Ceramics w/ Laura Blankenship
Balancing experimentation, guided step by step instructions, and space to customize your creations from your own imagination, these clay classes are designed to hone your foundational hand-building skills so that you feel equipped to make anything you can dream of. Ages 12 to adults
This class:
Intro to Hand-building: Clay Slab Lizard Eyes with Scales!
Friday, October 30, 5:00-8:00 hand-building
Friday, November 6 5:00-8:00 hand-building
Friday, November 13, 5:00-8:00 painting pottery, glass pupil
$65 per person (Two for $115 – call for discount)
8 students minimum. 15 students maximum
Hone your foundational slab hand-building skills to create your own scary, playful, or beautiful lizard eye with scales! Inspired by the eastern fink lizard of southwest Virginia and worldwide dragon lore.
About the instructor
Laura Marie Blankenship’s wild, wooly work bridges the gap between the tactile craft of felting and the embodied art of abstract expressionism. Her art is deeply informed by her 8 years as a live music painter, teaching yoga and meditation, and time spent as a wilderness therapy field guide, and answering crisis/suicide hotline calls, with her formal background in Psychology from The College of William and Mary. She was awarded a scholarship and studio assistantship at the Penland School of Craft in 2015, is a frequent instructor of wet felting and needle felting at Earthskills Gatherings throughout the Southeast, and from 2022 to 2025, she served as a full-time public school art teacher. With painting names like “there is nothing that cannot be transformed into joy,” her current studio practice centers create action-painted abstracts that serve as victory cries (and sometimes desperate pleas) for emotional integration and personal transformation. Laura Marie Blankenship lives and works in Damascus, Virginia, where she continues to paint, teach, hike, bike, kayak, share beauty, create connection, and ask for guidance from the trees, trails, and beings in and around the South Holston River.