Instructors
Robert Prince
Rob Prince is an Associate Professor in the Communication & Journalism Department teaching courses in video production and documentary film making. In 2014 he created Dark Winter Nights: True Stories from Alaska with the goal of sharing the real Alaska with the world. Since then the live show has drawn audiences of over 800 to Hering Auditorium and the podcast has over 1000 subscribers.
Leila Pyle
Leila Pyle is a local artist and outdoor educator. She teaches environmental education at Calypso Farm in the summers, and she is passionate about connecting people to nature and the place where they live. In her free time loves to experiment with a variety of different art mediums. These include drawing, painting, bookmaking, printmaking, and fiber arts like knitting and felting.
Nita Rae
I’m a musher and I love living in Fairbanks, Alaska. I’ve always enjoyed hand crafts of every type and anything done outdoors. Raised on a farm in NC, I learned early in life to make do with what was on hand – gardening and processing foods and taking care of farm animals.
Andy Reynolds
Andy is a lifelong boataholic and watersports junkie and has been self employed as a woodworker/builder for 4 decades.
Andy has been working with wood for 50+ years starting with a Soap Box Derby car and later a family project, Folbot kit, followed by Alaska cabin and outhouse construction, progressing through rough (and crude) carpentry, to finish carpentry and eventually cabinet making and custom joinery. Recently and most relevantly, more boatbuilding has provided ongoing challenge. He has been partly self-taught, mentored and inspired by many friends, family, and co-workers, as well as attending workshops by various well known artisans and craftsmen and women, and has attended the Woodenboat School in Brooklin, Maine. Andy has taught paddle making, canoe and kayak repair and paddle board building classes for TFS since 2013. In his spare time he likes to be on, or in, water, in all its many forms.
Jim Richardson
Jim is a retired general contractor. Most of the work he did was residential.
Natalie Schuldt
Natalie was born in Fairbanks and raised on her parents’ homestead in Salcha between the Piledriver Slough and the Tanana River. Childhood winters meant mushing and reading by gas lights, summers meant being outside more than in, and autumn meant berry picking until snow forced her inside. She has lived all over the country, including Dallas, New Orleans, and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Because the boreal forest is imprinted on her soul, she made her way back to Fairbanks and plans on staying forever. Since moving back to Alaska, she has recovered her childhood love of cross-country skiing, berry picking, and generally getting lost in the woods. She loves all things folksy and is passionate about learning how to make things by hand in the old ways. Natalie has an art degree from UAF and is a work-at-home printmaking artist and mother. She lives in Goldstream Valley with her husband Gabe and her two sons, Charlie and Ole.
Megan Schulze
Megan Schulze is the business owner and full time farmer behind Frontieress Farm. With sustainablity at heart, she strives to feed both body and soul with the growth of local produce while exploring and delving deep into the beautiful world of specialty cut flowers. She dedicates a portion of her field to being harvested and dried into material used for artistic, handmade crafts that endure well past the short Alaskan growing season. Visit http://www.frontieressfarm.com for more information.
Sönna Schuttner
Sönna is a knitting instructor, tech editor and knitwear designer. She has worked and taught at yarn shops in Fairbanks and Seattle and her classes are now offered virtually. You can learn more about Sönna by following her on Instagram, Ravelry and subscribing to her website at http://www.sundaughterknits.com.
Christie Shell
Christie is an avid knitter, fiber enthusiast and one of the farmers at Calypso Farm and Ecology Center. She has been teaching knitting and other fiber arts at Calypso for several years.
Mary Shields
Mary Shields has delighted in waking up out in the wild country, having traveled there with the help of her small but faithful team of huskies. Now at age 74 , Mary’s body has given up, but her Spirit stills yearns to be on the long, Spring trails. She shares some of the joys of those trails, nearly 50 years worth, in her six books and one PBS featured program, and in over 40 years sharing her “Tails of the Trail,” with visitors to Fairbanks. Perhaps a better title for this class would be Robert Service’s line from The Spell of the Yukon; “The Freshness, the Freedom, the Farness, oh God how I’m stuck on it all”.
Doug Sims
I have been working with clay since my early college years and continue to be fascinated by the limitless possibilities it presents to the artist, craftsperson or hobbyist. I continually seek to push my own limits with clay and enjoy sharing basic wheel throwing skills with curious students.
Frank Soos
In Memoriam
Frank Soos was the 2015 Alaska State Laureate Writer and instructed creative writing at the University of Alaska Fairbanks for nearly two decades. Frank was author of several books, including several Bamboo Fly Rod Suite (essays) and a book of essays from the University of Washington Press.
Brian Sprague
Brian Sprague is a lifelong woodworker and hand tool enthusiast. Brought up in rural Michigan, his occupations have ranged from white collar engineer to aircraft mechanic to fuels crew sawyer, and counting. He is particularly fond of tree work and began running a saw at the age of 12 (It was a Stihl.).
Marianne Stolz
Marianne was born and raised in Germany where she completed a wood carving apprenticeship. Her passion for mountains and ice climbing brought her to Alaska in 1985. She now works as a professional wood carver, ice carver and artist.
Tobin Stolz
I have always loved airplanes and I also like making them. I spent some time with a friend who helped me with my first glider and since then I have made quite a number of airplanes, some of them with R/C controls in them. I also like teaching people skills that I learn.
Christin Swearingen
Christin Swearingen is a volunteer mycologist for the Fungal Diversity Survey. She has degrees in Biology and Environmental Studies from Oberlin College, and earned a master’s degree from UAF from 2013-2016. There she learned mushroom identification from the esteemed mycologist Dr. Gary Laursen. She works at the Northern Alaska Environmental Center and Interior Alaska Land Trust to protect habitat for all types of wildlife, including fungi.
Sara Tabbert
Sara has been making prints for quite some time! She has a MFA in printmaking from the University of Nebraska and has taught printmaking to ages kindergarten through college. She’s excited about The Folk School’s new location and hopes to help grow a print shop around the press that Bill Brody donated. Look for more printmaking classes ahead. We can talk about what you are interested in to plan for future classes.
Cyndie Warbelow
I am a lifelong Alaskan growing up first in several remote villages and then in a roadhouse on the Alaska Highway. My education was in biology and zoology, but then I discovered horticulture, which lead to a career of building and operating two greenhouse businesses in the Fairbanks area, first Tacks’ General Store and then The Plant Kingdom. One of my favorite parts of the greenhouse business is designing hanging baskets and porch planters, and over the years both of these business locations became known for these container plantings. Combining the beautiful colors and textures of flowering plants in containers and growing them in the unique magic of Alaskan summer light is definitely one of the most inspiring opportunities I have had. I passed The Plant Kingdom to a new owner a few years ago. Now I have a small research greenhouse near my home here in Fairbanks, where I continue to experiment with container combinations, trial perennials, and develop perennial display gardens. I also teach classes in horticulture and garden design. My book, Northern Garden Symphony: Combining Hardy Perennials for Blooms All Season, was just released in May of this year.
Julianne Warren
Julianne has authored an intellectual biography, Aldo Leopold’s Odyssey, developing this influential U.S. conservationist’s ‘land health’ concept. It is one that resists industrial-capitalist assumptions and practices, yet not settler colonial and white supremacist ones. In a new collaborative project that is centered by Indigenous colleagues’ insights, Julianne is sounding out troubling details in Leopoldian inheritances. Looking back, she is self-critiquing her complicity. To listen, in this case, is to explicitly refuse—and, to suggest protocols for refusing—oppressive proposals of her birth-cultural ancestors with commitment to anti-racism and decolonizing alternative futures.. You can learn more about this and Julianne’s other work here: theunfallensilent.org
Joe Weber
I have been removing problem trees professionally since 1996. I have also been an educator since 1996.