4-week online class
Dates: Wednesdays, February 1, 8, 15, 22 2023
Time: 7-9 pm EDT
Admission: $110 Patreon Members/$125 General Admission

PLEASE NOTE: All classes will also be recorded and archived for students who cannot make that time, but it is highly recommended you attend the classes live for the richest experience.

Each class meeting is 2 hours long. The first hour consists of lecture and discussion and the second hour is art-making and sharing.

A four-week course utilizing experimental archeology to explore the meaning and use behind the historical “Venus Figurines.” The “Venus” figurines are found throughout many ancient cultures. The image of the voluptuous female body without identifying facial features appears over and over in antiquity, but there are only theories behind how these objects were used or why they were made. In this course we explore the how and why employing the use of experimental archeology. We will build a variety of our own female figurines with our own intentions informed by our culture of origin, our family culture, and our personal needs, wants, hopes, and fears. During these experiments we will discuss why we made these objects, and how they impact our lives after they are made.

Each class will begin with a short image rich lecture and many questions followed by a discussion and art making salon. We will utilize the materials of the ancient makers, meaning we will be making our figures from clay. There is no experience with clay necessary as within each of you the knowledge already exists to create these figures as your ancestors did.

Katie Croft is a multi-media artist, art educator, and a candidate for her MPS in Creative Art Therapy from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn in 2022. Her current research is focused on clay and its ability to respond to the maker, offering bio feedback and acting as a stand in for the body. Her current work explores this idea with intuitive ceramic sculpture and offers a nod of respect to the first female abstract painters who practiced as spiritualists and mystics. Katie has had her work exhibited at SuperDutchess Gallery, NY; New York Academy of Art, NY; San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA, and Richard Gray Gallery, Chicago, IL as an AXA Art Prize Finalist. Her work was included in the 2020 New American Paintings, No. 147, and the inaugural issue of AllSheMakes contemporary art and culture magazine curated by ArtGirlRising. Her work is currently being exhibited at Winston Wachter Fine Art Gallery in New York; Odyssey Gallery in Asheville, NC; and at RiseArt, London.