Maskmaking and Movement Workshop 

with Arulu and Isa

Where and When

August 8-10, 2025

Relay Flex Space in Santa Fe, NM

Masks have long served as ceremonially significant objects in many cultures across every continent for embodying and working with spirits and archetypal energies. Join us for an Immersive 3-day artmaking workshop co-facilitated by Isa and Arulu at Relay Santa Fe. In this multidisciplinary process, we will use maskmaking and movement to explore our personal mythologies and inner worlds. Isa will guide us through dance practices to access creativity and imagination to enliven the beings we will be depicting in our masks. Arulu will teach us how to design and construct our own paper mache masks in a fun and communal making space. We are excited to see you there! 

All artistic skill levels are welcome! 
Prior painting & sculpting experience helpful but not required.

 

Register HERE

What to Expect

Participants are encouraged to consider what they would like to make beforehand, but will also be given time to sketch and solidify a vision of the mask they will make over the course of the workshop. The process involves sculpting a clay mold, making a paper maché mask over the mold, and finishing with surface decoration.

Movement practices will include guided meditations, sensory-based dance improvisation, and collaborative and solo creation of masked dances.

In this workshop you will:

- Learn to create your own paper mache mask

- Explore dance and movement to access creativity

- Wear & embody your masks to be witnessed by one another & optionally photographed

We will provide:

- All basic materials (clay, paper, glue, paint, brushes, etc) 

You will need to bring:

- 3-4 brown paper grocery bags

- A bag lunch, water bottle, and snacks for each day of the workshop

*Participants are invited to bring any materials for inspiration: (consider objects from nature, shells, silk flowers, cloth, beads, etc, & if you have your own clay tools please bring them!)

 

 

Event Details:

Cost of workshop is $330 per person. Limited to 15 participants on a first come, first serve basis.

Once your payment is made, you are registered for the event.

 

Each Day

Arrive at 10:30am

Lunch from 2:00-3:00pm

Finish and head home at 6:00pm

 

If you have any questions, please email isa at isa.snakesandbones@gmail.com

Meet the Facilitators

About arulu

Arulu is a multimedia visual artist based in Black Mountain, North Carolina. She specializes in the sculpting of clay and paper-mache masks inspired by her elaborate dreams and the spiritual dimension of the natural world. Arulu’s interest in making masks originates in her study of the ancient ceremonial use of masks worldwide for healing, protection, and communication with spirits and ancestors. Her watercolor paintings and ink drawings expand upon the same mythos as her sculptures and masks, often illustrating an evolving pantheon of therianthropic and hybrid creature-beings. Making art in this way is Arulu’s way of tending to relationships with an intensely animate world, paying homage to its infinite incarnations, and courting their wisdom. She occasionally performs with her masks locally around Asheville, NC, hosts renegade art exhibitions, and teaches mask-making workshops several times a year.

Arulu has a BFA in Art & Design from the NYS College of Ceramics at Alfred University.

House of Arulu

About Isa

Isa finds herself continually jolted by the sensuous delight and searing urgency of being a body alive.  She considers sensations of aliveness experienced through dance to be politically and culturally potent. In tracing our vitality, we contend with death, decomposition, and regrowth. Through practices of imaginative embodiment, we can play at becoming something else, tipping into complex relations with places and beings beyond the human. 

Isa is currently based in Columbus, Ohio. She graduated from Alfred University in 2015 with a BFA in Visual Art and a minor in Dance and received her MFA in Dance from the Ohio State University in 2025. She performs and shows work regionally, nationally, and internationally.

Isa facilitates wokshops on dance and transdisciplinary practice for folks of all ages and backgrounds. For Isa, dance is a creative technology available to all bodies to enhance our connections to each other, ourselves and the natural world.