Wheelhouse Creative Education Center

Last chance! Come play art with us!

The exuberance of growth is palpable at this time of year. Gardens spring into greens and the vibrant colors of blooms, strawberries develop their perfect ripeness, it’s hard to keep up with lawn mowing. At schools, as our academic years draw to a close, it’s a season in which we realize that in the space of what feels like an eye blink, children have transformed. After ten months of daily life together, it’s a time for celebrating the learning that has happened, the friendships that have formed, the time that we have spent together, the incredible growth that has emerged.
To celebrate this growth, we will be hosting our second annual Week of Wheelhouse, featuring five days of fun activities that are open to all. Attendance is by donation with the hope that money won’t be a barrier to anyone.

This celebratory week is also the kick-off for our Annual Appeal. This year, we are launching our Annual Appeal during this celebratory season of June, in order to better plan for the school year ahead, and accurately assess our ability to offer financial support to interested families for the fall. Our goal is to connect to ten new monthly sustaining donors, and to raise $15,000 by the end of August for our Annual Fund.

Will you join us in celebrating the deep work of authentic connection, and help us to continue it into the future? All contributions, large or small, mean a lot to us. ❤️

Thank you for building with us. We appreciate you.

Check out the campaign Annual Fund 2026 on Givebutter! https://givebutter.com/annual-appeal-2026-judcg0

More at (free) Saturday Family Arts this week! The famous aka Stephanie Dougherty aka Kid Magnet Extraordinaire! Stephanie will be leading a Color Theory workshop for our kiddos under 5.

As a lifelong resident of the Hudson Valley, I have been practicing Art and Childcare most of my life. I try to honor each child's ability to arrive with great ideas and their own intuition about how an idea might be brought out from the mind by bringing children rich and exciting materials and expanding our Artistic Vocabulary. Offering several choices of materials and projects is another way I honor this. Being always open to teachers of any height is a never ending source of ideas and wisdom brought and wisdom discovered together.

This workshop will provide an introduction to Two-Dimension Art with some focused color theory practices. We will discuss common principles and elements of art while learning ways to guide our own work. Learning about these concepts can help us sharpen our ideas already living within, and how we can strongly portray them. I will offer an array of drawing mediums to choose from and a variety of surfaces to work on. Kids can also choose from several types of color mixing approaches.

Pre-registration is helpful but not required. Registration link can be found on our website www.catskillwheelhouse.org

is back at Saturday Family Arts this week for more movie fun! This week's workshop, running from 10:30 - 12:30, is designed for ages 5-12, but we're flexible.

This is a hands-on filmmaking experience that begins with a conversation about storytelling, outlining an idea through storyboards than intuitively building a short film together with the students as directors, cinematographers and actors...sometimes all at once. It's a playful opportunity to express an inner world through a modern visual medium --lead by a working filmmaker deep in the practice of creative storytelling.

Ryan Balas has made over 40 independently produced feature films as a director and cinematographer. Additionally, he has worked with some of the biggest brands in the world to craft deeply human documentaries and trained as an actor in LA and NY. He views his filmmaking as an intuitive art form with endless creative potential and centers his work around dreams and human relationships, often intertwined with nature.

Hope to see you! Pre-registration is helpful but not required. Visit www.catskillwheelhouse.org to register.

At the end of this school year, we will bid farewell to our dear Operations Manager, Christina Dietmann. Christina joined Wheelhouse less than a year after we first opened, and has been with us through all kinds of ups and downs, thicks and thins. She’s brought the sunniest smile, the best songs, and the warmest welcomes, and we will miss her very much.

We will be taking some time this week to celebrate her many contributions, and to share our warmest wishes for her next chapter. Please join us for karaoke, drinks, and nibbles tomorrow, Thursday, June 4, from 3 - 6 p.m.

Hope to see you!

For our tweens and teens this weekend, we are offering an introduction to the beautiful art of mosaic techniques with .little.fern.house Students will be led in a hands-on discovery of working with some different types of materials and tools used in mosaic making.

We will begin with a lesson in the safe handling of stained glass, ceramic tiles and pottery shards and the different tools used in cutting the material into smaller pieces and different shapes. Small colorful pebbles, gemstones and sea shells will also be available for use. Books from my personal library will be available to look through and hand outs with mosaic information will be given.
Students can then choose from a variety of materials for their palette of colors and textures to work from. A small wooden base, either a panel or picture frame/ or a large seashell, or a small terracotta pot can be chosen along with a small cup of thin set cement and an applicator. Once the thinset is applied to the base section by section, they can press the tiles into place. Using this method of application for a one day workshop allows for the completion of a small project.

We will talk about designs, what makes a good image choice for mosaics, patterns, how the background can make the subject pop out or disappear and how the direction in which tiles are placed affect the feeling of the piece.

Christine Moss was born in 1971 in the Bronx, New York, United States of America

Resides and works in Woodstock, New York, United States of America

Christine is a versatile mixed media artist who creates with the mediums of paint, collage, ceramics and mosaics.

Her work explores the relationship between the natural, physical world and the spiritual, unseen world. She switches between mediums and sometimes uses as many as possible in a single piece, a sort of grand mosaic. Painting and collage are sealed under clear glass and then incorporated into a mosaic that includes pottery shards from her ceramics. She is always exploring and learning new mediums of expression to fulfill her desire to understand and become one with the energetic nature of the wild.

More Saturday Family Arts fun! For our 5-12 year-olds, Asia Sosnowski from will be leading Clay Play! Saturday’s clay sessions will be a general exploration of clay in both solid and slip forms, combined with social energy and engagement while experiencing various sensory and creative impulses. Clay sessions are messy and very energetic, come prepared with mud clothes, muddy buddies, or waders with boots, and a small towel if possible! Asia Sosnowski has been collecting and making claybodies for over 10 years, and taught for almost that long wheel-throwing while having also facilitated pottery and ceramics at the former Catskill Mill and Freehold Art Exchange. Her motto is as Susan Beecher once said “Free the Clay!” Asia lives in Durham with her family, cats and sheep.

Ooh la la! Look what's coming up for our next set of free workshops at Saturday Family Arts this week! Here's a spotlight on our workshop for kiddos and their caregivers who are under 5 (or thereabouts...we are flexible)...

Painting with Plants : A sensory exploration on watercolor paper using paints made from flowers and food scraps. We will create works of art using homemade watercolors from non toxic plant pigments, kids will get to touch, feel and smell the materials that the colors are made from during the class. An introduction to the rainbow of colors that can be created from foods and flowers that we see everyday.

This workshop will be led by design. Hanoux is a textile artist, educator and mother working from her farm in Taghkanic, NY. After graduating from Pratt Institute and working in Fashion & Film for over a decade she pivoted her career to focus on educating others on regenerative textile choices & creating with the cycles of nature. Alongside a small team, she creates bespoke, naturally dyed textiles and original garments in limited run batches from biodegradable materials. Her approach is slow process, hyper local, anti fashion and focused on preserving craft to build resilient community. Transforming consumers to creators and inspiring a conscious, minimal lifestyle.

Register at www.catskillwheelhouse.org

This project is made possible with funds from the Statewide Community Regrant Program, a regrant program of the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of The Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature and administered by CREATE Council on the Arts.

We’ve been having a great time these past few weeks at our Family Arts Workshops, here are a few highlights to enjoy. Open to all, pay what you can and going on every Saturday until end of June! Come join in on the fun with new classes for all ages every weekend. For information on classes and registration, please visit our website.

Join us this Saturday for another fun weekend of art for all ages! These Family Arts Workshops will be going on now, throughout June. Don’t miss out on the fun!