2025 Workshops & Demos
Natalia Arbelaez
Creating Figures with Reusable Armatures
Saturday + Sunday, November 8 + 9
9AM–4PM
Workshop Focus: Explore zoomorphic and/or human figurative, legged forms and learn how to integrate surface decoration into your work, including majolica stain techniques with Visiting Artist Natalia Arbelaez! You’ll learn how to build your own reusable armatures using wooden dowels and boards and will learn how to build and troubleshoot making medium pieces with mid-range stoneware.
This workshop will use Laguna Red Sculpture clay (WC-390), which fires from cone 2 to cone 5. You’ll focus on making and learning skills to continue working with armatures and at mid-scale on your own and will be able to take your in-progress greenware work home when the workshop ends. This workshop is a process-centered educational experience. Bisque or other firing is not included in the workshop fee but is available to PS members and contract firers (the general public).
Experience Level: This workshop is open to all levels. You’ll get the most out of the workshop if you have some experience handbuilding with coils, slabs, and pinching, but experience is not required. This workshop includes hands-on guidance on constructing armatures using hand saws, drills, and other tools.
GENERAL PUBLIC: $345 + $45 materials fee
PS MEMBERS + current STUDENTS: $295 + $45 materials fee
Natalia Arbelaez is a Colombian American artist born and raised in Miami, Florida to immigrant parents. She received her BFA from Florida International University and her MFA with an Enrichment Fellowship from The Ohio State University. Her work has been exhibited internationally, in museums, galleries, and included in various collections, such as the Everson Museum, New York; Museum of Art and Design (MAD), New York; Fuller Craft Museum, Massachusetts; The ICA Miami; and the Gardiner Museum, Toronto, Canada.
In 2016–2017, Arbelaez was a Rittenberg Fellow at Clay Art Center in Port Chester, New York, and was awarded the Inaugural Artaxis Fellowship that funded a residency at Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts in Newcastle, Maine. In 2018, she was recognized by NCECA as an Emerging Artist and was a 2018-19 resident artist in the Ceramics Program at Harvard University, where she researched pre-Columbian art and histories. In 2019-2020, Arbelaez was an artist-in-residence at MAD in New York City, where she researched the work of historical and influential women ceramicists of color and continued this research as a 2021 and 2023 Visiting Artist at the American Museum of Ceramic Art (AMOCA) in Pomona, California.
Natalia joined the School of Art + Art History + Design at the University of Washington as Assistant Professor in Ceramics in the fall of 2024 after completing a residency at the MenLo Studio in Jingdezhen, China, where she spent the summer researching the city’s rich ceramic history and industry.