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Marking Memories: Reflecting on Loss with Squire AIR Joan Giroux
10:00 am - 4:00 pm
Clamshell box making workshop with Squire AIR Joan Giroux and Lisa Marie Kaftori
Throughout our lives we experience moments of loss, reflection, and critical
moments of change. In this workshop, you are invited to create a memory box to hold small objects, texts, and ephemera that harbor personal significance to you, your history, or your environment. Alongside the boxes, we will make small paper and clay items as memory objects to support the sharing of your thoughts, stories, and experiences. Participants will create images on sheets of paper that will in turn be used to cover and assemble a small hand-held clamshell box. Some elements of the clam shell boxes will be prepared in advance.
After assembling the memory boxes, we will discuss and explore ways handwritten text and assembled ephemera can capture elusive memories and introspection, creating small 4 x 6 single signature books and using 
air-dry clay to make imprints to be stored in the memory boxes. Each participant will leave the workshop with a small clamshell box, a single signature book, and clay object.
No experience is necessary.
Please bring any small objects, memorabilia, or photographs that can become part of your memory box.
Josh was born and raised in Santa Barbara, where his passion and curiosity for the environment began and has continued to grow. During his undergraduate studies, Josh pursued this interest at the University of California at Santa Cruz, receiving a Bachelor’s Degree in Environmental Studies.
Melissa Dodos developed her passion for creative reuse as a mother of four and elementary educator over the past 25 years. She loves to inspire creativity by connecting people with resources and ideas.
Veronica grew up in San Diego and spent four years in San Luis Obispo studying Animal Science at Cal Poly. As an undergrad she learned lots about livestock, agriculture, and wildlife.
Stephanie began her journey as an educator over twenty years ago working as a preschool teacher in Washington state for a cooperative preschool program affiliated with Whatcom Community College. She loved observing the wonder and curiosity of the children and bringing them out into nature to explore the natural world. She continued her love for learning and got her teaching license and then her Montessori certification and worked as an elementary teacher in Tribal, Public, and Montessori schools. She collaborated to create a school garden and her students loved it so much that it became a special place where they could garden, read, explore, play, and it provided a safe sanctuary for students to calm down and reset when they were having difficult moments.
Morgan’s mermaid soul is always seeking adventure—swimming a relay across the Santa Barbara Channel and taking the first photo of a newborn orca off Anacapa Island being standout experiences close to home.
Lindsay Johnson
