Workshop Description: Step right up, my fine and freakish friends! Behind this tent flap lies a world of wonder—a traveling troupe of curious souls and misbegotten marvels, each built from the bits and bones of forgotten things.

In this mixed-media workshop, we'll create our own sideshow icons: part saint, part scoundrel, all spectacular. Using found objects, sculptural materials, and acrylic paint, we'll conjure a carnival of characters and curiosities—tattooed mystics, maniacal strongmen, contortionist clowns, shrine-like tributes to the marvelous misfits of the midway, and other oddities born of rust, relics, and imagination.

Expect plenty of painted alchemy, assemblage wizardry, and a few tall tales of woe and wonder. You'll learn to age, adorn, and assemble your piece into something that feels plucked from a traveling carnival's corner stall—a sight both strange and sublime.

So gather your scraps and wonders, your broken bits and junk drawer goodies.

The circus is rolling into town—and you are part of the act.

Join me in Oaxaca, Mexico during Día de Muertos as we create small nichos—personal shrine boxes built from found objects, curious fragments, and the kinds of treasures most people pass by (their loss, our gain).

Inspired by Mexico’s tradition of devotional altars and home shrines, we’ll transform humble materials into meaningful assemblages that honor memory, storytelling, and a touch of the mysterious. These pieces may be small, but they carry big stories—tributes to loved ones, symbols of personal mythology, or simply beautiful oddities given a second life.

Surrounded by the color, candlelight, and atmosphere of Day of the Dead in Oaxaca, we’ll layer paint, texture, and symbolism into shrines that feel both playful and heartfelt. No rules—just intuition, creativity, and a willingness to see magic in unlikely things.

Ahoy, you crusty creatives and barnacle-hearted bricoleurs! It's time to nail your colors to the mast and clear the crustaceans from your ears—because we’re diving headfirst into the shadowy seas of found-object assemblage. Inspired by the eerie beauty of shipwrecks, not the experience, mind you, but the haunting poetry of rusted hulls, tangled ropes, and salt-warped relics—we’ll be crafting nautically themed shrines and altars.  

These structures, shaped by time and tide, tell stories of sailors and sirens, mermaids and maritime monsters, sea gods and sunken secrets. We'll explore a range of techniques to help your creations take on a life of their own, including sculpting barnacles and coral, distressing surfaces with rust and verdigris patinas, and infusing your work with the haunting textures of the deep.

Whether your tribute is to Poseidon, a siren  or a peg-legged privateer, this is your chance to make something beautifully briny. So batten down the hatches. We’re already taking on water. And if your gut says this sounds like a class worth sinking into… trust it.

I’ve always had a soft spot for old toys. The freakier the better.

Not the shiny new ones. I’m talking about the forgotten ones—the doll missing an eye, the action figure bearing the unmistakable teeth marks of a toddler, the plastic critter languishing in a thrift store bin wondering where it all went wrong. 

But what’s even better than a freaky old toy? A freaky old toy you make even freakier with the magic of assemblage and a bit of acrylic paint.

Duh nah nah nah… nah nah… nah nah… Super Freaky.

Our inspiration comes from one of Mexico City’s strangest destinations: the legendary Island of the Dolls. There, hundreds of weathered toys hang from trees, stare from the undergrowth, and slowly surrender themselves to the elements. Creepy? Perhaps. Fascinating? Absolutely.

In this workshop we’ll rescue a few toys of our own and give them a second life.

Using found objects, sculptural materials, paint, and assorted bits of creative mischief, we’ll transform ordinary toys into extraordinary oddities. A plastic western gunslinger and a toy cow might become a literal googly-eyed cowboy. A forgotten doll could evolve into a strange home for tiny train folk. A cheerful toy monkey might become a spider monkey.

Literally. The black widow kind.

Along the way I’ll share my favorite tricks for mutating toys, adding sculptural details, incorporating found objects, and convincing a bit of plastic that it has lived a long and peculiar life. I’ll also share plenty of painting techniques to help bring your newly transformed oddities to life.

So gather your misfit toys and prepare for a freaky time. In a freaky place:

The Isle of Freaky Toys.