Eliana Mentors
Eliana Blancas Mentors Wheel Throwing Porcelain

Our ARTISANSHIP programs are full immersion ‘Flagship’ offerings—with 3-Month or 9-Month Residency choices—adaptable to individual time, skill sets and aspirations. Our programs will serve those with limited as well as varied experience in a range of media, design and fabrication applications. This will provide unique opportunities to creatively explore traditional ceramic, wood and metal artisan-crafts blended with contemporary processes and digital technology. The opportunity to leverage our extensive tool and process capacity, in the regional beauty of coastal Maine, has potent potential.

Our programmatic focus is the design and artisan fabrication of usefully beautiful objects for daily use. Our point is to provide opportunities to  practice making the ordinary objects of everyday life—which we more typically purchase because they are expendable and cheap. This distinction is important because through our repeated and practiced daily actions “we become what we do”.

Over several decades, Maine Kiln Works has had numerous Resident Apprentices, all of whom enjoyed “not as expected” but productively challenging experiences. Unfortunately tenure was limited due to lack of funding or visa limitations. Sharing skills with these enthusiastic artisans has created the best memories of times past at the Kiln Works. We place high priority on establishing Partnerships which will expand our capacity to develop infrastructure to empower Artisan Residency programs.

Learn MORE: 3-Month | 9-Month

Residency Application

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  • Beginning with your most recent job, please explain briefly. Please provide more than one work experience.
  • List any skills or experience that you feel is related to Artisan Lab's programs.
  • Have letters of recommendation sent to: Artisan Lab Attn: Dan Weaver 115 South Gouldsboro Road, Gouldsboro, Maine 04607 OR Send via email to: dan@mainekilnworks.com
  • Please submit two letters of recommendation from employers, teachers, or other non-relatives who can speak to your character and your personal qualities. One letter should be from an employer or teacher and the other can be from a personal source. Please ask whomever is writing your letters to follow these instructions: (YOUR NAME) is applying for a Residency at Artisan Lab, a hands-on multi-media creative educational facility in Gouldsboro, Maine. He/She will be working in a richly creative environment with access to equipment and supplies in many medias, learning both traditional and modern processes. He/She will be heavily self-directed in his/her work, while also working alongside and learning from 1 or 2 other experienced craftspeople and occasionally working with groups of students. You have been asked to provide a reference speaking to the contributions this individual will make to Artisan Lab. If he/she is accepted, the reference will become a part of the individual’s file. In a word document or PDF please tell us: 1) How long and in what capacity have you known the applicant? 2) Describe the applicant's work ethic. 3) Do you think the applicant is truly interested in a residency at Artisan Lab? 4) Describe how the applicant interacts and communicates with others.