About Shakerag
Shakerag Workshops is an opportunity for adults of all ages and skill levels to catalyze creativity through residential classes in a range of media. Workshops are taught by exceptional artists and craftspeople who are chosen for their superior teaching skills.
Our Inspiration: "We could do that!"
Those four words are the start of most bold endeavors. For Shakerag Workshops co-founders, high school art teachers, and artists Claire Reishman, Merissa Tobler, and Burki Gladstone, the inspiration was an early 2000s professional development opportunity. Inspired by the arts facilities and natural surroundings of their own 550-acre mountaintop campus, the three, joined by fellow art teachers Rachel Malde and Christi Teasley, designed a series of short term, residential adult arts workshops at St. Andrew’s-Sewanee School.
Our Development
Our Workshops
Explore classes in knitting, drawing, stitching, cyanotype, clay, printmaking, sculpture, painting, photography, mixed-media, writing, quiltmaking, animation, and book arts. While most of our workshops are offered as weeklong courses in June, Shakerag Workshops has expanded to offer residential workshops of various durations throughout the year.
Our Students
Each session, Shakerag Workshops gathers students and teachers from across the country and around the world. Participants’ skill levels range from true beginners just stepping into their creative lives to professional artists looking to gain new skills. During each Shakerag session a new community is created, and participants leave the mountain renewed and invigorated by their Shakerag experience.
Our Home
Shakerag Workshops takes place in Sewanee, Tennessee, high atop the beautifully forested Cumberland Plateau. Sewanee is consistently listed among the most beautiful college towns in America. It is home to the University of the South, the Sewanee Writers Conference, the Sewanee Summer Music Festival, the Sewanee School of Letters, St. Mary’s Sewanee, and St. Andrew’s-Sewanee School.
Our Life Together
Step away from the concerns of daily life to immerse yourself in a community that values creativity. During each workshop participants, faculty, and staff live, eat, and work together. In addition to small classes and studio immersion, you will enjoy delicious meals, artists’ talks, local hikes, swims, and relaxing yoga classes.
Shakerag strives to be a welcoming community
where a commitment to creativity and learning, a generosity of spirit, and a hunger for new experiences are the only prerequisites to inclusion.