Limited spots available. Apply below.

Contact us with questions!

SMALL WOOD KILN BUILDING SYMPOSIUM

Salem Art Works invites teams to build and fire small wood-fired ceramic kilns. Specific refractory materials are provided to build the kiln (listed below,) teams must create their design in advance. During the symposium teams will construct their kiln and must be finished by 5 pm Friday, Kilns will be loaded with ceramic work made by the team members, fired for a maximum of 24 hours, and unloaded on Sunday late afternoon.

Materials Provided
Refractory and fuel available to each team 4' x 8' x 4” steel box filled with silica sand
(200) standard hard bricks 9"x4.5"x2.5"
(100) 2300 soft bricks 9"x4.5"x2.5"
(4) 12" x 24" x 3/4" silicon carbide kilns shelves
(1) five gallon bucket of fireclay/epk mix for mortar and wadding
1/4 cord of hardwood and 1/4 cord of pine both split fine and 12 inches long

Ceramics Schedule

Kiln Building Workshop
Friday Sept 20
9 AM–5 PM

Artist Talk
Friday Sept 20
5:30 PM—6:30 PM

24 Hour Kiln Firing
Fri. Sept 20 6:30 PM
to Sat. Sept 21 6:30 PM

Unloading
Sunday Sept 22
3 PM

CERAMIC GUEST ARTIST

“Heat Saturation and Mark Making” Justin Lambert

Justin Lambert received his BFA from Florida Atlantic University 1999, and his MFA from Indiana University 2003. Justin has spent the last 18 years firing utilitarian pottery in wood burning kilns. Investigations into reduction cooling variations in the teardrop anagama adds dramatic decoration to the subtle curves in his pots. In addition to running the studio, Justin travels to teach kiln building, pottery making, and wood firing workshops around the country. Justin is also a very accomplished fly fisherman, a licensed USCG captain, and ran fishing charters for many years. He enjoys spending time with his wife Andrea cycling, snowboarding, hiking, swimming, eating delicious vegan meals, traveling, and playing with their dogs Rusty, and Daisy.

My clay bodies start with porcelain, and I then blend in various other clays to help encourage the color and ash glaze achieved through the wood firing process. Wood firing in an Anagama style kiln poses many challenges, and opportunities. It's extremely labor intensive, requiring constant stoking every 5-10 minutes for a duration of 3-6 days minimum. My kiln utilizes 3 cords of wood each firing (we fire 5 times per year). I love firing with wood for many reasons. There is no other way to achieve the color, drama, individuality, and connection from maker to user. No two pieces will ever be the same, and there is no "applied" glaze separating the user from the bare clay.

There are so many variables in wood firing, it's impossible to attribute any one effect to any single variable. For example, my color palette is not a result of the "clay body", it's a harmonious blend of wood type, clay body, atmosphere, firing duration, stoke frequency, humidity, wind, temperature, stoking style, etc.

DANCING WITH THE DIVA WORKSHOP

The Glass department offers a master glass workshop led by a guest artist. Students will explore hand-building, color application, floor marvering, working with bits, and we might even skip into the flame shop and make parts for our blown work. This intensive workshop will include demonstrations and hands-on activities throughout the weekend.

Glass Schedule

Glass Demos
Fri. Sept 20
09 AM–12 PM

Student Work Time
Fri. Sept 20
1–5 PM

Artist Talk
Sat. Sept 21
9–9:30 AM

Glass Demos
Sat. Sept 21
11 AM–5 PM

Unload Glass Annealers
Sun. Sept 22
9 AM

GLASS GUEST ARTIST

Laura Donefer ‘Dancing with the Diva’

Laura Donefer is an award winning artist who has been using glass as her primary medium for more than thirty five years, often in combination with diverse materials. Celebrated for her innovative, colorful blown glass and flame worked “Amulet Baskets”, she also pushes the boundaries with work that explores ideas concerning memory, assault, bereavement, joy and madness. In demand as an exciting teacher helping her students to push the boundaries of glass as an art material, Laura has taught workshops and given lectures worldwide, including Japan, the United States, China, New Zealand and Australia. Her work is many public and private collections, the Corning Museum of Glass, the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, the Museum of Art and Design in Manhattan and the Museum of Fine Art in Montreal to name but a few. Laura has been honoured with many awards, among them “Lifetime Achievement Awards” from the Glass Art Association of Canada, as well as Craft Ontario, the prestigious “Honorary Membership Award” from the Glass Art Society, for her dedication to the glass community at large, and the International Flameworking Award for “extraordinary contributions to the glass art world,” as well as being honored in 2016 with the Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass award for her role in the glass community. Every few years Laura organizes one of her wacky, exuberant Glass Fashion Shows, a fantastical spectacle for the international glass community to enjoy. The last one took place in Murano, Italy and featured 33 amazing glass costumes in gondolas going down the famous Vetrai Canal.   Laura lives in the wilds of Ontario, Canada, and in her spare time grows kale, hangs out with her husband The Mighty Dave and kayaks the nearby waterways with her dachshund Mr. Lance, loving and living her life to the fullest!

The iron department offers an artist talk, performance, and production pour. Friday evening showcases our iron key note artist with an artist talk and performance. Saturday we’ll have a production iron pour all day where participants are invited to bring molds to have cast in metal. The production Iron Pour is a chance for teams from across the nation to come together for a hands on opportunity to share techniques, ideas, and resources in iron casting. Participants spend the weekend working in groups to prepare and pour molds, furnace, and pour site.

Scratch Block Workshop

Contact us to reserve scratch blocks or doodle bowls and schedule a group demo!

Iron Schedule

Mold Making Workshop
Mon. Sept 9—Fri. Sept 13
9—5 PM Daily

Mold Making Open Studio
Tues. Sept 17—Fri. Sept 20
9—5 PM Daily

Register Molds
Fri. Sept 20
9 AM –7:00 PM

Artist Talk
Fri. Sept 20
7–7:30 PM

Iron Performance
Fri. Sept 20
8 PM

Iron Schedule Cont ‘d

Production Pour
Sat. Sept 21
9 AM—7 PM

Divesting Molds &
Clean Up
Sun. Sept 22
9 AM—2 PM

‘Speaks On Fire’ Coral Lambert

Using fire as a tool Coral Penelope Lambert is internationally recognized for working in cast iron and large scale sculpture. Born in the UK she studied sculpture in the late 1980's at Canterbury College of Art with Sir Anthony Caro and received for MFA in Sculpture in 1990 from Manchester Met University. She combines her early training in formal steel sculpture with her passion for casting metal. Over the past 30 years she has utilized the foundry as her laboratory to explore the process of speeding up the work of Mother Nature. Her work responds to metals rich history in myth, landscape and mining; exploring its weight, permanence and flux as well as its political reference to the earth’s resources. She is the recipient of prestigious awards and her work can be seen across America and Europe. She is Professor of Sculpture and Director of the National Casting Center Foundry at Alfred University, NY.

The lecture will precede the performance, Lambert will speak about the importance of fire as a transformative tool in her work connecting it to the history and development of culture. The talk will engage the audience in activating the performance ‘The Cosmic Furnace’ : it may involve bringing an offering to the furnace, chanting and journeying with fire to the performance site.

‘The Cosmic Furnace: Fire and Iron Performance’ Coral Lambert

In general my work explores forces of nature and seeks to address darker issues related to the earth’s resources such as contamination and mining.

‘The Cosmic Furnace’ is an active iron furnace that will produce molten iron. The form of it stems from my ‘Chakra’ series of sculptures which are about ideas of things being in fluctuating sync with nature; they explore ideas of coexistence, containment, resonance and metamorphosis. In the furnace design a specific number of spherical forms have become joined and dependent upon each other, this state references such things as the alignment of planets in the sky or the chakras in the body.  Surrounding the furnace will be a circle of small communal fires.

Offerings will be made to the furnace in the form of charges of iron created ahead of time: the iron charges will be in the form of tiny human figures. In many cultures the furnace has symbolic meaning, it is not just a piece of apparatus to heat up and purify metals. Alchemists believed that the metal (and thus the human soul) experienced suffering and mortification while being cleansed of its impurities and corruption. The symbolic act that will take place at during the performance echoes this purification.

It has been theorized that the planet also has Chakras that appear as centers of high energy at sacred sites. ‘The Cosmic Furnace’ will be located at a heart of SAW and remain as a sculptural artifact after the Festival of Fire.

I use the ‘The Cosmic Furnace’ concept as a metaphor to build a tie between the rich history of metal in myth and cultural development and the current progressions of deep mining and violation of the earth. It draws attention to the value of our resources and hopefully makes one think about how past actions affect the future and vice-versa.

The Blacksmithing department shares the art of blacksmithing with a Weekend Blacksmithing Pass which includes an optional introductory smithing workshop with Luke Claymon, open studio time, and a featured Artist Talk and Demonstration. Advanced Blacksmiths can opt out of the workshop and work in the shop with support from SAW’s Blacksmithing Director.

Blacksmithing Pass

Whether you prefer a coal or gas fired forge, your fuel is included with your Weekend Blacksmithing Pass. The pass includes an optional Introductory Blacksmithing Workshop from 9am to 12pm on Friday, optional depending on prior experience, as well as shop access. The shop will be open till 10pm on Friday and Saturday nights and you are welcome to work on projects until 5pm Sunday. *There will be some restrictions to shop access during guest artist demo. For those who cannot join us for the whole weekend the Introductory Blacksmithing Workshop will also be available on its own.

Blacksmithing Schedule

Blacksmithing Pass
Thurs. Sept 19 to
Sun. Sept 22

Intro to Blacksmithing
Fri. Sept 20
9 AM–12 PM

Artist Talk
Sat. Sept 21, 2019
9:30–10 am

Demonstrations
Sat. Sept 21, 2019
1–5 pm

‘Process, Tool, & Object’
Patrick J. Quinn

Patrick J. Quinn is the Executive Director at the Center for Metal Arts in Johnstown Pa. where he teaches resident blacksmithing classes and coordinates visiting artist workshops. Patrick has taught blacksmithing, fabrication, and tool making at Southern Illinois University, Hereford College of the arts, The Penland School of Craft, The Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, and The Adirondack Folk School. With a passion for sculpture and education Patrick uses forging as a vehicle to express himself sculpturally and uses toolmaking and teaching as a way to share what he find so intrinsic about metalworking with his students. With a firm belief in “quality work starts with quality tooling,” Pat uses this philosophy to forge the best possible tooling for the Center for Metal Arts and himself, as well as, making the Center for Metal Arts the best classroom it can be. Patrick is a 2015 Niche award winner, and has work in the Evansville IN Museum of Art and science permanent collection. His work has been featured in juried exhibitions such as “Transitions” (Belgium), and “Forge” contemporary forged metal design (UK), “Craft Forms”, “43rd Mid States Craft Exhibition”, “New York Silver, Then and Now”(Museum of the City of New York) and “Metal in Motion” (National Ornamental Metal Museum).

Fri. September 20

Registration
Visitor Center, 8 AM–8 PM

Kiln Building Workshop
Barn 3 field, 9 AM–5 PM

Laura Donefer Glass Demos
Glass Shop, 9 AM–12 PM

Intro to Blacksmithing
Smithy Shop, 9 AM–12 PM

Dancing with the Diva
Student Work Time
Glass Shop, 1 PM–5 PM

Justin Lambert Artist Talk
White Tent, 5:30 PM–6 PM

Light 24-hour Wood Kilns
Barn 3, 6 PM

Coral Lambert Artist Talk
White Tent, 7–7:30 PM

Coral Lambert
Iron Performance
TBA, 8 PM

Sat. September 21

Registration
Visitor Center, 8 AM–8 PM

Production Pour
Pour Floor, 9 AM–7 PM

Laura Donefer Artist Talk
White Tent, 9 AM–9:30 AM

Patrick Quinn Artist Talk
White Tent, 10–10:30 AM

Laura Donefer Demos
Glass Shop, 11 AM–5 PM

Exhibition Openings
N. Main & Railroad Station
12–4 PM

Patrick Quinn Demos
Blacksmith Shop, 1–5 PM

Collaborative performance
TBA, 3:00pm

Sun. September 22

Check out
Visitor Center, 8 AM–2 PM

Clean Up and Divest Molds
9 AM–2 PM

Unload Glass Annealers
Glass Shop, 9 AM

Unload Wood Kilns
3 PM

Gallery Hours
1N. Main & Railroad Station
12–4 PM

North Main Gallery
196 Main Street
Salem, NY 12865

Railroad Station Gallery
1 Rail Road Street
Salem, NY 12865