Courses and workshops
for adults and children
Courses
I love sharing my skills, I love how workshops and courses can be a place where people can express themselves and explore their creativity. I run mini-courses with that very intention in mind to enable everyone, any age, any ability to open up to the power of their own creativity and self-expression be it in clay, movement, voice, nature art or journaling.
Clay
- During this course, students will design and make a slab-built form exploring the versatile qualities of clay and using an array of craft tools. On the second day two weeks later you will learn how to apply the glaze and the techniques I use to create patterns and details.
- Day 1 time 10 – 5 pm with half an hour break for lunch. Drinks provided but bring your lunch.
- Day 2 time 10 -12 pm
I offer one day and a half workshops for adults and children at the home studio community and online in making:
- a jug
- a tile
- cup, porcelain paper clay sculptures
- create a goddess sculpture air drying
- easter chick in a basket
- clay in nature (kids)
- make cups (kids)
- make an insect (kids)
- slab built pots
- press molds
- make a box
- jewellery
- journaling ( mothers only)
Community art
I love working as a community artist for over 15 years, working with many wonderful organisations. I have been commissioned to do large mosaic murals, and tile projects in schools and community centres and museums.
Examples of recent projects
One out of the 200 tiles made from transfer images gathered imagery from the museums’ archives of the hay day of the coliseum when it was a cinema and theatre. Images were scanned and turned into transfers and assembled then fired onto the tiles. I facilitated working with the community to show techniques and process and oversee the continuity of design.
A finished tiled wall at Penarcau community centre
Mama Creatives/ Mamau Creadigol
Mama creatives/ Mamau Creadigol is a nurturing group for mothers who are creative or who want more creativity in their lives, in 2021 we are grant funded by the National Lottery to run a free year-long face to face program of creative journaling and guest artist workshops using the award-winning Maternal Journal framework that explores the potential of ‘journaling’ as a creative & therapeutic tool to promote good mental health and wellbeing for pregnant women and new mothers, open to all types of mothers & people who birth. The sessions welcome mothers with babies and children, at the wonderful, supportive Nurture Centre in Carmarthen.
Thank you so much National Lottery Community Fund and everyone who supports the National Lottery, our community of mothers and their children are over the moon.
As we are still in lockdown and with no news of yet when we will be able to meet we will be keeping you in the loop when we know more.
If you would like to be added to our mailing list email joanna.bond@gmail.com also join our private facebook group Mama Creatives/ Mamau Creadigol you can also follow us on Instagram and also ko fi.
Art and Permaculture
In 2019 I moved to a Permaculture based, fully mutual housing co-op located near the market town of Carmarthen with my boyfriend our 10-year-old and 2 years old so that we could live a life where we took more responsibility for our ecological impact, and where we were supported by a community of like-minded individuals.
We garden and grow food together and manage our woodland orchard, fruit trees and hayfields. We eat a vegetarian dinner with vegan options together 5 days a week in the communal house. On Wednesdays, we have our community meeting and workday. We share the care of chickens, ducks, two horses, a small dog and cats. Some of us share an electric car. We have compost loos and solar energy in some of the dwellings. I love being tied to this land!
Since the mass awakening of 2020 say no more! I have been asking the questions more deeply than ever before, who we? what we are here to do? Looking deeply at our behaviour, what we do, and what we manifest into the world.
How can I support my family and my community to change things for the better, changes driven by love and peace so we could restore the earth to its former beauty in a sustainable natural way and still meed our own needs?
I believe that permaculture and spirituality can be a great way of bringing harmony into our world, after all, we are all connected using the principles of permaculture on your land and personally, can I belive be transformational.
Over the next few months and years, as a community and individually we will welcome visitors to attend courses in art and nature, art inspired by nature, wilding ourselves, movement, sound, music, chanting, meditation, sound therapy, ceremonies and land management.
To find out more go to http://heartwood.moonfruit.com/about/4594316760.
Free gift when you
subscribe to my mailing list
I would like to offer you a free workshop on how to create a leaf tile, you will also be added to my mailing list, so you can hear about any workshops, discounts or news I have in my quarterly newsletter and occasional news.
The workshop is a live on zoom during the summer months of 2021 and 2022 so you get the right leaves for printing, I will be showing you step by step how to make a leaf print tile, from picking, rolling them into the clay to staining and glazing also a pdf of materials you will need.
A little bit about why I create leaf prints and how this act can bring a sense of wellbeing to you.
We all want to find the best way to communicate and I have found my way through being an artist. I am a believer that what we do creatively comes from a deep sense to communicate something, so we can understand ourselves and life that little bit better. My life and my art are so interconnected that I have come to see my work as a vocation not just as a job. Since I started to become aware of the disconnection some big corporations, governments and some family and friends have with the natural world, it gave me a deep sadness we humans are not looking after the earth and all its plants and animals as well as we should be. I needed to find a way to liberate, free up my feelings, express myself and ultimately be a vehicle to initiate change.
Make a leaf print tile
I found by connecting with the natural world, by looking after the land and growing beautiful plants, medicinal teas and encouraging beneficial insects into my garden it began to ease my mind (as I see gardening as a quiet protest) it is also a symbiotic relationship, not only do I have a beautiful garden that encouraged bees and other insects, but I also use and honour the plants in my clay work.
I have been communicating my feelings through the therapeutic medium of clay by capturing the beauty of nature by printing leaves and grasses into clay to make tiles, pictures and jugs. My pieces have simple leaf designs and are usually coloured with blues and greens. I aim to create a space to pause and for our thoughts to evoke a feeling of connection between the plants and us, and you can help do this too by learning this technique.
This technique is all about the leaves or grasses I choose to print and rolling them into a thin slab of clay. The best leaves are ones that have really pronounced veins like sage, fennel, dill, strawberry and yarrow. If you don’t have a garden you can often find some growing wild. I love to walk in the countryside and in the summer months, the hedgerows and meadows are full of grasses and rushes. I am especially fond of these as they print really well and you can use them when they are dry again and again for multiple prints. I especially like couch grass, meadow grass, Barren Bromegrass, my favourite is actually a rush, not a grass called sharp flowered rush.