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.

Step right up, my fine and freakish friends! Behind this tent flap lies wonders—a traveling troupe of curious souls and misbegotten marvels, built from bits and bones of forgotten things. 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—tattooed mystics, maniacal strongmen, contortionist clowns: oddities born of rust, relics, and imagination. Expect painted alchemy, assemblage wizardry, and tall tales of woe and wonder. Learn to age, adorn, and assemble something that feels plucked from a carnival’s corner stall—a sight strange and sublime. Gather your scraps and wonders, broken bits, and blessed mistakes. The circus is rolling into town—and you are part of the act.

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.