Workshops

Living Arts Institute Workshop Series

Workshops at Living Arts Institute are in-depth, hands-on, and led by well qualified instructors in their field. These are not textbook classes that just teach formulas and theories, but rather hands-on, engaging, and participatory relationships where the lessons of experience form the backbone of the curriculum. Plenty of demonstration and exposure to various assets of the Crestone community will also be shared.

2013 Whole Systems Internships:

Anaerobic Digestion: May 27-June 13

·     AART 1 at an Off-Grid Homestead

·     10 m3 Greenhouse Integrated

·     Earthen Plaster

·     CSA Gardening

Wood Chip Energy: August 12-25

·     10 kw Power Pallet

·     DIY 55 Gal Drum Gasifier

·     Desert Forestry & CHP Energy Districts

·     CSA Gardening

·     Crestone Energy Fair Aug 24-25

Cost: $100 includes simple room and board

Where: Living Arts Institute Crestone, CO

Straw Bale Construction
Earthen and Lime Plasters
Solar Hot Water
Permaculture & Sustainable Design
Top Bar Beekeeping
Timberframing
Food Preservation I: Fruits and Vegetables
Food Preservation II: Meats

Straw Bale Construction

This workshop will be an immersion into the craft of straw bale building and will include a home tour of some of Crestone's best straw bale homes. This workshop will include plenty of discussion, but in the process we will be building a north wall to a commercial kitchen. Topics covered will include foundations and roofs, compression systems, window and door bucks, plaster preparation, finish details, common pitfalls, and overall how to build an efficient, comfortable, and beautiful earthen home. This is a unique opportunity to learn directly from one of Crestone's best, don't miss it!

Paul Koppana of SkyHawk Construction

Paul Koppana with daughter Sage

Paul Koppana is a professional straw bale construction contractor in Crestone, CO. He has been in residential construction as a general contractor for 20 years and for the last 11 years has been building strawbale homes and spiritual retreat centers in Crestone. He is an internationally-recognized strawbale builder and a past member of Builders Without Borders. He has assisted with a straw bale community center in Anapra, Mexico and helped run 2 straw bale workshops in south central Siberia in 2005 and 2008. SkyHawk Construction homes have been published in ‘The New Strawbale Home’ by Catherine Wanek and ‘Small Strawbale’ by Bill and Athena Steen. Paul has a BS in Engineering Colorado School of Mines,1986.

Earthen Plasters

This workshop will be part two of the straw bale construction workshop where we will plaster the newly constructed straw bale wall. There will be plenty of direct one on one with the instructor to get enough practice to learn the techniques and skills to efficiently and effectively encase a straw bale wall in protective plaster. We will do an earthen adobe plaster on the exterior and a lime plaster on the interior. Students will learn about the benefits of Natural Plasters on Strawbale/Adobe/ Cob Houses vs. more traditional stucco’s (ie cementitious and synthetic stuccos). We will discuss the variety of Natural plasters and their pros and cons, ie. Earthen Plasters, lime plasters, gypsum plasters, tadelakt. The importance of Vapor permeability in wall systems for healthy living environments will be stressed. Other topics will include bale prep, mixes and recipes, multi-coat techniques, material transitions, bull noses, cob, metal lathe, J-channels, finish details, alizes, frescoes, pigments, polishing, and much more. This course offers the fundamentals of what makes a straw bale house last a long time.

Anikke Storm of Stormworks Construction

Anikke Storm has worked in construction for 18 years. In 1997 she met Ianto Evans and Linda Smiley from the Cob Cottage Company and the rest is history. “Once I discovered what we can do with the Earth, I was hooked!” Anikke worked on Cob houses and got into Natural Plasters and Earthen Floors. When she moved to Crestone, there was an abundant amount of strawbale homes that needed plasters, thus she and her husband Steve started Stormworks, a small company offering Natural Interior and Exterior finishes, Earthen floors, Masonry, Timberframing, Cabinets and Natural Building. Over the years she has worked all over the state, bringing beautiful finishes to strawbale homes and consulting and teaching home owner/builders in this process. “Mud is my passion. I believe in its simplicity and versatility.”

Solar Hot Water

This course in solar hot water (SHW) is suited for the homeowner, contractor, and/or person just interested in renewable energy. There will be plenty of overview of the different types of SHW systems and the different applications where each is appropriate. Discussions of the array components that make up SHW systems will be complemented by the actual hardware in the classroom, and we will take some field trips to go look at several systems in operation. Students will get a chance to solder copper pipe and help put together a pump station. Anyone can do solar electric, come learn how to do SHW!

Talmath Lakai, New Gen Energy

Talmath Lakai has been professionally installing renewable energy systems in the San Luis Valley for over 13 years. Not only does he specialize in efficient SHW systems, but he does complete hydronic heating systems with with boiler back-up for commercial and residential clients. He has also built numerous custom, alternative homes as a contractor and has provided consulting work for designing passive solar high-efficiency homes. He has also traveled from Carbondale to Santa Fe installing his high-quality trademark adobe floors. He and his family happily live off-grid with their chickens and ducks, and he enjoys gardening, making beer, and teaching his sons how to cut copper pipe.

Permaculture
& Sustainable Design

Permaculture is a dynamic design system for the earth and the human communities that live upon it. This workshop will cover the fundamental concepts, principles, and methodologies of Permaculture, with lots of examples and demonstrations of Permaculture in practice at Living Arts Institute, in nature, and around the Crestone community. We will discuss plant and animal systems, human systems (invisible and visible structures), all of the other kingdoms (bacteria, fungi, algae, archaea), and the strategic relationships between all of the above. This class is well suited to homesteaders, gardeners, business people, or anyone interested in a balanced sustainable future. For people new to Permaculture, this class will provide a solid foundation for further study. For people already familiar to Permaculture, this class will provide plenty of demonstrative examples and lots of experience in a high alpine desert valley to augment their practice of the Principles.

Nicholas Chambers of Living Arts Systems

Nicholas Chambers has been practicing Permaculture since his certification under Scott Pittman in 2001. Nicholas lived in a tipi with his family for ten years where life was close to the elements and seasonal migrations took them from Missoula, Montana to Crestone, CO. He and his partner managed the Atalanta Community Garden CSA near Crestone during the major drought of 2002. They then interned on a 160 acre Biodynamic farm in British Columbia where he established them with a biodiesel processor, farmed with horses, studied Biodynamics under Carl Jung's nephew, George Baumen, and helped with the 60 share CSA. In 2005, the Chambers founded Chokecherry Farm which has grown up into Living Arts Institute. Everyday at the Institute is filled with alternative building, systems design, homesteading, gardening, animal husbandry, and overall building a Permacultural small farm for the 21st Century. Nicholas has learned a lot through many years of bottom-up development and is eager to share these lessons with people for their benefit.

Top Bar Beekeeping:
Bees & Humans

Top bar bee hives are the simple approach to keeping bees for enhanced pollination, bee gaurdianship, and access to bee products including wax, honey, and propolis. This course will orientate you towards setting up your own hive (hives will be available for purchase) considering the major considerations of siting, bear protection, feeding, queen and brood assessment, starting a nuc, etc. Discussions will be complemented with looking at several live colonies and bee yards around the Crestone area.

Benjamin Byer, Elephant Cloud Teas, Bees and Knees

Benjamin has been interested and working with ecological design since 1999, when he saw that conventional design was not helping humans, nature, or the whole of the earth. He studied eco-design at Prescott College, Cob Cottage and Eco-design Institute, as well as on his own. In 2001 he bought 16 acres of off-grid land and started building a cob-strawbale hybrid home with mostly bare-hands and feet, very little money, and a lot of determination. In 2007, Benjamin started his bee guardianship working with a company called Backyard Hive and Bee Guardians out of Eldorado Springs, CO. Working with Bees aligns perfectly with the study of ecological design, and Benjamin has been working on creating a local infrastructure that supports bees in the Northern San Luis Valley. Benjamin believes that over the last eighty years humans have taken an extremely selfish view in the raising of bees, by emphasizing honey production, artificial queen raring, low-quality feeding practices and many other hurtful habits. Benjamin emphasizes and practices an approach to bee guardianship that allows bees to live as close to the way they would in nature. By providing protection, and subtle support to the bees, humans can live harmoniously with them, and we can continue and extend our 200,000 years of symbiosis with one of our closest allies.

Timberframing

This coarse will provide a historical and contemporary overview of traditional mortise and tenon timber framing. Through class discussions and hands on experience, students will learn how to design, cut and raise their own timber frame by cutting and raising a small timber framed barn at Living Arts Institute in Crestone CO. Emphasis will be placed on hand tools, their use and their maintenance, along with modern, time-saving timber framing tools and techniques. The class will lay out and cut joinery for a complete frame, assemble and raise the frame on the last day. Not only will this course empower the student with timberframing techniques and experience, the experienced carpenter, general builder, or artist will find a new eye and taste for detail. At the end of the course students will be able to:

            · Use and maintain traditional timber framing hand tools

            · Use and maintain modern timber framing tools

            · Be familiar with historical and contemporary timber framing design and layout techniques

            · Lay out and cut mortise and tenon, through tenons, shouldered and housed mortise and tenons, free                 tenons, and scarf joinery

            · Assemble and raise a small timber frame

Travis Rosenkoetter

Travis Rosenkoetter is a carpenter who was born in Georgia and was raised in Athens, Greece and Jakarta, Indonesia, where he developed a deep appreciation of things made by hand. After a number of years in construction, his love affair with timber frames began with taking apart an 19th century timber framed barn in the Bitterroot Valley in Montana in 2000. After an apprenticeship with a timber framer in Northwest Montana and attending a Timber Framing School in Northern Minnesota he began his business building timber framed homes and additions. He expanded his business to include building custom fine furniture in his shop in Northern Montana after attending the College of the Redwoods Fine Furniture School. He maintains a woodshop doing custom furniture, timber frames, and finish carpentry.

Living Arts Institute 2011 Timberframing Workshop

September 12th-16th, lunch included, camping available $15/night with facilities and common kitchen.

325.00

Food Preservation I:
Fruits and Vegetables

This class will offer hands-on experience with canning fruits and
vegetables. Demystifying the techniques passed down for generations, we
will explore and demonstrate stove top preservation, pressure canning,
and fermentation, as well as engage in a discussion covering other
methods such as dehydration, sandbox storage and freezing. We will also
cover the basic tools and safety awareness needed for canning and
pressure canning. Students will leave with the:
*ability to choose the best method and recipe for canning a particular
fruit or vegetable.
*hands-on experience of canning, pressure canning, and fermentation
*knowledge of the basic tools and safety needed for canning and pressure
canning
*knowledge of techniques used for contemporary, old world and passive
food preservation
*resources for acquiring the needed supplies, materials, and recipes to
can at home.

Food Preservation II: Meats

Animals are an extremely valuable resource on the homestead and small farm. They provide us with so much, and when their time has come there is no better way to honor them than by knowing how to handle and prepare them for the table. In the case of wild game, or even pinon-nut raised turkeys, there is no other food source that is as vital, organic, and wild. This class will teach how to dress and process poultry such as chickens and turkeys, as well as deer and elk. We will discuss different cuts of meat for: roasts, burger, prime cuts, etc. as well as basic tutorial demonstrations into skinning, gutting, hide tanning, and other traditional uses of the "whole critter.". We will discuss and demonstrate the options for meat preservation including freezing, canning, and drying.