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Nov 01
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Berea

By About

Berea, KY,
Where Art is Alive!

Places to Stay:

 

Berea College’s Boone Tavern Hotel

              (800) 366-9358

Cynthia and Doug’s Air BnB

             View listing here.

Holiday Inn Express Berea

              (859) 985-5500

Comfort Inn & Suites

              (859) 985-8191

Quality Inn

              (859) 986-9627

Homegrown Hideaways  

             (859) 986-3478

The lodging options listed above offer a small discount for students in classes at Pine Croft so make sure to let them know if you are in town for a class!

For more lodging options visit the Berea Tourism website.

Places to Eat:

Apollo Pizza

(859) 756-6036

Berea College Farm Store

(859) 985-3685

Dona Maria’s Tamales

(859) 868-1003

Historic Boone Tavern

(859) 985-3700

Honeysuckle Dining & Bourbon House

(859) 625-2438

Native Bagel / Nightjar

(859) 756-6185

These are some of our favorite places to grab a bite in town! There is a more extensive list of dining option on the Berea Tourism website.

 

Oct 11
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Katie Bister

By About

Katie Bister

Manager of Pine Croft

I moved to Berea, KY in 2019 for my first year as a student at Berea College. Prior to this I was in Kijabe, Kenya where I attended Rift Valley Academy for Middle and High School. This is where I had my first experience with woodworking. We had to take a woodshop class my 7th grade year and the teacher was unkind and discouraging which lead me to have a negative impression of the craft. I figured it didn’t matter because I wasn’t planning on being a woodworker and would probably never set foot in another woodshop. At least that was the plan until I was assigned to the Woodcraft Department of the Student Craft Program at Berea College for my labor position. I had quite a bit of anxiety entering a woodshop again but was immediately struck with the compassionate and welcoming attitude of the staff at Student Craft. By the end of my first year I realized that I was really drawn to working with my hands and loved the contrast that it provided to the time spent in the classroom. During my four years at Berea College I spent all of them working in the Woodcraft department as well as exploring the other craft departments at Student Crafts. I took classes in Fibers and Ceramics and ventured to the Broomshop to learn to make hand brooms. Each year I spent more and more time in the studio and soon all of the work I was doing in my classes was also relating to craft. In the Summer of 2022, I received a scholarship from the Chairmaker’s Toolbox to take a Stick Chair class at the Lost Art Press. This was my introduction to the world of chairmaking and in the next year I made over 15 different chairs as prototypes for a rocking chair design that we were designing for Student Crafts. This was during my Senior year at Berea College while I was also trying to figure out what came next for me as I was about to graduate. I looked into craft schools and applied for fellowships but after some closed doors I was made aware of the Pine Croft Manager position. I have developed such a love for the town of Berea and the community of Craftspeople here and look forward to continuing my time here! I am excited to continue to welcome students to Pine Croft and support them in their learning here as we work to build an inclusive craft community!

Oct 11
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Rob Spiece

By About

Rob Spiece

Director of Pine Croft, Director of Woodcraft

I moved to Berea in the December of 2021 to join Berea College Student Craft – an amazingly talented group of studio craft professionals and students all working toward an inspiring and empowering mission.

I started my woodworking career as an apprentice to a studio furniture maker back in 2006.  After spending a few years learning and exploring, I began making work professionally in 2009.  At the same time, I found teaching to be a foundational part of my work.  Between 2009 and 2021, I made custom commissioned furniture of all types for clients across the country.  You can find my work in the pages of Fine Woodworking, Woodcraft Magazine, and Furniture & Cabinetmaking.

In 2023 I was hired as the Director of Pine Croft.  It’s my goal to continue to the excellent tradition my predecessors have set forth.  Pine Croft is a special place and those of you that have been here understand it.  For those that haven’t been here, I hope you can make it one day.  I’ll continue to offer classes that push your skills to a new place – in an environment that is friendly, challenging, and supportive.

Sep 21
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The Woodworking School at Pine Croft

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The Woodworking School at Pine Croft

A Continuation of the Kelly Mehler School of Woodworking

 

In 1977 Kelly Mehler began his career as a professional woodworker and opened his first shop here in Berea in 1978.  In the decades that followed both Kelly and Teri have been essential members and leaders within the craft community of Berea and have openly shared their kind, generous energy with woodworkers around the country.
In 2007 Kelly and Teri opened the Kelly Mehler School of Woodworking next to their home alongside Berea College’s forest and set an incredible standard of excellence for education and hospitality.  The amazing instructors Kelly and Teri brought to the school attracted students from all over the country, but we believe that more than anything it was Kelly and Teri themselves that made the school such a success. Their kindness, caring, knowledge, and generosity brought students back time and again, and helped foster a wonderful community.
The Mehler’s involvement has been invaluable to Berea College as we have worked to reopen the school, and we will continue to strive towards the legacy that Kelly and Teri achieved.  It was a great honor to have Kelly teaching the first class at Pine Croft in July of 2019, and we are so grateful to have him on the schedule for 2020.
Berea College re-opened the former Kelly Mehler School of Woodworking in 2019 under the leadership of Andy Glenn.  Since then, we have worked to preserve the fundamental character the school has been known for – inviting world renowned instructors from wide and diverse backgrounds to lead our classes in making and learning.  Rob Spiece, the new director of Pine Croft, continues the mission that Kelly and Andy started.  The Woodworking School at Pine Croft further supports Berea College’s 120-year commitment to the preservation and promotion of craft.
Our Mission
While in some ways woodworking is an individual pursuit, there are common traits that connect across makers: a desire to expand our skills, furnish our homes, surround ourselves with the handmade, and join a community of dedicated craftspeople. We believe that craft can both preserve traditions and beauty – and that craft can act as a counterbalance to a disposable and consumer-reliant world. Making is essential to us. We are excited to share a place where students can grow in their skills and fulfill their creative pursuits. Providing opportunities to work with leading instructors who come from diverse backgrounds and have different woodworking perspectives. All are welcome to attend.
Dec 01
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Registration

By About
Azariah at the lathe part 2

Registration:

  • Full Payment is due during registration.  We request students register online through Eventbrite.   Eventbrite has fees that are charged at the time of registration. These fees are included in the listed class price:

A Service Fee – 3.70% of class price +$1.79 per ticket

A Processing Fee – 2.90% of class price

Withdrawals and Refunds:

  • Students withdrawing more than 30 days before the start of a workshop will be refunded the full amount minus the charge of the Eventbrite Fees.  Between 30-15 days, students will be refunded 50% the cost of the class.  No refund will be given when the withdrawal occurs within 15 days of the class.
  • Contact Rob Spiece at spiecer@berea.edu should a situation arise that requires a withdrawal or transfer to a different workshop.

Questions?

Email Rob Spiece at spiecer@berea.edu or Katie Bister at bisterk1@berea.edu

Nov 30
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Instructors

By About

Rob Spiece

Director of Pine Croft

Now the Head of Woodcraft at Berea College, Rob has been a studio furniture maker and teacher for the past 15 years. After moving from Pennsylvania to Kentucky, he now enjoys a creekside home where he spends most mornings and evenings enjoying the sounds of running water while trying to catch a glimpse of the beavers that make their home in its banks. Rob’s furniture has been wide and varied, but unique domestic materials and traditional joinery have always been at the heart of it. You can find him published in Woodcraft Magazine, Fine Woodworking and Furniture & Cabinetmaking. In 2020, he was awarded the Wharton Esherick Prize for Excellence in Wood at the Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show.

Katie Bister

Manager of Pine Croft

Katie Bister joined the Pine Croft team as a recent graduate of Berea College and the Student Crafts Woodcraft program in the summer of 2023. As a student she designed the People Collection Active Rocker which is available for purchase through the Log House Craft Gallery store. Although she focuses on woodworking, she enjoys incorporating other materials into her designs. During her time as a student, she fell in love with teaching and introducing woodworking to others and strives to make it an accessible and approachable craft.

Lisa Kriner

Professor of Art at Berea College

Lisa L. Kriner is a Professor of Studio Art at Berea College in Kentucky. She earned her BS in Textile Technology at North Carolina State University and her MFA in Fibers at The University of Kansas. Kriner teaches all levels of Fibers and Printmaking at Berea and is excited to help students use these processes to develop their own artistic voice. Kriner’s own studio practice and art visually explores the formation of identity through tensions between being rooted in community and the desire for personal movement and freedom.

Emerson Croft

Weaving Manager at Student Craft

Emerson Croft, originally from North Carolina, joined Student Craft as staff after graduating from Berea with a B.A. in Biology. As a student working in the weaving studio they designed the Elements blankets, an explicitly non-gendered line of baby blankets inspired by their nonbinary identity and connection to nature. Their personal work uses several media, including music, fibers, and writing, to explore the connections between social sciences, life sciences, and art.

Hunter Elliott

Hunter Elliott is a broom maker, woodworker, and sculptor living and working in Berea,
KY.

Kimberly Winkle

A native of Oklahoma, Kimberly Winkle is a maker who creates furniture and objects using wood and paint; her work displays a balance of form, color and surface pattern. Winkle is a Professor and Director of the School of Art, Craft & Design at Tennessee Technological University. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Art in Ceramics from the University of Oklahoma and a Master of Fine Art in Furniture Design from San Diego State University.

Erin R Miller

Director of Weaving

Erin R Miller’s work explores the intimacy and fragility of the human relationship with cloth though a variety of textile and printmaking techniques. Her work is informed by social inequity, consumer culture, and queer identities. She received her MFA in Fibers from Eastern Michigan University in and her BFA in Textiles from Kent State University. While pursuing her education she operated a small garment design business focused on reclaimed and sustainable material. Her work has been exhibited internationally and her designs are in private collections throughout North America and the UK. Her most recent work focuses on comfort and coping through the cultivation of natural dye producing plants and quilting.

Jennifer Zurick

Jennifer Zurick is a self-taught artist specializing in black willow bark which she has been harvesting and weaving into baskets since 1973. She is the recipient of a United States Artists Fellowship and two Kentucky Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowships. Zurick has traveled to Ecuador and Japan as a cultural exchange artist and was honored with a Kentucky 2017 Governor's Award in the Arts. Her work resides in a number of museum collections, including the Renwick Gallery at the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, and has won prizes and awards at national shows and exhibitions. She has exhibited her baskets internationally and created special commissions for Spanish firm Loewe (2019 Salone del Mobile, Milano) and Irthi Contemporary Craft Council in Sharjah, UAE (2019 London Design Fair). Jennifer lives and works in the Appalachian foothills near Berea, KY.

Amanda Lee Lazorchack

Director of Broomcraft

Amanda Lee Lazorchack of Please Send Word is a broom maker who is delighted by
traditional craft and botanical dyes. She creates unique sculptural home goods that
speak to the relationship between art, utility and the nature of domesticity. You can find
her work or strike up a conversation at pleasesendword.com.

Micah Wiles

Micah Wiles is a farmer and craftsperson living in Kentucky in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains. He has been weaving baskets for over twelve years with a focus on traditional white oak basket making during the past seven years. His practice of craft is place based and involves a connection with the land, utilizing local materials found in the landscape around him. He has studied the traditional baskets of Kentucky and Tennessee and has travelled internationally learning from basket makers in Romania, Ireland, England and Japan. Passing on knowledge and keeping traditional skills alive is important to Micah and he teaches a variety of classes on his farm as well as at craft schools throughout the region.

Matt Monaco

Andy Glenn

Andy builds custom furniture and chairs from his Waldoboro, Maine shop. An ideal day in the shop involves the shave horse, fresh oak, and a sharp drawknife. Andy worked at Berea College in Woodcraft and at Pine Croft from 2017-21. His first book, Backwoods Chairmakers about ladderback chairmaking within Appalachia, was released in early 2024 (publisher Lost Art Press).

Christopher Schwarz

Christopher Schwarz is a furniture maker and writer who works from an 1890s barroom in Covington, Kentucky. He is a founder of Lost Art Press and Crucible Tools and is the author of 14 woodworking books, including “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” and “Build a Chair from Bulls%$t.” Since 2003, Chris has focused on building stick chairs, a vernacular furniture form found in many Western cultures.

Megan Fitzpatrick

Megan Fitzpatrick is editor at Lost Art Press in Covington, Ky. Her work has also appeared in Fine Woodworking, Mortise & Tenon and Popular Woodworking (of which she is a former editor).

She’s been teaching hand-tool woodworking classes around the U.S. and abroad for more than a decade, but can most often be found cutting dovetails in cherry, working alongside Christopher Schwarz in the Lost Art Press shop in Covington.

Megan lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, with her cats, Olivia and Toby, who enjoy hanging out in the basement shop while Megan works on restoring a circa-1905 American foursquare. Very slowly. Though her formal education is in English literature with a concentration on early modern drama, she promises to keep the Shakespeare references to a minimum.

Danielle Rose Byrd

Working primarily in wood, Danielle blends traditional and modern methods with ample experimentation and a wide range of tools to make gradients of sculptural and functional objects.
She graduated in 2005 from College of the Atlantic, where she explored music and sound sculpture. While building her senior project, a handmade fiddle-ish instrument constructed from burn pile wood found on campus, she carved her first spoon.
For the following 15 years she worked in restaurants, gardened, managed a sled dog kennel and paid off student loans, all the while carrying around a cardboard box full of random woodworking tools, knowing they were important, but uncertain of where they fit in.
After years of trial and error learning about the craft, she now works as a full time carver and sculptor out of her studio in Bar Harbor, Maine.

Beth Ireland

Beth Ireland earned an Art Education degree as well as a masters degree in Sculpture and has over 40 years of woodworking experience. With articles published in Fine Woodworking and American Turner and work that has been exhibited all over the country, she is well known and loved. Although Ireland specializes in Woodturning, she is also an experienced stringed instrument Artist making incredible one-of-a-kind musical masterpieces. Her studio in Saint Petersburg, Florida is set up for architectural and Artistic woodturning allowing her to create work that exists in the intersection of Art and Craft.

Robell Awake

Robell is a furniture maker, teacher, and researcher based in Atlanta, Georgia. His work aims to disrupt the normalization of whiteness in craft and the decorative arts through writing and object making that centers the histories and traditions of Black craftspeople. He has taught woodworking at The Center for Furniture Craftsmanship, Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, and Mass Collective (a community makerspace in Atlanta).

Kelly Harris

Kelly Harris is a studio furniture maker and educator. Located in Brooklyn, NY, she builds custom furniture, useful homegoods, and a Tenon Cutter Hand Tool for windsor chair making.
She is a graduate of the North Bennet Street School Cabinet and Furniture Making program, where she studied period furniture. Additionally, holding a BA in political science and gender studies, she ties in her decades long experience of working in the trades and the service industry, with her specialized study of both period furniture and critical thought.
She has taught woodworking classes nationwide at craft and trade schools including: North Bennet St School, Makeville, Fireweed Woodshop, A Workshop of Our Own (WOO) and has assisted classes at Lie-Nielsen and Penland School of Craft. She serves on both the Facilities Committee and the Education Committee at WOO. She received a Critical Craft Studies Fellowship from Winterthur Museum, Penland School of Craft Assistantships, the Future Craftsmen Scholarship from Oneida Air Systems, and the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts Summer Conference Scholarship. Her work has been exhibited at craft and furniture shows in the U.S and has been published in Wood Review Australia.
Kelly’s work is rooted in solid joinery and functionality, while reserving the space for a playful and nuanced design aesthetic that is both elegant and bold.

Dawson Moore

Dawson Moore lives and works on a sixth generation family farm in Harbor Springs, MI. After reestablishing roots at the farm in 2014, spoon carving became a full time obsession as he gained access to the native trees growing in the local forests. He spent the next several years harvesting his own wood, working it fresh from the log, and learning to use traditional hand tools and techniques to make a variety of spoons and other household items. More recently, he is focusing on designing and building stools and chairs. Even as he incorporates more modern working methods, he still feels a deep connection to the knowledge gained working directly from the woods with hand tools. Every chair still starts with a fresh log and an axe.

Larissa Huff

Larissa Huff is a self-employed furniture maker in Philadelphia, PA. From 2012-2021 she was part-owner of Lohr Woodworking, in Limerick, PA, where she designed and built furniture and taught classes. In recent years, Larissa has exhibited at the American Craft Show in Baltimore, the Philadelphia Furniture Show, the Philadelphia Museum of Art Contemporary Craft Show, and Philadelphia’s Center for Art in Wood. She was profiled in the May 2021 issue of Furniture & Cabinetmaking, and has written articles for Fine Woodworking and Woodcraft Magazine. In 2022, she was awarded a residency at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, in Gatlinburg, TN and a fellowship at the Center for Furniture Craftmanship, in Rockport, ME. Larissa’s website is larissahuff.com.

Will Myers

Will is a native of north western North Carolina. Woodworking in some way shape or form has been a lifelong hobby for him. Will is mostly a hand tool woodworker but does use the powered stuff for material prep and rough dimensioning of stock.
Measuring and documenting vintage furniture, then attempting to figure out the processes past makers used to build it is one of his favorite aspects of the craft. Then using the information and lesson learned from the old pieces to build new furniture.
Will teaches at several woodworking schools in the eastern US.

Erik Curtis

Erik Curtis is an American woodworker, sculptor, and television personality. He attended the nine-month comprehensive at the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship in 2012 and has taught at schools around the country. His creative practice combines the sculptural with the functional - in an attempt to blur the line between furniture and art. He also stars as the carpenter on Netflix’s Instant Dream Home.

Joshua Wetherington

Joshua Wetherington is a multidisciplinary artist, designer and craftsperson who lives and works in Central Kentucky. Originally from the deserts of Southern California, he finds Kentucky’s lush biodiversity a major source of inspiration. Joshua’s only formal woodworking training was a high school shop class that taught him the fundamentals of machine powered woodworking. This sparked an interest that has lived with him, and has only grown throughout the 20 years since he took that class. Joshua currently enjoys both machine powered and hand tool woodworking with an emphasis in manual wood carving. Most recently, he has ventured away from a more “traditional woodworking” path in an attempt to blur the line between art and craft.

Katie Hudnall

Katie Hudnall received her BFA in Sculpture from the Corcoran College of Art & Design and her MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in Furniture Design/Woodworking.

Her work has been included in many publications and exhibitions including Crafting A Continuum: Rethinking Contemporary Craft, Making A Seat at the Table: Women Transform Woodworking, and in American Craft Magazine’s February/March 2017 issue.

Hudnall lives in Madison, Wisconsin, where she runs the Woodworking and Furniture Program at the University of Madison, Wisconsin. When she’s not teaching she spends her time making tools for problems both real and imagined.

Aspen Golann

Aspen Golann is an artist & furniture maker blending early American furniture forms with sculpture and social practice.
Her artwork is exhibited nationally and is published in American Craft, Fine Woodworking Magazine, Architectural Digest, Popular Woodworking, Luxe Magazine, Lost Art Press Blog, American Period Furniture, and others. She serves on the board of A Workshop of Our Own and as an ambassador to the Board of Fine Woodworking Magazine. She has received support for her work from The Windgate Foundation, Winterthur Museum, Anderson Ranch Arts Center, The Center for Furniture Craftsmanship and others and is the recipient of the 2020 Mineck Furniture Fellowship from The Society of Arts & Crafts.

Aspen maintains an active teaching practice and in 2020, with the help of the SA+C, founded The Chairmaker’s Toolbox—a project that provides free tools, education, and mentorship for BIPOC, Gender Nonconforming and female toolmakers seeking to build sustainable businesses. In support of the project, she has partnered with Winterthur Museum, Fine Woodworking Magazine, A Workshop of Our Own, The Furniture Society and chairmakers around the country.

Aspen does domestic and international commission work for designers such as Beata Heuman in the UK, The Harvard Design Project in Boston, MA and Building Preservation Associates in Nantucket, MA.

Most recently, Aspen has received a Windgate residency in the wood/furniture design program at San Diego State University and a Critical Craft Fellowship at Winterthur Museum to explore the physical and social history of the Windsor chair.

Charlie Ryland

Charlie Ryland is a chair maker, teacher, and researcher interested in working with pre-industrial tools, techniques, and styles to unpack their stories and adapt their forms to the modern context. First introduced to the trade in his father's cabinet shop in rural Idaho, and later trained in the North Bennet Street School's Fine Furniture and Cabinet program, his work is motivated by an interest in the overlap between class and craft consciousness, their respective roles in the systems of knowledge creation and dispersal, and the ways in which both can be used to build and shape community through the generation of history, meaning, and solidarity.

Kelly Mehler

Kelly Mehler’s professional woodworking career spans four decades of creating fine furniture as a business owner, teaching and speaking to woodworking enthusiasts at trade shows, guilds, and to classes at all skill levels and interests. Kelly built and headed the Kelly Mehler School of Woodworking (now called Pinecroft) for many years before retiring to a less scheduled lifestyle!

Kelly’s work is characterized by the use of classic designs that emphasize the inherent beauty of natural grain patterns and colors of hardwoods. Kelly’s trademark furniture pieces often feature strikingly figured and matched wood that has been carefully air dried and sawed from a single tree. Kelly’s teaching reflects his emphasis on the appreciation of the beauty of wood.

Kelly is the author of The Tablesaw Book (1992/2002, Taunton Press). He is featured in two Fine Woodworking video/DVDs: Build a Shaker Table With Kelly Mehler, and Mastering Your Tablesaw. Kelly has contributed numerous articles to Fine Woodworking magazine, Woodworkers Journal, Popular Woodworking, Woodworker West, American Woodworker, Time/Life woodworking book series, and in other woodworking publications.

B. Terry Ratliff

Terry has held tight to the traditional ways of chair making passed down by our Appalachian ancestors. As a child, his father and uncles guided him though the woods to learn the best use of each type of tree in these hills.

From the hand crafted log home he raised his children in, to the high chairs where they sat. On to the wooden horses they rocked upon and the hand woven baskets they collected their eggs in. Terry is a true workhorse who raised his family by the world of woodworking and shared his knowledge for all to gather.

Keeping our roots strong by using his master craftsmanship and passing down his skills to his kids and grandkids; He has dedicated his life to working the grain of the trees pulled down by his own two hands.

May 05
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Giving

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Friends of Pine Croft.

Even before we were forced to cancel our first full season of classes due to COVID-19 we had received inquiries about how best to make donations to The Woodworking School at Pine Croft.

Our intentions for the school are two-fold:

1. To provide the best possible woodworking education.

2. To ensure that the long tradition of quality handcraft continues with future generations.

These two objectives can rub against each other uncomfortably sometimes. Young aspiring craftspeople often find the tuition for the highest quality classes to be out of reach as they are struggling to begin their careers, yet to accomplish both of our core objectives we need to find a way to bring them into the school.

You can help us achieve this goal by making a donation. We will apply 100% of the money raised to fund scholarships for those craftspeople, and aspiring craftspeople, who can’t afford our regular tuition.

Please contact Rob Spiece (spiecer@berea.edu) or Aaron Beale (bealeaa@berea.edu) if you are interested in making a donation!

As we move forward with this campaign we will keep you posted about how selections for these scholarships are made and would gladly accept any nominations for consideration that you feel comfortable offering.

Together we can ensure that the long legacy of craft and woodworking excellence continues for future generations.

~Aaron Beale

Sep 15
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The Mehlers

By About

In 1977 Kelly Mehler began his career as a professional woodworker and opened his first shop here in Berea in 1978.  In the decades that followed both Kelly and Teri have been essential members and leaders within the craft community of Berea and have openly shared their kind, generous energy with woodworkers around the country.

In 2007 Kelly and Teri opened the Kelly Mehler School of Woodworking next to their home alongside Berea College’s forest and set an incredible standard of excellence for education and hospitality.  The amazing instructors Kelly and Teri brought to the school attracted students from all over the country, but we believe that more than anything it was Kelly and Teri themselves that made the school such a success. Their kindness, caring, knowledge, and generosity brought students back time and again, and helped foster a wonderful community.

The Mehler’s involvement has been invaluable to Berea College as we have worked to reopen the school, and we will continue to strive towards the legacy that Kelly and Teri achieved.  It was a great honor to have Kelly teaching the first class at Pine Croft in July of 2019, and we are so grateful to have him on the schedule for 2020.