INSTRUCTORS
Prin van Gulden is a homesteader and craftswoman passionate about exploring our connections to land and humanity through traditional crafts. She believes the ecological relationships we maintain through this work are as essential as the skills we cultivate.
Her practice is centered on the fiber arts, including basketry and textile weaving, spinning, felt making and natural dyeing. She enjoys gathering and growing plants for crafting, from flax, cotton, and various dye plants to broom corn and basketry willows. Prin teaches the Fiber Arts curriculum at Sterling College as well as workshops in Vermont and New England.
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Prin is teaching Introduction to Natural Dyeing.
Penny Hewitt is passionate about revitalizing and sharing traditional skills, particularly in the forms of black ash and bark basketry. She enjoys teaching people how to transform natural materials from the surrounding forests into objects of beauty that are useful in everyday life. She is inspired by traditions of many cultures, and is grateful for the opportunities of connection that her craft cultivates. Her experience includes teaching workshops to all ages, as well as crafting for income, pleasure and to meet the needs of her homesteading life.
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Penny is teaching Tree to Basket.
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A habitual wanderer and weed eater, Lucian Avery lives with his family in Hardwick VT. He likes making things for everyday life, like baskets, bowls and chicken soup. Lucian spends his days blacksmithing, focusing on hand tools - mostly for the garden, woodshop and kitchen. IG
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Lucian is teaching Shrink Pot Carving, Living Materials, and co-instigating the Morning Walks.
Luke Boushee 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. IG
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Luke is teaching the Pole Shelter workshop
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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.
IG earthshinestudio.bigcartel.com
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Erok is leading two t-shirt block printing sessions Friday afternoon and evening, putting Sloyd Skills Gathering logos on shirts and patches. We will have some shirts and cloth but bring your own if you can. Light colored cotton is best.
Sean Miller lives in the bustling metropolis of Montpelier but is lucky enough to have a sloyd barn in his backyard. Passionate about making, building, and tinkering, his hands are usually busy. Carving has been his daily meditation for several years, with spoons taking center stage. He is a lover of trees- both standing and fallen to the forest floor. IG
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Sean is teaching The Wooden Spoon.
In addition to teaching crafts and earth skills, Ross Doree is a long time educator who loves the collaborative experiences that arise from being outside with kids. He also enjoys making up stories (some good, some not so good) based on folk traditions and the intersection of suburban and wilderness living. He is currently the Youth Programs Director at Crow's Path in Burlington, VT.
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Ross will be leading Stories and Games for kids.
Nick Neddo has been teaching wilderness living skills, tracking, drawing and nature awareness professionally since 2000, although he considers himself a perpetual student. He makes his art supplies from materials he gathers from the landscape, which is the topic of his books: The Organic Artist, and The Organic Artist for Kids.
Nick is a sixth generation Vermonter who has been making art since he could first pick up a crayon. He grew up exploring the wetlands, forests and fields of his bioregion and developed a profound curiosity, respect and love for the community of life around him.
As a youth Nick identified primary focuses that would become life-long pursuits: study of the natural world, Stone Age technology (popularly known as primitive skills) and creating art. Trusting the inherent value of these skills, he continues to embrace their pursuit with a ravenous appetite fueled by a genuine love of the living world and the creative process. He has traveled the country extensively, visiting the last great wildernesses, seeking traditional skills and experiencing the landscape’s majesty, which are common themes in his work.
Nick enjoys clean air, water, food and dirty hands.
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Nick is teaching From Stones, to Pigments, to Paints and Stone Paints for Kids
Sarah Corrigan is an herbalist and ancestral skills practitioner who has a focus on ethnobotanical studies. Informed by these land based arts, she finds they offer the rewards of self reliance through skill, responsibility and gratitude through growing and gathering, and the awe and wonder of things through the beauty of the natural world. In effect, that this interaction can educate us to being more capable, responsible, and healthier human beings. As a student and an educator, she remains passionate about continuous learning, and facilitating a student’s relationship to the natural world through supporting their own learning processes. IG rootsvt.com
Sarah is teaching Felted Hats.
Maggie Joseph is the Program Director at New Village Farm in Shelburne, Vermont. At NVF, she finds a lot of meaning working outside, caring for plants and animals, and hanging out with the youngsters. When not at the farm, Maggie's probably knitting, weaving, throwing clay, or maybe making soup. She enjoys walking around too.
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Maggie is teaching Leaf Printing, Et Cetera! for kids
Jonathan Shapiro lives in Vermont and spends his days tracking, making traditional crafts, hunting, canoeing, picking up roadkill, and listening to birdsong. He believes that an accurate understanding of and deep connection to our wild surroundings are necessary for all people to thrive. He runs the Fox Paw School, where he teaches adults about wildlife tracking, bird language, weather, plants, awareness, and nature connection. IG
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Jonathan is teaching Tree Identification for the Crafter, and co-instigating the Morning Walks.
Kerry Lambertson lives in the woods in Maine. At one time he spent a lot of years living in the great north woods of Minnesota, where he used an axe every day to cut firewood, build houses, clear trails, fell trees, and make tools. These days he tries to only build violins, but ends up building furniture, boats, and houses, restoring old machines, playing fiddle, and chasing wild foods around.
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Kerry is teaching Axe Skills and Axe Handles
Born in Minnesota, André Souligny moved to Vermont in 1996 and was introduced to the green woodworking tradition at Goddard College. For 25 years André and his partner Heather have lived in Central Vermont, raising their daughters Marguerite, Cedar, and Ruby. By their graces, André continues to revel in green wood spoon and utensil making, always learning new things, and instructing and blogging on the topic at spoonderlust.com.
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André is teaching Beginning Green Wood Carving.
Quincy Boardman is a seventeen-year-old homeschool student who has spent most of her life loving the outdoors and being curious about traditional skills. She is a musician, craftsperson, and wanderer who enjoys all things creative and loves teaching her skills to others. She lives in Bakersfield, VT with her parents and brother and has taught skiing at Smuggler’s Notch for three winters, as well as working as a counselor at the Mary Elizabeth Preschool summer camp last year. Quincy spends a lot of her time playing with her enormous puppy, reading any and all fantasy books she can find, and trying to master her various musical instruments.
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Quincy is leading Kid Games on Friday.
Barry Wyman has been working with wood, with kids in the woods, for the greater part of 20 years. In his own life, working with his hands, and shaping objects out of naturally occurring materials is one of the most rewarding ways to pass time. When he’s not working as a math teacher in public school he is passing on traditional skills to his own two children.
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Barry is teaching Carving for 9-12 year olds
Coleen Butler lives among the maples and oaks in the Champlain Valley of Vermont. She is a hide tanner, hunter, and sewer. She works with the visceral cycles of life and death and is passionate about nose to tail eating, clothing making, returning bodies to ancestral health, living with the cycles and seasons of the earth, and generally being a wild human.
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Coleen is teaching Buckskin Pouches and Brain Tanning Rabbit Hides
Nelly Wolf is a professional weaver of Jewish ritual textiles. She lives off grid with her husband, three cats, and a whole lot of chickens. IG blackcatjudaica.com
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Nelly is teaching Card Weaving
Rob Palmer is an educator, builder, outdoor adventure enthusiast, and fine wood butcher. Rob began his career remodeling homes built in the 1700’s in Old Town Alexandria, Va, culminating in the complete overhaul of his fathers pre-Civil War home in Charlestown WV. While living in WV Rob guided whitewater rafting trips on the Shenandoah and Upper Youghiogheny Rivers and became an ACA kayak instructor. In 2010, Rob moved to Cambridge Vermont to pursue a BFA in Furniture Design and Fine Woodworking. While studying fine furniture, Rob took a spoon carving class in the Sloyd tradition, and never wanted to cut another dovetail again. Since graduating, Rob has done an artist in residence at the Shelburne Craft School, taught wood shop safety at The Generator maker space in Burlington VT, and taught whitewater kayaking at Kroka Expeditions in Marlow NH. Rob’s primary position since graduating in 2014 has been Woodworking and Outdoor Education Teacher at the Lake Champlain Waldorf School in Shelburne VT. When not teaching, Rob enjoys going down mountains fast in his kayak or on his snowboard and traveling with his wife.
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Rob is teaching Milking Stools