Faith in a Seed: a Clay Seed Pod workshop with Rosie Brand

Join AMOCA and the California Botanic Garden as we welcome multidisciplinary artist, educator, and certified California naturalist Rosie Brand for a two-day workshop exploring the intricate relationships between living seed architecture and their environments!

In this ceramics workshop, we’ll spend the first day at the California Botanic Garden touring their extensive native seed bank and observing their living collection of CA native plants. Afterward, we’ll do some sensory field journaling exercises in the Garden to shape personal narratives with the plants that surround us in our everyday lives.  California Botanic Garden is the largest botanic garden dedicated to California native plants: an 86 acre living museum dedicated to education, research, and conservation.

The next day, in the AMOCA Studio, students will share their botanical findings and explore the artist’s collection of locally foraged seed pods. We will continue our conversation around fostering habitats for our more-than-human neighbors, discussing human impact on the natural environment. As we imagine new possibilities for collaborations with the plant world around us, students will build their own tactile seed pod architectures through clay, using essential ceramic hand-building techniques to create both ephemeral and permanent sculptures: Clay Seed Pods.

Along with their seed sculptures, students will be able to make and take home clay seed balls embedded with native wildflower seeds to be gifted back to the land. 

This class is open to all levels of clay experience!