Investing in our community
In addition to providing several scholarships and grants to help artists attend, Frogwood also sponsors Resource Artists who help with expanded leadership and educational roles during the event. These are the 2023 artists who will contribute in that capacity.
Joan Carrigan
Joan Carrigan is a full-time basket maker and basketry teacher living on Salt Spring Island, BC. Over the past 30 years, her passion for baskets has led her to study, travel, and explore many different techniques and materials. Joan has a love of both traditional techniques as well as for the sculptural and creative potential that the medium offers. Her inspiration comes from the plant materials she respectfully harvests from nature. Materials range from tree barks, rushes, roots, willow and soft fibres; all of which offer their own properties and creative potential.
Joan’s work has exhibited nationally and internationally. She has two project grants from the Canada Council of the Arts and is the recipient of two Handweavers Guild of America Awards. Joan teaches extensively both close to home and further afield and finds teaching to be a very rewarding aspect of her art practice.
Rose Covert
I am a multimedia artist who has switched mediums a few times in my career. I began as 2-D artist using mostly oil paints to create large canvas works which featured primarily humans, anatomy and animals. Painting with lots of color and imaginal backgrounds. I still work with pen and ink to create illustrative pieces mixing poetry and forms. I spent a number of years as a self taught ceramicist, hand building and sculpting creatures, beings and vessels. And now I work primarily with natural materials, using basketry techniques to create sculptural forms. I hand process my materials and have experience with a wide range of weaving techniques. I am a member and organizer with the Columbia Basin Basketry Guild and have learned and developed my skill primarily through their teaching as well as my own innovations. I am teacher who works with toddlers, teens and adults and a gallery artist. I work in multiple mediums and love what happens in collaboration.
Lisa Geertsen
Lisa Geertsen is an artist blacksmith from Seattle, WA. She has owned and operated Firelight Forge since 2007, operating solely on custom commissions ranging from architectural work to sculpture. In 2013 she accepted the position of Metal and Stone Sculpture Studio Manager at Pratt Fine Arts Center in addition to the classes she taught there regularly. This position allowed her to design and schedule the classes offered at Pratt in Stone Carving, Bronze Casting,Fabrication and Blacksmithing.
Lisa completed her BFA in sculpture from WVU in1997 and has worked as a blacksmith and a high-end fabricator for various businesses, including three years working with Master Blacksmith, Darryl Nelson. As an active member of the Northwest Blacksmith Association, she oversees the gallery portion of their conferences and teaches hands on workshops occasionally.
In addition to teaching regularly at Pratt Fine Arts Center for over ten years and currently holding the Intermediate Blacksmithing Teaching Assistant position at SIUC, Lisa has been a guest instructor at West Virginia University, University of Washington, Blue Hell Studios and for the Western Reserve Blacksmith Association. She has demonstrated for groups such as Southern Ohio Forge & Anvil, Western Reserve Artist Blacksmith Association, Florida Artist Blacksmith Association, and the Bonneville Forge Council. During the pandemic times she participated in virtual demonstrations for the Northwest Blacksmith Association and the Metals Museum in Memphis. She was honored to give a presentation for Society of North American Goldsmiths online conference about the Society of Inclusive Blacksmiths of which she is a founding and active member.
She is committed to building community through the art of blacksmithing, is a Founder and Governance Committee member for the Society of Inclusive Blacksmiths. By increasing the visibility of what a blacksmith can look like, her goal is to encourage diversity within the craft and community. She believes that by participating in regional demonstrations, holding workshops, and joining collaboration groups such as the Hawaii Artist Collaboration, EMMA Collaboration and Frogwood Artist Collaboration, she can reach a widespread community.
She has exhibited at local and national blacksmithing conferences as well as group exhibition in Colorado, Tennessee, Maryland, Florida, Oregon, Washington, Texas, Hawaii, and Europe. Her art encompasses many themes; nature, emotion, form, word play and the human experience. Geertsen curated a survey of contemporary ironwork, NW Anvil, for four years and completed the largest solo exhibit of her work in Olympia, Washington in 2018. This exhibit was comprised of 48 pieces from her hearts series.
In 2020, Geertsen was accepted into the Master of Fine Arts program at Southern Illinois University Carbondale for Metalsmithing and Blacksmithing. This university is the only one in the US, and one of three in the world, that offers a Master’s degree program in Blacksmithing. After completing her first year, she has decided to pursue her thesis work focusing on the everchanging meditative properties of clouds, weather and the stories and mythology humans use to connect to the natural environment. By bringing the practice of quieting the mind while surrounded by nature to the process of forging and forming metal, her goal is to convey this connection through her art.
Tai Lake
Tai Lake’s life has been design, woodworking, the arts, and forestry and family. Early experience in his family’s construction company, college at Buckminster Fuller’s design department and his own design/build contracting firm prepared him well for the transition to full time custom furniture making in 1991.
A Hawai’i resident since 1980, Tai found an ideal combination of lifestyle and local woods and a ready audience for his creations. Keeping up with the world of design meant travelling and participating in international expositions where he got to show his work with the best artists alive.
Tai has served as the president of the Hawai’i Wood Guild, the Donkey Mill Art Center, The Hawai’i Forest Industry Association, and is currently heading up the Hawai’i Artist Collaboration. Tai also hosts guest instructors at his studio for the benefit of the Hawai’i island craft community.
Tai's work has been featured in numerous publications and has received many awards for design and craftsmanship. He and his sons work together and still harvest much of the wood that goes into their creations.
Kristin Mitsu Shiga
Kristin Mitsu Shiga is a hapa artist and educator who splits her time between Oregon and the Big Island of Hawai’i.
Kristin began her education in the field of architecture, but after forays into art history and furniture-making, found her true calling in metalsmithing. Since then, her career has spanned various industries from nonprofit administration to stop-motion animation.
Coming from a long line of educators, Kristin values her role as teacher above all and has had the opportunity to teach metalsmithing and book arts at institutions around the world including Penland, Arrowmont and Haystack schools of craft. Additionally, she has built metals studios and established programs for adults and youth across North America, including three that continue to thrive in New York, Oregon and Hawai’i.
As a maker, Kristin pursues projects that tell a story and actively engage her audience, using whatever combination of materials and formats best serve the narrative. She is deeply inspired by her participation in artist collaboration events around the world, such as the EMMA International Collaboration in Canada, CollaboratioNZ in New Zealand, the Hawai’i Artist Collaboration and our very own Frogwood in Oregon.
Kristin’s work has been shown internationally and is included in several notable collections, including the Kamm Artful Teapot Collection and the Permanent Collection of the White House. You can find her published in numerous books and magazines, including Art Jewelry Today, The Art of Enameling, Metalsmith’s 2017 Exhibition in Print, and several of Lark’s 500 Series books. In 2010, she was featured with a segment on Oregon Public Broadcasting’s popular television show, Artbeat.
In 2017, Kristin opened ‘Okina Jewelry, a tiny teaching studio and jewelry gallery on the Big Island of Hawai’i. Learn more about Kristin and shop at www.okinajewelry.com or on Instagram @okina_jewelry.
Some of the criteria considered when selecting our Resource Artists:
1. Established artists who have shown a command of their medium(s), through portfolio, recommendation, personal experience with Frogwood Artists Collaborative members, references from other collabs.
2. Demonstrates positive and productive collaboration experiences with other artists; observations from personal experience with Frogwood Artists Collaborative members,references from other artist collabs.
3. Ability and desire to help others not only participate in collaboration but demonstrates and encourages new skills, design, and sharing of making knowledge with others.
4. Candidates from all cultural backgrounds.