Folk Art & Living Simply – Intensive Learning @ MFS

Folk Art: The End of the Tour

March 29, 2024March 29, 2024Folk Art & Living Simply

Today was the culmination of a week of hard work, learning, and community building. In the morning, we worked on two new projects that highlighted our focus for the week, using reclaimed materials. The first project was paper making, where we pulped the shredded paper from the MFS Faculty/Staff Lounge and turned it into...

Folk Art: Three Is a Magic Number

March 28, 2024March 28, 2024Folk Art & Living Simply

On the fourth day of Folk Art and Living Simply IL students continued to craft with new mediums, to repurpose recycled materials, and to use a range of materials and methods to make tea light luminaries. By the end of the day, we had completed three separate projects. We kicked off the day by...

Folk Art: A Gift from Prometheus

March 27, 2024March 27, 2024Folk Art & Living Simply

We started the day with hot chocolate and pottery painting with chemical dyes (using copper and iron). With carefully wrapped pottery in tow, we moved outside for some good old-fashioned manual labor. Taking turns, we dug a hole (that was supposed to be a cubic meter) and prepped firewood. Once we got the fire...

Folk Art: Macramé Madness!

March 26, 2024March 26, 2024Folk Art & Living Simply

The Folk Art Intensive Learning group had a great second day. From learning new skills like macramé and exploring new combinations of mediums, the group had a day full of exploration and experimentation. We started the day off by unloading new materials for the week in preparation for the coming days, which included fire...

Folk Art: Encounters with Nature and Art

March 22, 2024March 26, 2024Folk Art & Living Simply

The Folk Art IL group had an eventful first day: a wonderful nature walk, basket weaving, friendship bracelets, and everyone’s favorite, the mould and deckle. First, we started with a snack consisting of fruit, croissants, and muffins. After that, we took a nature walk around the back of the school and found animal bones,...

Thursday Night Folk Art: Color Rush!

April 2, 2023April 2, 2023Folk Art & Living Simply

Thursday was an explosion of color! As people arrived, they selected from a rainbow of embroidery flosses and revisited the childhood craft of making friendship bracelets. How appropriate for an IL centered around simplicity. Then we cleared our work areas and set out blank cotton sheets, because it was time to try out the...

Folk Art, Day Four — Getting Fired Up!

March 30, 2023March 30, 2023Folk Art & Living Simply

Folk art’s day, to put it simply: “We dug a hole.” More to the point, we dug out a large hole in the field by the Gaga Pit, which is not something you see every day! But let’s start at the beginning. After the success of the past two days of macrame and baskets,...

Folk Art: Basket Cases!

March 29, 2023March 30, 2023Folk Art & Living Simply

Here’s what some of our group had to say about our third day of Folk Art & Living Simply … We used natural dyes to create imprints of flower petals and leaves. I used the red cabbage dye, hibiscus dye, and salt to create my patterns. I also used batteries to flatten some of...

Folk Art — Simply Colorful!

March 28, 2023March 28, 2023Folk Art & Living Simply

Our day started by taking a walk together to gather materials to use over the next few days. Tomorrow we are going to weave baskets from a bunch of materials, so we stripped leaves off English Ivy and cut back some long grass outside. Viv knew how to braid together the ivy stems, and...

Folk Art and Living Simply, Day One

March 27, 2023March 27, 2023Folk Art & Living Simply

On Friday, (3/24) the Folk Art and Living Simply group learned how to weave paper baskets in preparation for weavings they will make with natural supplies in the upcoming week. Some students also began experimenting with clay, getting a head start on the rest of their learning. We also started making dyes from plants...