Those of us who were fortunate enough to have attended Lana’s workshop found ourselves in the presence of an artist who shared her skills and life philosophy with an atmosphere of warmth and delight. 

Frequently drawing on her Buddhist influences, Lana demonstrated her elaborate surface decoration techniques using a variety of methods. She will often impress patterns of repeating figures, such as open hands, faces, or abstract design using her handmade stamps.

Lana creates complex slab sculputes using paper clay slip.

Employing a technique where she takes small slabs of marked clay and throws them onto her mat, Lana stretches the patterns and creates a new effect.  Using varying combinations of these techniques, she constructs her pieces from stiff slabs. The pieces are then joined with a slurry made of paper clay. Very complex appearances were attained by stacking multiple images on a piece in a variety of patterns.

Throughout the 3 days workshop, while she constructed her pieces, Lana held the audience’s interest by demonstrating the use of a number of tools she uses in her surface decoration. Some of these included a lemon zester, brass mascara brush, tile cutter, and litho blanket. Lana also presented a number of techniques for creating textures on her handmade tiles, and shared a number of glaze and slip recipes.

Once the student’s pieces were in the final stages, she reassembled the group, and recapped the philosophy of the workshop. She offered several techniques for self assessment and improvement of work.

We spent the third day of the event in a hands-on environment, employing the techniques we had learned in the construction of our own pieces. Lana continued to encourage and cajole the participants, circulating among us offering assistance as needed.

The first day of the workshop was culminated with a barbeque at the Eagle Heart Ranch, hosted by Jim Romberg and Lynette Jennings. We were treated to a fine dinner of grilled chicken, bread, salads and wine by some very warm and gracious hosts. After supper, Mr. Romberg spoke to the group about many of the art pieces on display in their home. The evening was capped off with a slice of Lynette’s home made pie (berry or apple cinnamon) and a dollop of vanilla ice cream.

Ron Cloyd