Intro to Birch-Bark Canoe Material and Processes

Date: Saturday, October 1 
Time: 9am - 2pm
Class Size: 8

Deadline for Registration: September 21st, 2022

Description:
In this 5-hour class, master birch-bark canoe builder, Ken Weeks, will introduce students to the traditional steps of processing natural materials for canoe construction. Starting with a brief history and introduction to the indigenous technology of birch-bark canoes, students will learn how to: 

-Hand-split cedar logs into blanks for ribs, thwarts, and gunwales
-Crooked-knife cedar blanks 
-Harvest birch bark 
-Make and apply pine pitch to make water-tight seals
-Process spruce root to make lashings

Students will get hands-on instruction from Weeks and his assistant, Bradley Pitts, while learning these fundamental skills for constructing a birch bark canoe. They will come away with new skills grounded in new relationships with the natural world and indigenous technology.

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General Registration: $220
Member Registration: $210
Household Menber Registration: $200

Artist Bios:
Ken Weeks, who has built an average of a traditional birch-bark canoe each year since 2000, builds canoes in the indigenous way, harvesting birch bark from the forest and lashing bark and frame together with spruce roots. He pursues all aspects of birch-bark canoe technology with anthropological reverence. Trekking the Northern woods he hand harvests and prepares materials to build these magnificent craft. Weeks has designed and is in the process of constructing a 42-foot ceremonial long-canoe, with a six-foot beam, in the Passamaquoddy style.

Bradley Pitts is a Brooklyn-based sculptor who spent childhood summers learning to canoe on the lakes and whitewater rivers of the Southeastern United States. He has completed several multiple-week canoeing expeditions down the Grand Canyon and other major rivers in the US, and in 2002 he tried out for the US Olympic Team in Whitewater Canoe Freestyle. Educated at MIT, the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten (NL), and Columbia University, Pitts’ artwork has been shown at the Jewish Museum (US), University of California in Riverside (US), the Netherlands Institute for Media Art (NL), and Kunsthalle Bern (CH), among other venues.

In 2021 Pitts had the opportunity to paddle one of Weeks’ canoes and the two have been working together ever since.

**Members must log into the museum website during registration to apply their discount. Please note membership must be current as of the date of the class. Call the museum at 845-338-0071 for questions about membership. 

Cancellation Policy: Full refunds will be offered for cancellations that occur 30 days or more before a program's registration deadline (if no deadline, the first day of the program). Cancellations between 30 and 7 days will be offered a 50% refund or credit toward another class. Cancellations after the registration deadline or within 7 days of the first day of class (whichever comes first) will not be refunded.