2025 Workshops

Morning Yoga with Kara Douglas – Welcome each new day with an hour of fresh sea air and movement to awaken your senses. Early morning classes will be designed with postural modifications to suit the experience of practitioners present and will include guided breathing and meditation to inspire connection, creativity and a balancing of the interactive and introspective. For those who wish to explore yoga philosophy, meditation, nuanced postural alignments and breathing techniques.

Kara Douglas lives in Harpswell, Maine with her husband and daughters where she runs Fishmoon Yoga, a studio they built in the former hayloft of their 1860’s barn. She has been practicing yoga since 1998 and teaching since 2001. As a writer and naturalist, Kara steeps her teaching in a love of nature. https://fishmoonyoga.com

Nature Journalling and Ephemeral Found Object Sculpture with Louisa Carl

Nature journaling is a way to deepen our relationship to the more than human world by looking, listening and creating with presence and intention. There’s a way that spending time in nature can naturally elicit joy, healing and reduce stress. No prior skill or experience with journalling, artistry or drawing necessary to enjoy this workshop. 

As we head out into the landscape of Star to work in our journals during this class, we will learn about and practice a number of nature journaling techniques that help you connect quickly and deeply to a place.

Various free writing prompts will use your senses to connect to place with a focus on smell, touch and listening. We will also explore writing as a way to bring up memories of prior experiences in a place, as a way to imagine what it would be like to live here in a previous time period and finally as a way to observe what is around you in real time and what it makes you think about. 

Other techniques include drawing objects found in nature to increase observational focus and help you notice details, making rubbings of leaves and other natural objects to discover more about their textures and forms, and experimenting with natural art media found in nature, such as mud, soft rock, clay, plant juices, and berries. 

Journals and art supplies will be provided. If you have a journal and art supplies you like to use, please bring them along. 

A good book you could look to for some inspiration is Keeping a Nature Journal: Discover a Whole New Way of Seeing the World Around You. By Clare Walker Leslie. http://www.clarewalkerleslie.com/books.htm

Ephemeral Found Object Sculpture 

Louisa will also be guiding us in creating Star Union found object sculpture(s). The focus will be on creating individual or group sculptures in nature. Learning assembly techniques that will allow your sculpture to naturally decay back into the site over time, we will experiment with attaching objects to each other, learn how to pick objects that do not damage the landscape and work in community to synergistically build something magical together. 

Louisa Carl is currently a Senior Manager at athenahealth, an artist and activist while. Her primary art medium is sculpture, and she has a BFA in Sculpture from Washington University in St. Louis School of Fine Art. She also has an MS in Environmental Education from Lesley University and the Audubon Expedition Institute. The intersection between art, activism and nature has fascinated her throughout her life. She loves to create public art on her own and with others. Found object art created in situ in nature is a special focus.

Rosa Rugosa Propagation with Rob and Bill Gimpel

The humble Beach Rose, Rosa rugosa, is perhaps the most iconic flower to be found on the Isles of Shoals. Their clumps of deep green covered with pink blossoms catch the eye of both artists and passers-by. They dot the islands, peek around corners, and mark boundaries. The dense thickets devour homeruns during softball games. They fill vases in the stairwells. We notice their fragrance when we walk past, as well as their thorns when we get too close. The simple flowers may be delicate, but these shrubs are hardy! They take all of the cold, wind and salt that Mother Nature can throw at them in winter and bounce right back in spring. Rosa rugosa is as rugged and as beautiful as the Island itself. Wouldn’t you like to have one in your yard at home as a living reminder of Star?  

Join us for the return of this hands-on workshop where we will learn more about the history, lifecycle and uses of Rosa rugosa, then learn and practice techniques for propagating including division and rooting cuttings. Participants will take home a rose plant to establish in their own yards. 

Music and Stories with Kemp Harris – in addition to leading the Morning Meet Up each day, Kemp is offering these workshops.

Come and join The Union Gospel Choir – Come and be part! Sing your heart out. Along with some favorites from past summers, (Go To Sleep Little Baby, Star I Feel Like Going Home, and more) this year, we’ll also learn a song new to our conference.

The Moth on Star – Tell us a story, tell us your story. In the spirit of the Moth Radio Hour, there will be a theme (TBA) and folks can tell a 7-9 minute, true story that reflects our theme for the day. We’re all storytellers at heart and this is your chance to share yours.

Kemp Harris been coming to Star Island for almost 40 summers and has been involved with Star Union from the start. Kemp Harris is a composer, musician, actor and teacher. He taught himself piano and was writing songs at age 14. Born in segregated Edenton, North Carolina, and transplanted to Massachusetts at the age of 5. He is a singer/songwriter, a weaver of American musical styles, an actor, activist, author, and storyteller, and an award-winning educa-tor who taught Kindergarten/1st Gr. students for more than 40 years.

He has shared stage with such artists as Koko Taylor, Gil Scott-Heron, Taj Ma-
hal, Kandace Springs and Freebo. He has composed for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and Complexions Contemporary Ballet. Kemp currently serves on the boards at Passim in Harvard Sq./Cambridge,MA, NERFA (North East Regional Folk Alliance) and on the Advisory Board for FARHOF (Folk Americana Roots Hall of Fame at The Boch Center), Boston, MA

Meditation on Smuttynose with Kara Douglas

Meditation teacher Thich Naht Hanh referred to “Islands of Mindfulness” – safe places we can find in meditation to rest and reset the mind, especially when our attention has been fragmented or our nervous system overwhelmed. Smuttynose Island – surrounded by the North Atlantic, rich with bird life and visible traces of geologic time – will be our catalyst, our anchor, our connection to the here and now. Immerse yourself here and return home with a timeless point of reference to settle your mind and find calm and clarity in daily life.

Kara Douglas is a writer and yoga & meditation teacher in Harpswell, Maine. She seeks engagement with nature, where wilderness experiences become a mirror that reflects human complexity and intimacy with our deeper abilities to observe and act. She recently curated an anthology of essays for Littoral Books, in Portland, Maine, called Alive to This, Essays on Living Fully.