Join us for Samizdat Sundays—hands‑on textile workshops inspired by the spirit of creative resistance and DIY culture found in samizdat traditions. Each week offers a different project, connecting archival stories of subversion with contemporary making.
We encourage participants to bring an item each week—a T‑shirt, a pair of jeans, or any textile you’re ready to transform, repair, or experiment with.
Each session is free, open to all skill levels, and guided by artists who delight in subversion and play. Come for one or come for all—together we’ll stitch, alter, repair, and imagine new forms of expression.
Join us for Samizdat Sundays—hands‑on textile workshops inspired by the spirit of creative resistance and DIY culture found in samizdat traditions. Each week offers a different project, connecting archival stories of subversion with contemporary making.
August 30: Finish It Clinic.
Today, we will finish up projects. If you don’t have anything to finish, don’t despair! Come and I will give you a project from a past workshop to do during our time together.
September 6: Model Memory
In “The Sextant,” the exhibition in the main gallery of the museum, artist Enrique Martinez Celaya presents a handful of paintings and sculptures, including a scaled-down replica of the house his father built in the sugar-producing town in Cuba where Martinez-Celaya grew up. The slippery nature of memory and a deep sense of loss emanate from the work, some of which are quite literally covered in suffocating sugar, which seems to imply the weight that memories can carry. The installation touches on exile, dislocation, and the incongruities of memory and dream and our actual lived experience. This week, we will visit the exhibition together and then return to the classroom to make a model of a place from memory. This model can be a 3D sculpture, a collage, a 2D drawing, or a textile piece, or perhaps a combination. It can be of a whole place or a small detail; a window sill or a cathedral. What place will you recreate?
September 13: Navigating Our Way
Enrique Martinez-Celaya’s exhibition, “The Sextant,” is named for a tool for celestial navigation used in the faraway time before GPS and digital navigation. We often talk about ‘“navigating” tough situations, emotional ups and downs, life transitions, and, of course, in the literal sense of finding our way to a physical location using a map or landmarks. Today we will explore the idea of making a map. Perhaps your map will be a conceptual map, or perhaps it will be a map of the palm of your hand. Your map can be sewn into a pocket or drawn on a magazine cover. Where will you navigate to this week?
September 20: All That Jazz
Have you been so hooked by a song that you listened to it over and over again, perhaps to the point of exhaustion? The Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson, in his performance/video work “A Lot of Sorrow,” invited the band The National to perform their song “Sorrow” for over six hours, a sort of live-action version of what many of us have done in our living rooms and cars with cassette tapes and MP3 files. Many artists have been inspired by music and have made artwork in response to their favorite songs. In the Undercurrents show of 2023, the Wende exhibited artworks about jazz and jazz musicians by artists in the Soviet Bloc. Inspired by this work, we will make an artwork in response to music — a favorite song, perhaps, or favorite performance, album, musician, musical or opera. Or perhaps yours will be in relationship to a bird song, or a lyric, or a rumbling train. Your artwork can be on paper, or with textiles, or a patch to put on your favorite jean jacket.
September 27: From One to Many
Taking inspiration from Jan Sawka’s Invasion/Trees series, which was featured in the Undercurrents I show in 2023, we will tell a story through a series of three or more pieces that share the same elements but demonstrate a transformation. Sawka’s series began with a print of a tree in a landscape. Each piece in the series is based on this same image, yet each one is different, and a story is told through a growing red cloud or fog that seems to overtake the image as the pieces progress. We will not begin with prints, but can echo Sawka’s strategy by choosing an element (or two) that will appear in each of the pieces in our series. Perhaps your element will be a shape (circle, square, triangle, etc.) or a color (blue, purple, yellow, etc.), or a pattern or texture (textile works are welcome!). Begin with a shared element and see where the series/story takes you!
About the teaching artist
Kate Ingold is an LA-based artist and poet working with the discarded, the damaged, and the worn out. Materials and methods include textiles, collage, photography, video, ceramics, and performative installation. She works in series driven by conceptual concerns and is currently making work in two interwoven projects: Relics for Future Rituals and Damaged Goods/Small Repairs.
RSVPs for this free program do not guarantee admission. Limited seating is available on a first come, first served basis.
An ADA-accessible entrance to the Wende Museum Community Center is available through the garden gate from the parking lot. This gate will be opened approximately 15 minutes prior to the program.