Our instructors are drawn from a wealth of talented teachers, including nationally known artists from across the country and across the street. They are innovative craftsmen and artists who enjoy trying new techniques and love sharing what they do with their students.
If you are an experienced art, craft, writing, or performing arts instructor and are interested in teaching at Shake Rag Alley, click here for more information.
After retirement as an architect, Hal Aavang was looking for a way to combine a practical skill with his lifelong love of working with metal, and to also use this skill as an art form. He found the blacksmithing program at Shake Rag Alley, and started with a basic blacksmithing class taught by Bob Tuftee using the traditional coal forge. In order to continue blacksmithing at home, the propane gas forge provided a clean and readily available forging heat for his projects. A MIG welder and oxy-acetylene torch added additional support for his home blacksmithing shop where he works on many pieces such as traditional hooks, fire pokers, flowers, custom live art tables, other art projects, and an expanding list of future works. Hal is a member of the Upper Midwest Blacksmith Association. He keeps, sells, donates to charitable causes, and displays his work, and accepts commissions.
Workshops
Introduction to Gas Forge Blacksmithing: The Basics
Forging Hooks & Leaves – Woodlanders Gathering
Forge a Calla Lily – Woodlanders Gathering
A love of paper arts and functional art caused Nancy Akerly to create her business, Liberty Grove Paper Arts 20 years ago. She shares her enthusiasm for bookbinding, origami, Cartonnage, paper and fabric marbling, gel printing, and paste paper in her classes, with an emphasis on the joy of developing one’s own creativity through form, color, and design. Her home studio is in Sister Bay, Wisconsin, in the heart of the Door Peninsula, and is inspired daily by the beauty of the surrounding bays, bluffs, forests and northern skies. She was a public school teacher for 39 years in Wisconsin and Germany before following her passion for paper arts. She now teaches throughout Wisconsin and surrounding states, as well as teaching online classes for San Diego Book Arts.
Workshops
Cartonnage: Creating a Classic Toolbox
Adam al-Sirgany is an Arab-American writer and editor, born and raised in the Driftless Midwest. He holds degrees in Creative Writing from Knox College, the University of Arizona, and Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. Adam teaches Developmental Editing for the UCLA Extension Program in Writing, Editing, and Publishing. He serves as the Acquisitions & Developmental Editor for the independent press SFWP. His debut short story collection, More Hell, was published by Whiskey Tit Press in 2025.
Instructor Website
Workshops
Mining Your Stories Writing Retreat
Denise Anton Wright has made three really good decisions in her life: becoming a librarian, marrying her husband, and dabbling in jewelry-making. Since retiring from Library Land in 2015, Denise spends her days creating, taking care of two high-maintenance cats, and watching lots of classic old movies while working on jewelry projects. Her growth as an artist and creator has been helped immeasurably by the wonderful classes that she’s taken at Shake Rag Alley (a big shout-out to Lorraine Reynolds). Her jewelry business is Salve Regina Tchotchkes; the name is a combination of Latin and Yiddish and can be very roughly translated as: shiny objects with no practical purpose for our Heavenly Queen.
Workshops
Jim Arendt retired from a long career as a teacher and YMCA director. “I became interested in willow furniture watching John Schakel, the master willow bender, give a demonstration at Woodlanders many years ago. Shortly after that I registered for Shake Rag Alley’s bent willow chair class with John. As fate would have it, I was John’s only student and through that class we developed a lasting friendship. Over the years I helped John gather the willow needed for a class and assisted him. I have built many chairs on my own, but some of my most cherished undertakings are the three youth willow chairs I have made for my three grandchildren. I was deeply honored when Shake Rag Alley contacted me to teach the Make a Bent Willow Chair class. I am looking forward to working with everyone in lovely Mineral Point.”
Workshops
Rustic Garden Bench – Woodlanders Gathering
Helen Avakian is an award winning Singer/Songwriter/International Guitar Champion and long time music educator. She has helped her students write many songs in individual classes and in groups at Girls and Ladies Rock Camps in Madison and Camp Mariah Carey Fresh Air Fund Camp in NY. 8 of her songs have taken first in the NewSong Contest at the Walnut Valley Festival, KS and she was a winner in the NYC Cityfolk competition.
Like Joni Mitchell, Helen Avakian can turn lyrics inside out… Helen Avakian’s music touches a place within.” John Barry, Poughkeepsie Journal
Workshops
Lee Ann was fortunate to be raised in a creative and nature-loving family. She grew up camping and hiking all over the country, and her parent always nurtured and encouraged creativity. Her father taught himself woodworking and furniture making, and her mother has been a wood carver for over 35 years, following in the footsteps of her father and grandfather. Lee Ann loves the joy and the community that wood carving affords, and she looks forward to to share her craft with others.
Workshops
Beki Borman was born and raised in the Milwaukee area of Wisconsin. She attended the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design where she received her BFA in painting in 2004. Since graduating, Beki has exhibited both locally and nationally. Beki’s current paintings are done primarily with a palette knife. These “Chromascapes” focus on color relationships within the subject of landscape. Some of Beki’s influences include Vincent Van Gogh, Wolf Kahn, and Wayne Thiebaud. She currently works out of her studio in the Waukesha Springs Gallery/Studios.
Workshops
Francie Broadie has been beading and teaching beadwork in the Midwest for the last 27 years. She is well versed in bead weaving and glass fusing, having studied with multiple teachers over the last 26 years. Francie has taught at the Bead and Button Show in Milwaukee, Bead Fest in Philadelphia and Sievers School of Fiber Arts. Seed beads are Francie’s favorite, but she will bead with anything. Her goal in life is to cram as much beady info into her brain as possible. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Kenyon College, and a Master of Arts degree from the University of Indianapolis. In her spare time she knits, sews, paints, embroiders, and dabbles in photography.
Workshops
Tom Cabezas is a Mineral Point wood-worker and mixed media artist. He has been designing and building unique quality furniture since 1991. With a background in sculpture and a deep respect for craftsmanship and detail Tom strives to create work that does not attempt to place form over function or function over form. His work has been shown nation-wide and has won numerous awards. Tom earned an MFA in sculpture from UW-Madison.
Workshops
Penelope Cake is a visual artist, choreographer, performer, teacher, and writer who currently lives in Cape May, NJ. Her work has been exhibited and performed in NYC art galleries and theaters, as well as in Cape May at Cape May Stage, The Cape May Artists Cooperative, and The End of the Road Theater. Samples of her performances, videos and artwork can be viewed at penelopecake.com. For more information: penelopecake@yahoo.com.
Workshops
Hello! My name is Mackenzie Champion, although most call me Mack, and I’m the 2024 Youth Program Manager. I’m looking forward to working with children and making art all summer long! I just finished my first year at the University of Wisconsin-Stout majoring in Art Education. In my spare time I compete on the UW-Stout Track and Field team as a pole vaulter, as well as participate in community service and philanthropic opportunities with my sorority, the Gamma chapter of Phi Theta Chi.…
Read MoreHello! My name is Mackenzie Champion, although most call me Mack, and I’m the 2024 Youth Program Manager. I’m looking forward to working with children and making art all summer long! I just finished my first year at the University of Wisconsin-Stout majoring in Art Education. In my spare time I compete on the UW-Stout Track and Field team as a pole vaulter, as well as participate in community service and philanthropic opportunities with my sorority, the Gamma chapter of Phi Theta Chi. I love reading and I’ve recently started experimenting with my green thumb. I’m looking forward to working in a small community and growing the Shake Rag Alley family!
Workshops
Make Your Own Beads & Jewelry Workshop
Craft Camp: We’re a 3-Ring Circus!
Layer Painting & Design with Natural Materials
Linda Chmelar has been a basket weaver and teacher for over 25 years. She owns The Basket Weaver Shop located north of Dubuque at 12208 Circle Ridge Road. She offers classes and materials, kits used in weaving baskets. Linda lives with her husband, Mark and together they have four grown children and 12 grandchildren, 3 step grandchildren. Linda graduated from Iowa State University in Home Economics Education.
Workshops
Mike led his first Shake Rag class at the age of fifteen during the second Woodlanders Gathering in 2003. Now a board member since 2012, Mike still enjoys helping with classes when needed, and he still comes to Woodlanders every year. You can find Mike on several of Shake Rag’s committees, and serves as Board President.
Workshops
Kate Church has a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design (1978), participated in winter study at Bellas Artes, San Miguel de Allende Mexico (1996-2011), is a NIADA
artist (niada.org), and affiliated with Craft Nova Scotia (craftnovascotia.ca).
The intention of my figurative work is to carry a silent imprint or sense of emotion through the posture and expression of the figure evolving in front of me. Built using a process that is movable throughout its construction, a tangible sense of emerging comes naturally to the finished sculpture. In fact, most of the figures can be altered and adjusted: Movement is part of their design.
Polymer clay, fabric, and found objects are the main materials I use in my work. My aim in teaching is to show and guide students in working with polymer clay and simple body form using cloth and wire.
Workshops
“I follow MY HEART and paint what I FEEL.”
It’s the life of artist Cathee ‘Cat’ Clausen. It’s her artwork’s unspoken word.
Imagining and creating with a thought, a brush, paint and a canvas, each work begins with the simplest element – a memory or a feeling – and builds from there.
From her childhood recollections of camping in Sedona or the Grand Canyon, of sleeping under an Indian blanket each night, of building sandcastles by the ocean, or forming mud animals to bake in the hot desert sun, to the current sleepy northwestern Illinois town she calls home, Clausen’s life and artwork have danced around each other for years.
Born in Brawley, Calif., Clausen spent the majority of her childhood with her parents and siblings in Arizona, where her mom taught elementary school to Native American Apaches and her father worked as a arid plant geneticist.
She spent her days as a budding artist, making her own jewelry and pottery and clothing, taking camping and nature trips throughout the desert and soaking in a southwestern, Bohemian life.
She could imagine herself as an artist–free to express her life as a painter and illustrator.
“I like a somewhat solitary life and I could envision the time it would take to make a bracelet or to paint a picture or make a drawing, and I had the patience to sit and do things like that,” she said.
Little baby moccasins. A tiny woven basket. Graphite drawings of wild horses. The colors of a fiery desert sunset. Dancing angels. Fascinating portraits. These images painted her youth.
It would be years before those memories would become front and center in both her mind and work.
In 1982, Clausen earned her bachelor’s degree in visual communications from Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff.
Following graduation, Cat worked in marketing, public relations and art direction for 10 years including a position with WVPT Public Television in Harrisonburg, Va.
Cat left her career in the fall of 1993 to become a stay-at-home mom and moved to Illinois with her husband and three-year-old son.
Craving a creative outlet, Cat began to teach herself to paint in oils, an art medium she had not studied in college. She sold her first oils to members of her small community.
A second collection, “Ribbons of Color,” began as a soul searching mission and a way to purge difficult experiences of her past. From it, she developed a permanent style of illustrative lines and brushstrokes for her work. Known as pure power, Clausen’s colorist ‘ribbons of color’ cascaded down canvases and transformed her new found creative outlet into a full blown career.
As Clausen found resolution in her own personal story, she began to seek out the story of others. The “Icons” collection followed with portraits of political and educational leaders and musicians, as well as her beloved Abraham Lincoln.
Treasured by many in his home state of Illinois, Clausen’s Lincoln has gone on to grace the covers of magazines; a book; a mural in Springfield, IL; an original oil that hangs in the White House West Wing; as well as banners throughout the city of Chicago and Springfield, IL.
Even as her work brought her more acclaimed recognition with appearances on WGN news and a trip to Italy in honor of her Lincoln, a commission for Yoko Ono – a new vision came to her.
She awoke one day with the images of two Indian chiefs in her mind. She knew they were leading her to her next works.
And so the “Visions” collection was conceived. Months of researching, including trips to Chicago’s Newberry Library and a two-week journey to the stomping grounds of her youth, led her back to the simplest of places.
With a thought, a brush, some paint and a canvas, Clausen developed her “Visions,” collection.
It was simple and pure and and moving.
As time passed Cat reflected once again on her roots and from a window-filled, lake front loft, on a quiet street, in an unassuming forest community, Cat’s newest works of portraiture and landscapes, and now, fiber art, come to life with a bold illustrative statement.
Workshops
Lydi Conklin has received a Stegner Fellowship, four Pushcart Prizes, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, a Creative Writing Fulbright in Poland, a grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation, and fellowships from MacDowell, Yaddo, Bread Loaf, Sewanee, Emory, Hedgebrook, Djerassi, the James Merrill House, Lighthouse Works, and elsewhere. Their fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, One Story, McSweeney’s, American Short Fiction, and VQR. They have drawn cartoons for The New Yorker and Narrative Magazine, and graphic fiction for The Believer, Lenny Letter, and the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago. They’ve served as the Helen Zell Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan and are now an Assistant Professor of Fiction at Vanderbilt University.
Their story collection, Rainbow Rainbow, was longlisted for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Award and The Story Prize. Their novel, Songs of No Provenance, was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize.
Workshops
Mining Your Stories Writing Retreat
I create one of a kind stainless steel chainmaille jewelry. Chainmaille is made by weaving different sized metal rings around each other to form a pattern, I then take that pattern and add different sized rings, natural stones, Swarovski crystals, or delicate chains to make a unique statement piece. I use stainless steel because it is strong, durable, hypoallergenic, will never rust, tarnish, change color, or make your skin change color. My jewelry is a mix of medieval, industrial, gothic and punk.
Workshops
I am retired environmental mediator living in Alexandria VA. I’ve collected pretty or unusual rocks from places as diverse as the parking lot cracks at her nearest Starbucks to river edges in New Zealand and beaches in the Caribbean. I found found the craft of wrapping rocks with interesting fibers in a workshop at my favorite creative crafting store and now evaluate interesting rocks as potential for decorative wrapping. While I am not an expert, over the years i have taught origami, macrame and other crafts to kids, fellow employees, and friends.
Workshops
18 Shake Rag St.
Mineral Point, WI 53565
(608) 987-3292
