Description
Date: June 1st – 2nd, 2024. Class starts at 9am on the 1st, and finishes 5pm on the 2nd.
Instructor: Jenna Bradford & Jeff Wagner
Topics: The weekend is divided into 4 half-day blocks. The classes are meant to be an introduction to a broad enough range of topics that you can leave ready to experiment with your own fiber art projects!
- Carding, spinning, and processing wool with Jenna
- Introduction to backstrap weaving with Jeff
- Introduction to wet felting with Jenna
- Eco printing & natural dyes with Jenna
Location: Paonia, Colorado (Groundwork Farm — See map).
Lodging: A riverside campsite is included for those who are camping out for the weekend. You are welcome to arrive and camp Friday night.
Meals: Meals are provided during the weekend, with organic ingredients from our educational farm.
Level: Beginner (No experience required)
Meet The Instructors
Jenna Bradford
Jenna grew up in the Sacramento River delta in California, swimming, climbing trees, searching for animals along the water’s edge, studying their ways, and always looking for excuses to be outside. She received her B.A. in Environmental Studies and Bioethics from Loyola University in Chicago. Before becoming a teacher, Jenna worked on farms in Colorado, designed and sewed clothing, and studyied plants through an herbalism apprenticeship with Wildroot Botanicals and an ethnobotany immersion with Raven’s Roots Naturalist School. Jenna taught 5th and 6th grade at Paonia’s North Fork School of Integrated Studies. She is excited to continue with some of her current students on this adventure. Jenna loves teaching because she loves learning and loves to share that enthusiasm with others.
Jeff Wagner
After a university education didn’t provide sufficient answers, Jeff began seeking answers to the big questions that weren’t answered by academia: how we might reimagine U.S. society in the age of climate change, and what it means to be a responsible human in an unraveling world. For over a decade, Jeff sought answers outside the mainstream: living at wolf sanctuary in the Colorado mountains, leading NOLS expeditions across North America, and facilitating cross-cultural semesters in the Andes, the Amazon, the Himalaya, and the great Mekong River Basin. Jeff’s biggest focus has been teaching to the cultural roots of environmental issues, and helping students both experience and examine different ways of life that can be applied as cultural activism at home in North America. As a person dedicated to questioning the mindsets stemming from settler-colonialism, Jeff finds inspiration in the communities working to maintain and strengthen relationships with the natural world and with the sources of food, water, clothing, shelter, and meaning. Jeff likes walking slowly, weaving fabric and baskets, and growing beautiful varieties of heirloom seeds. Jeff founded Groundwork to help people pursue the goal of becoming ancestors that their descendants will be proud to tell stories about. Jeff is a certified Wilderness First Responder.
