INSTRUCTORs
Prin van Gulden is a homesteader and craftswoman passionate about illuminating our connections to land and humanity through traditional skills. She believes the relationships we maintain with the ecological world as we re-learn to utilize the gifts of nature are as essential as the skills to make a basket, or skein of yarn. This type of craftsmanship practice helps us to own and process both the reverence and hardships that come with being human in our time.
She lives and homesteads in Craftsbury VT with her family. Prin teaches the Fiber Arts curriculum at Sterling College as well as classes and workshops around Vermont.
Prin is teaching Spinning and Wet Felted Pouches.
A craftsperson, teacher, homesteader, and homeschooling mom, PennyHewitt lives with her family on a diversified farm in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. Through the curiosity of her sons, she became fascinated with and then passionate about revitalizing and sharing traditional skills, particularly in the forms of black ash and birch bark basketry. Working with responsibly harvested and hand-processed materials from the forest surrounding her home, Penny seeks to create objects of beauty that are useful in everyday life. She is inspired by traditions of other cultures, and grateful for the opportunities of connection to people, place, nature, and self that her craft cultivates. Her experience with weaving includes
teaching workshops, leading homeschool groups and crafting for income.
Penny is teaching Birch Bark Wallets and Birch Bark Stars.
A habitual wanderer and weed eater, Lucian lives with his family in Hardwick. He likes making things for everyday life, like baskets, bowls and chicken soup. Lucian spends his days blacksmithing, focusing on door hardware and hand tools - mostly for the garden, woodshop and kitchen. lucianaveryblacksmith.com
Lucian is teaching Shrink Pot Carving and Knife Hafting and leading the Bird Walks.
Luke has worked as a mentor at Earthwalk Vermont since 2014 where he teaches youth primitive and naturalist skills through out the year. He leads adult workshops in a variety of subjects including basswood rope making, flint and steel blacksmithing, hide tanning, etc. He lives in a homemade yurt in central Vermont and spends most of his time learning traditional crafts and harvesting and preparing wild foods.
Luke is teaching workshops in Burl Bowl carving and Buckskin Pouch making.
Photo Taken By Brad Salon at the ROOTS Rendezvous
Nolwenn is a full time educator at Maple Hill Farm School. She trained at the Marshfield School of Weaving, and through various basketry classes around the state. She's led clinics on textile weaving and ice fishing, as well as co-ran workshops on natural fiber cordage and bead making. She lives in a home-made yurt in central Vermont where she spends her free time harvesting and preparing wild foods, gardening, and crafting various projects.
Nolwenn is teaching Cedar Bark Hats.
Photo taken by Brad Salon at the ROOTS Rendezvous
Erok "e-rok" Gillard is a local artist, activist, poet, uncle and lover of the wild. He enjoys printmaking, paper cutting, shadow puppetry and sharing artwork, especially through the mail. Erok hopes to someday be able to whistle like a cricket.
Erok is teaching Papercut Shadow Lanterns and Hoops and Singing with Heidi.
Fern Sutton-Smith is a craftsperson, naturalist, writer, and outdoor educator. Fern is a graduate of the Vermont Woodworking School and has apprenticed as a green wood spoon carver in the sloyd tradition. Fern enjoys the intuitive and artistic challenge of creating little, functional sculptures out of wood. Fern works as a nature mentor at Earthwalk Vermont.
Matt Martin is a carpenter, furniture maker, and artist. He brings a woodworker's skill and a designer's eye to support Fern in facilitating spoon carving at the Sloyd Skills Gathering.
Fern and Matt are teaching Green Wood Spoon Carving.
Yard has been adapting to living in Northern Vermont on occupied Abenaki territory, trying to key in to all sorts of seasonal changes- often encouraged by the curiosity of youth. Yard is eager to find reason to be looking for stuff outside, indebted to the elders and teachers who've shared about paying attention to the landscape and our relationship to it. Yard has worked as a youth educator and mentor with Flying Cloud, Kindle Nature, and EarthWalk Vermont since 2015, collaborating in ways to share stories, play games, and craft, in reverence of and in celebration of the wild. Yard enjoys foraging, fishing, and birding, usually toting one too many field guides and taking pictures along the way.
Yard will be leading workshops on making Woodland Toys and playing nature based Kid Games.
Nancy VanWinkle spent nearly a decade teaching adolescents in a land-based Montessori program; it was here that she started teaching visual journaling as a form of self-expression. Over time, her love of books grew and Nancy learned everything she knows about bookbinding from Asheville-based artist, Erin Keane, dynamic book-binder and encaustic innovator . Nancy has been honored to join Erin as her teaching assistant at both John C. Campbell Folk School and Penland School for the Arts in western North Carolina. A fairly recent transplant to Vermont, Nancy teaches classes through local organizations and creates books in her home-based Nomadic Roots Studio, located in Craftsbury Village.
Nancy is teaching Coptic Book Binding.
Mary Watkevich has studied and taught land based traditional crafts for over a decade. She lives by the seasons in an old barn on a mountaintop in Vermont.
Mary is teaching Whisk Brooms.
Heidi Wilson loves working with willow, singing in community, and being goofy with kids. She has been leading community a cappella singing groups in Central Vermont for the last 12 years and is slowly turning her entire yard into a willow garden.
Heidi is teaching Hoops and Singing with Erok.
