Category: Past

Date and Time: Saturday, December 7th, 5pm – 7pm

Cost: Free

Event Description:

“History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.” -Mark Twain

Women’s Studio Workshop, in collaboration with Kingston City School District, is showcasing the work of local high school seniors who came to our studios as part of our Art-in-Education program. With history as a thematic guide, students used various printmaking and papermaking techniques to create a body of work that explore themes of narrative, biography, and repetition.

Art-in-Ed is a program that allows students to learn from working artists. This exhibition is an opportunity to see their work and our studios where it was created. This fall, students divided into small groups and spent full-day sessions in each studio: etching, silkscreen, and papermaking. Many of the classes are taught by artists-in-residence, who are developing projects of their own at WSW.

You can find the Facebook event here.

Date: Sunday October 20th, 10am – 12pm

Cost: $45

Event Description:

In this workshop, makers will work with locally foraged driftwood and a variety of textured and colored cotton string and rope to create mini (~10-12” driftwood) wall-hangings! These wall hangings will be made using scrap string and rope from Lindsay’s stash, accumulated from previous macramé projects, making them sustainable works of art! Lindsay will teach you the basic techniques and then give you creative freedom in choosing size, shape, and texture to create your leaf hanging.

All materials will be provided. However, if you feel inspired, feel free to bring your own driftwood or stash of scrap materials to incorporate or share. You may also bring an extra comb or hair straightener (though not necessary!).

Register for the Class:

Bio: 

Lindsay Welch of El Marie Macramé is a lifelong Hudson Valley resident who is energized by the opportunity to collaborate with her community through fiber art. Lindsay began crafting macramé in early 2017 out of her home in Highland and recently began the venture into turning her love of knots into a small business: offering workshops, attending craft markets, consigning pieces to local shops, and creating custom pieces. Lindsay features locally foraged driftwood and delicate cotton cord in her art that includes wall hangings, earrings, plant hangers, bunting, and accessories.

Cause:  Programs in the Crafts with a Cause! series combine the fun of creating and learning with the joy and fulfillment of giving back- to the earth, to a good cause, to a group doing good work.

Date: Saturday October 12th & Sunday October 13th, 1pm – 5pm

Cost: Free

Event Description:

Housing and Equitable Development: A Crossroads is a 12 min film that will run on loop and is meant to be a conversation framer/starter around what equitable development looks like in Kingston. The goal is to shift culture, moving hearts and minds in the region around the issues of housing affordability and access, and establish housing as a human right. X is a point of intersection, a crossroads.

We are at a crossroads in Kingston where we can decide whether or not we believe that everyone deserves a safe place to live, and that our priorities need to reflect that decision that we make. Set in Kingston, NY, this film will uncomplicate the issues of gentrification, giving our viewers an understanding of the types of decisions our city, county, and state governments make every day that prioritize developers over people. It will explain how these forces that often promise revitalization and market growth also promise displacement and trauma for low-income communities and communities of color.

This film will humanize the issues of displacement on both ends of the spectrum, putting a face and a story to those who are displaced and create a moral responsibility for those in power to choose differently. We will also show the types of decisions we want the places we love to be making instead.

Date: Sunday October 20th, 2pm – 4pm

Cost: Free

Event Description:

The Radical Liberation Project is an anti-oppression book club collective that seeks to dismantle generations of internalized oppression and white supremacy through engaging with the written word of bipoc, the lgbtqia+ community, and our allies. We celebrate literature that radically challenges the power status quo. Discussions will center our voices as we reclaim our identities in a safe and inclusive space. Join us and decolonize your mind! Because the revolution will be well-read, and in community.

This month’s dialogue circle is in collaboration with Frances Cathryn of wip projects. We are centering the text The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk – you are, of course, welcome to read/listen to the text in its entirety. But it’s a long one – so we are also providing scans of specific chapters. Keep an eye out for them here, or email us RadicalLiberationProject@gmail.com

Little ones are welcome! They are the next revolutionaries after all.

For more info about the Radical Liberation Project and to RSVP for this event please visit their website.

About Frances Cathryn
Frances Cathryn is an editor and community organizer who collaborates with others to shift how we define what it means to create valuable work in the world. Her work is about helping people build equitable, inclusive, and anti-oppressive spaces (both digitally and in-person) for creating, healing, and being. Through wip projects, Frances helps arts-based organizations celebrate creative expression and dismantle systems of institutional racism and patriarchy that exclude the voices of marginalized folks from the cultural conversation around art making.

“Language is one of the most effective ways to express ourselves, and maybe the most complex. It can uplift excluded voices or be a tool to keep them quiet. So what does justice look like for those who have been silenced? As someone who lives with a mental illness complicated by trauma, it means reclaiming my voice to empower others. I also benefit from ways I am included in the conversation, so I use my place to help folks overcome traditional barriers to access and express themselves without shame.”

Date: Saturday October 12th, 3:30pm – 5pm

Cost: Free

Event Description:

Kingston photographer and advocate Charise Isis will discuss some of the challenges women face as a result of breast cancer. Along with her powerful imagery she will tell stories that transcend the scars and illuminate the real beauty that lives inside each of her subjects. A selection of Charise’s photographs of women who have survived mastectomies, Broken is Still Beautiful, will be on display throughout the month.

Date: Sunday October 6th, 2:30pm – 5:30pm

Cost: $25 or pay what you can at door if space is available.

Event Description:

Come join us in making a traditional Romanian corn husk mat or basket.  Circle Creative Collective’s Poliana Danila will lead us in creating this craft she learned as a child in Romania. Materials will be provided.

Space is limited so reserve your spot by buying a $25 ticket.
Pay what you can at the door if there’s still room:)

Date: Saturday October 12th, 2pm – 3:30pm

Cost: Free

Event Description:

Join us for a conversation about the pitfalls of the current for-profit insurance system, and a look at the solution: THE NEW YORK HEALTH ACT (NYHA). Health Care impacts people at every stage of life. Come learn how single payer health care addresses care, access, social justice, and dignity regardless of employment status, health status, or income level.

To learn more about the NYHA please visit the Campaign for New York Health website.

Speaker: Jess Robie, RN, New York Health Act Advocate, Activist