Class Title: Ceramic Winter Gnomes/Elves
Instructor: Laken Bridges
Date/Time Tuesday, November 24th from 1:00PM-4:00PM
Cost: $45 per person
Location: Art Lab’s Ceramic Studio
Skill level: Any
Audience: 12-adult
Description: Come learn some hand-building basics to create 2-3 decorative gnomes for mantle, table arrangement, or other holiday decor. Your creations will dry out for a couple of weeks, then be fired so that they are solid and sturdy. After pick up, take them home and leave them unfinished, or paint and seal them however you like!
Fun facts: The modern Christmas elf evolved from ancient Northern European folklore, blending Scandinavian household spirits like the Tomte or Nisse with Germanic myths of hidden, magical beings. This folklore transformed into the specific holiday helpers we know today during the 19th century in America, spurred by literature and media. After Clement Clarke Moore’s 1823 poem ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas described Santa Claus himself as a “jolly old elf,” subsequent works—including an 1857 Harper’s Weekly poem and an 1873 Godey’s Lady’s Book cover illustration—firmly established the image of pointed-eared, toy-making elves working in Santa’s North Pole workshop, a tradition cemented into global pop culture through 20th-century media and modern customs like The Elf on the Shelf.
About the instructor:
Laken Bridges (any pronouns) is an artist-educator with an MFA from Clemson University. They have exhibited in solo, juried, and invitational shows at both a national and international level. Bridges is the recipient of awards including the George R. McDonald Research Fellowship, Cecelia Voelker Award in Art History, and an Arts Achievement Award (Arts Alliance Mountain Empire). They have presented at Southeastern College Art Conference (SECAC), regularly attend the Creative Placemaking Consortium’s conferences, and are a member of Virginia Association of Museums. Prior to joining WKMA in 2018 as Director of Higher Education, they taught undergraduate art. Bridges’ personal art practice engages media ranging from collage, drawing, books, sculpture, and printmaking, to costuming and performance. They reside in Northeast Tennessee surrounded by cats, boxes of art supplies and bins of strange bits and bobs destined to one day become “art”.