2025 Workshops
Cold Connections - Textile Techniques in Wire
Heather’s Studio in Asheville, NC
Fri - Sat April 25 & 26 - 10:00am - 5:00pm
This two day class will introduce wire as an artistic as well as a practical medium. You will learn how to work with wire and explore its linear qualities as well as creating three-dimensional forms. Using your hands, pliers, and cold connections you will discover the wonderful immediacy of wire working. Basic tinkering and fiber construction techniques, including coiling, stitching, and twining will be covered. Wire is a very versatile material and can be incorporated or combined with other materials. We will begin by making small studies and then explore larger forms or vessels. The workshop will cover the properties and qualities of different gauges and types of wire. The workshop will be held in my studio in Asheville, NC and limited to 8 students. Cost is $285 and includes wire and a set of ergonomic pliers with built in wire cutter. All levels. To register contact Heather Hietala.
Cold Connections - Textile Techniques in Wire
Pocosin Arts School of Fine Craft, Columbia, MC
July 7 - 11, 2025
Explore the artistic and practical uses of wire and create three-dimensional forms. Using your hands, pliers, and cold connections you will discover the wonderful immediacy of wire working. Basic tinkering and fiber construction techniques, including coiling, sewing, lashing, wrapping, shaping and twining will be covered. Wire is a very versatile material and can be incorporated or combined with other materials. We will begin by making small studies and then explore larger forms. Click here to register.
Tinkering Around - Textile Techniques in Wire
Sanborn Mills Farm, Loudon, NH
August 13 - 17, 2025
Explore the artistic and practical uses of wire and create three-dimensional forms. Using your hands, pliers, and cold connections you will discover the wonderful immediacy of wire working. Basic tinkering and fiber construction techniques, including coiling, sewing, lashing, wrapping, shaping and twining will be covered. Wire is a very versatile material and can be incorporated or combined with other materials. We will begin by making small studies and then explore larger forms.
All experience levels are invited to enroll although a bit of hand strength is required. Click to Register
The Unexpected Page - Exploring Your Creativity
Maine Media, Rockport, ME
August 25 - 29, 2025
This workshop is designed to invigorate and deepen your creative practice. Using a variety of techniques and media, including collage, stitching, walnut inks, tea dye, sumi, gesso and mark making, we will explore our creativity. Using primarily natural browns, white and black we will use additive, subtractive and repetitive processes to create surface depth and meaning, these marks become part of a personal language. We will focus on working in an intuitive and nonlinear approach, straddling the fence between cognitive and intuitive. Come explore the beauty of a limited palette and what marks, textures and stitching can create. Our creative explorations will be collected and bound into books for continued exploration. We'll connect through demonstrations, discussions, and hands on creative processes. Open to all skill levels and to students from all media who want to expand and enrich their creative practice.
Add Another Layer - Stitching on Paper
September , 2025
Join Heather Hietala in learning how to bring new dimensions and unique tactile embellishments to your collages, photos, and prints. During this workshop held on two consecutive Saturdays, we will explore stitching on paper and how a variety of embroidery stitches can add a new tactile dimension to a collage, photograph or print. Stitching adds texture, mark making, pattern, delineation, a sense of embellishment, a color accent, and/or emphasis to a photograph or print after the act of printing. We will learn how to prepare and stitch on paper and how to dye thread so that you can customize the value and color of your thread to allow it to uniquely coordinate or provide contrast to your work. All Levels