Workshops for guilds, art centers and organizations.

Virtual and In-Person workshops are currently available for booking.

Learning virtually is a wonderful experience. Please reach out, so we can talk about how I can best serve your group needs.

All my classes are based on the concept of sustainability and harmony with the environment.

Plastic Nature Workshop

Here’s a creative way to help clean up our planet: make art from single-use plastic bags. Collect them for a few weeks and you’ll discover a myriad of colors, thicknesses, patterns and textures available to you. With my guidance, you’ll make art inspired by nature from the plastic bags you’ve gathered. I will show you how to prepare the plastic, cut it and stitch it by hand and machine. You will experiment with different types of stitching and finishes, and create an artwork like no other.

Graffiti Lab Workshop

Explore the artistry of urban graffiti and wordplay. A few trips to the supermarket will provide you with a diverse collection of fonts in different styles, sizes and colors from single-use plastic product packaging and bags. This is perfect fodder for graffiti and letter inspired art.  Create puns, superlatives, proverbs and haikus you’d like to immortalize forever.  (It is plastic after all, so it’ll last!)  Add machine stitching and hand stitching and end up with a fun and striking new piece of art.

What People Are Saying

“Natalya was one of the very first artists to help lead our guild into the Zoom era. Her lecture and workshop were so inviting and well-organized that, with her guidance and encouragement, we felt immediately comfortable sewing with plastic(!) to create works of art from items destined to live forever in landfills. It was an eye-opening experience!
I have since taken another workshop with Natalya and look forward to more! Virtual classes have opened so many opportunities. Don’t miss this one!”

— KATHY BRICKER

Textural Style Workshop

If you’re like most artists, crafters and makers, you’ve got scraps left over from a gazillion projects. A collection of diverse tidbits holds a great deal of promise that shouldn’t go to waste. From bits of vintage lace to snippets of shiny lycra, they can all be put to use. Transform these assorted visual morsels into a beautiful background or a stand-alone composition using a sewing machine, and hand stitching. Experiment by adding unusual threads, collected thread snippings and yarns for added texture. The results will be unique art imbued with your artmaking history.

Dryer Sheet Spectacular! Workshop

We’ve all used them, we’ve all thrown them away. Well no more! This helpful fossil fuel derived denizen of the laundry room is recyclable in only one way - ART! It’s good for painting, writing, stamping, screen printing, digital printing and stitching! 

Save your used dryer sheets, collect them from friends, put them through the wash cycle with some towels, bring them to the workshop and make art. We will learn all sorts of ways to use them in your mixed media art adventures. Bring your paints, stencils, needles and thread and leave with a collection of samples to use in your next creation…. And help to save the planet.

Home Portrait Workshop

Would you like to create a memory like no other?

I will take you through the steps of creating a portrait of your home just like the commissioned artworks that I am known for.

You will use your own ephemera and photographs, and transform them into a meaningful and special artwork. 

You’ll need high-resolution photos of the outside of your home and some details.

Awesome ephemera, be it hankies, upholstery fabric or wallpaper samples, a deed, a map of the neighborhood or a local park, a copy of the local paper, a photo of beloved people, a treasured recipe copy, pennant from a favorite team, a wrapper from a special treat, or a coaster from a fave restaurant. You get the idea!

You’ll spend three days transforming your ephemera and your photographs into a 12"x12” portrait. You will brainstorm, play, plot and envision. You will collage, thread paint and hand stitch. And I will guide you every step of the way.

THIS IS A MINIMUM THREE DAY WORKSHOP

What People Are Saying

“I took Natalya’s Nature in Plastic workshop, offered through my quilt guild. It was the first zoom workshop I ever took and was excellent! Natalya was well prepared with very clear instruction and lots of examples to show us up close and personal. We all had a great time recycling and reusing as we rediscovered plastics as a new quilting material. Personally, I can’t wait to make many more pieces using Natalya’s technique.”

— SUSAN CORTESI

“Your lecture, Alternative Stitching Practices, was one of our first Zoom lectures. It was wonderful and did a great job to encourage some of our Zoom-wary members. Your Zoom workshop, Nature in Plastics, was our first Zoom workshop. For many of us, the project was definitely out of our comfort zone; everyone enjoyed it and still talks about it. It was also very helpful that you made a “pop-up” visit to our guild the month before the workshop to introduce the project to our members.”

— MARY PHILLIPS, PRESIDENT Q.U.I.L.T., INC.

Alternative Stitching Practices Lecture

What can you stitch on? Just about everything! I will show examples which will motivate you and inspire you, sharing details of the pleasures and occasional pitfalls of working with each. This lecture will broaden your understanding of what you can use in your art.

So Many Approaches Lecture

Let’s talk about how to go about creating a brand new artwork and explore working in a series.

There are so many approaches to this for traditional artists, but what is you are an aspiring repurposed media artist? What approach can help you start off on the right foot?

BOOKING INFORMATION

travel information

I am available to teach on my own zoom channel currently and into the foreseeable future.

I live in the NY tri-state area, and bookings requiring travel of longer than two hours, must book three consecutive teaching days because of the traveling days. This can be shared between several guilds. Reimbursement is expected for gas and expenses if driving and airline fees if applicable.

Travel to your location is now available, but is dependent covid-19 conditions. I am fully vaccinated.

workshop fees

6 hour class: $850

3 hour class: $550

All classes can be reconfigured to multiple days, some classes are only available as multiple day.

All classes can accommodate up to 15 students.

lecture fees

Lecture: $550

Both lectures are about 1 hour in length and always time for Q&A

booking fee

Non-refundable booking fee: $200.00 (deducted from class fee)

Required at signing of contract.