Our Instructors
Michael G. Smith
Michael G. Smith co-founded the Cob Cottage Company, along with Ianto Evans and Linda Smiley, in Oregon in 1993. He helped organize the first Natural Building Colloquium in 1994. He wrote “The Cobber’s Companion” in 1996 and co-authored “The Hand-Sculpted House” (published by Chelsea Green, 2002) and “The Art of Natural Building (2nd edition, New Society, 2015).” He has experience with a wide range of effective low-cost, low-tech building techniques including cob, straw bale, and many lightweight natural infill systems. He has taught hundreds of hands-on natural building workshops, ranging from one-day earthen oven builds for children to 12-week professional training. He enjoys consulting with owner-builders to help them design and build successful energy-efficient natural homes. He is also on the Board of Directors of the nonprofit Cob Research Institute, which wrote the first building cob for code in the world and successfully advocated for its adoption into the 2021 International Residential Code. With his partner and children, he stewards a 20-acre organic farm in Yolo County. Learn more at strawclaywood.com.
Penny Livingston-Stark
Penny has spent time working in Peru with Reviveolution as an educator and mentor and community organizer working on community resiliency initiatives involving local food security, watershed awareness, and bio-regional mapping.
Penny co-created the Ecological Design Program and its curriculum at the San Francisco Institute of Architecture, co-created the Permaculture Program at Occidental Arts and Ecology Center with Brock Dolman, Earth Activist Training with Starhawk and she co-founded the West Marin Grower’s Group, the West Marin Farmer’s Market, and the Community Land Trust Association of Marin.
Penny is a professional natural builder, creating innovations in straw bale, cob, timber-frame, light clay, natural non-toxic interior finishes, and other methods using natural and bio-regionally appropriate materials for construction.
She has been featured in the following films: Symphony of the Soil by Lily Films and Deborah Koons Garcia, 2012: A Time for Change by Joao Amorim and Daniel Pinchbeck, and Permaculture: The Growing Edge by Belili Films and Starhawk.
Penny is currently working as a Permaculture Instructor with Ecoversity an Earth-based, online educational organization. www.ecoversity.org
Penny Livingston-Stark (www.PennyLivingston.com ) is internationally recognized as a prominent permaculture teacher, designer, and speaker. She holds an MS in Eco-Social Regeneration and a Diploma in Permaculture Design. Penny is a graduate of the Arven School of Herbal Medicine in Germany.
Penny is co-founder and director of Regenerative Design Institute www.regenerativedesign.org and has been teaching permaculture and community resiliency internationally as well as working professionally in the land management, regenerative design, and permaculture development field for 30 years. She has extensive experience in all phases of ecologically sound design and construction as well as the use of natural non-toxic building materials. Penny specializes in the design and installation of perennial agroforestry systems, biological water purification systems, site planning and the design of resource-rich landscapes integrating, rainwater collection, edible and medicinal planting, spring development, pond, and water systems, habitat development and watershed restoration for homes, co-housing communities, businesses, and diverse yield perennial farms.
VIVAMARÉE ZÖE HANSEN (Viva)
Viva (mudbloodbuilds.com) is a longtime builder. He was introduced to cob through his mother Claudine Desirée of Cruzin’ Cob Global who studied with Michael G. Smith in 2001. Viva spent countless afternoons in his backyard mixing mud with his mom to help build the first legalized cob structure in Santa Cruz, CA.
It wasn’t long before Viva started experimenting with pizza ovens, garden walls, and eventually whole buildings on his own. His love for earthwork took him across the world from West Africa and South America to Mexico and Europe. He’s built numerous structures and taught in many workshops. He currently resides in Colorado, specializing in low-tech, high-efficiency, wood-fired appliances.
In 2022 Viva launched Mudblood Builds as a way to collect and focus his work in a more distinct direction. He chose the name Mudblood as a reminder of the simultaneous power and danger of racial and genetic politics which shape our relationship to land, our right to life, and our access to the critical resources of the earth. Human health and the health of the earth are inextricable. Mud is in our blood, and the flesh and blood of the Earth is mud...
Mudblood serves to preserve this symbiosis.
Sasha Rabin
Sasha Rabin fell in love with natural building in 2002, when she began her building career with an apprenticeship at the Cob Cottage Company. Since then she has taught extensively through organizations that she co-founded, Seven Generations Natural Builders and Vertical Clay, and through collaborations with The Yestermorrow Design Build School, The Canelo Project, Cal-Earth, The Solar Living Institute, and Quail Springs Permaculture. Teaching natural building has brought her as far as the Permaculture Research Institute (PRI) Jordan and PRI Kenya and runs her own natural building organization, Earthen Shelter. She also directs the Natural Building Advocacy program at Quail Springs. She recently relocated to Northern CA where she was born and raised and is excited to be teaching up here once again!
Athena Steen
Athena Steen was one of the pioneers of the straw bale revival, building her first straw bale home at the age of 19. In 1989, with her husband Bill, she founded The Canelo Project, a center for natural building and cultural revival in southern Arizona. Together they have developed many innovations in straw and clay construction, ranging from simple straw bale pinning techniques to high-fiber “light adobes” to a revival of poured adobe floors. They emphasize everyone’s capacity to house themselves beautifully and inexpensively, using local natural materials and innate wisdom. They have worked extensively on low-income housing projects in Mexico and traveled and taught all over the world. Athena and Bill have also written half a dozen books, including “The Straw Bale House” (Chelsea Green, 1994). Well known for her artistry with natural finishes, Athena has collaborated on art museum installations at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington D.C., and several other museums. Learn more here: http://www.caneloproject.com
Colin Gillespie
Colin Gillespie has worked in the construction trades for over 10 years, with previous experience in integrative landscaping.He has dedicated himself to the study and mindful application of Natural Building, Permaculture Design, Eco-forestry, and Sociology.Son of an architect and a physicist, his attention to detail coupled with a passion for smart buildings and landscapes has inspired him to produce exemplary structures combining the benefits of modern and ancient building techniques. Elegant round-pole timber frame with straw bale infill constructions with robust contoured plasters are his specialty and have been featured in many of the projects he has led. In addition to his familiarity with standard stud construction, he is also known for his use of a variety of natural building techniques involving local resources such as wood, clay, and rock. He champions keen observation, considerate visioning, and thorough planning, all tempered with good humor to allow long-term efficient function and beauty to emerge naturally. www.polecraftsolutions.com
Avani Leitz
Avani began her journey in natural building in the beginning of 2017, building a cob cottage with her partner from the ground up. Since then she has delved into all types of structures including straw bale, pallet buildings, light clay straw and more. Guided by her desire to use materials that are local, salvaged, recycled and respectfully wild harvested, she utilizes back to the hands techniques to create functional and beautiful structures of art.
Spencer Nielsen
Spencer Nielsen grew up exploring the wild lands of Marin County and northern California. After studying Ecology (B.S.) at UCSD, and Environmental Education at UCSC, Spencer has since been a naturalist teaching, guiding, and mentoring youth throughout California since 2005. Spencer completed a Master’s Degree in Integrative Eco-Social Design through Gaia University, exploring the role of rites of passage in a healthy culture. Spencer has led wilderness-based rites of passage for hundreds of teens.
As an ethnobotanist who has traveled through Latin America and Asia, Spencer is always seeking to deepen his relationship with plants and traditional uses of plants. Spencer is certified as a Planetary Herbalist with Michael Tierra’s East West School of Herbs, integrating European, Ayurvedic, and Chinese herbs into a TCM diagnosis. Spencer has also been a landscaper, organic farmer, gardener & permaculture designer/educator since 2000, creating abundant gardens at home and for clients. He has worked on permaculture farms in New Zealand, Thailand, Costa Rica, and has visited projects in India, Cuba, and beyond. He teaches Permaculture at Sivananda Yoga Farm and Natura Institute for Ecology & Medicine.
pencer has taught hatha yoga and qigong and is an ongoing student of Traditional Chinese Medicine, weaving Medical Qigong and Neigong with Acupressure and Bodywork (Tui Na). Spencer is a Hatha Yoga Teacher and Ayurvedic Wellness Consultant, while still a perennial student of Vedic sciences such as Jyotish and Vastu. He is currently a student of Traditional Tibetan Medicine.
Spencer is also trained as a Wilderness First Responder. When he’s not in the field with youth or adults, you can find him in his garden, walking in the hills, playing music, or experimenting in his kitchen. And drinking tea, lots of tea. You can learn more about him and his offerings at ElementalNature.org
Blair Phillips
Blair Phillips, the founder of Abuela Gardens (2013), Has a BA in Environmental Studies with an emphasis in Agroecology and education ( UCSC 2006). Blair is a certified permaculture designer and teacher who has studied with the best(2007). Teachers like Dr. Elaine Ingham, Geoff Lawton, Darren Doherty, Penny Livingston, Broc Dolmon, Ian Davidson, Steve Gliesman, and Michael Flynn. (2004-to present). Since Blair's teenage years, he has been exploring practices to awaken the inner self and align with the world outside. This inquisition has led him to explore meditation, yoga, plant medicine, traditional west African drumming, and other healing arts. The fusion of internal work with the external has led Blair on a journey to make his work into visible prayers. listen to an interview.
Blair was also the original founder of Common Vision (1999), (www.commonvision.org) a nonprofit organization responsible for planting thousands of fruit trees in California, most of which were planted on California’s school campuses by a caravan of earth educators running on waste vegetable oil. In the first ten years, Common Vision used traditional and circus arts performances to inspire children toward a healthy, hands-on relationship with the earth. Blair has worked internationally to propagate an additional 7000 trees in Guinea, West Africa. (2008) He has also studied at Cal-Earth (2010) and helped build a super adobe dome structure for a school in Dogon country, Mali, West Africa (2010). He has participated in other natural building workshops covering straw bale, plastering, light straw clay, wattle, and daub as well as catenary vaults. (2008-present). In early 2012 Blair spent time working with the Huichol Community Center to develop a 4-year strategy to develop water and make certain changes to enhance the productivity of their traditional farming practices. 2014-2015 Blair traveled to Peru to explore his fascination with plant medicines and indigenous culture.
Settling into the hills of Willits (2012) inspired Blair to have an intimate relationship with the watershed, designing Abuela Gardens based on a regenerative relationship with the surrounding environment in a multifaceted approach. By keeping water at the core, agroecological development, forest regeneration, animal rotation, aquifer recharge points, natural building projects, and nursery work are placed providing a developing model of design for local neighbors and beyond.
In the winter of 2017-2018, Blair went to Rishikesh, India to study with masters of lineage to become a Certified Yoga Teacher. This journey was the transition and initiation to helping others fine-tune their own internal practices and integrate them through the recalibration of the Heart, Health, and Hands.
Since 2019, Blair has been working with the Forest Reciprocity Group (FRoG) to develop strategy and educational programming to help people who live in fire-prone forested areas understand our relationship with the forest, and health fire while making use of small diameter poles thinned in fire prevention work. https://forestreciprocity.org
Continuing on the path of service Blair created Abuela Gardens to be a campus for those who engage with themselves and the land. He is inspired to help people focus their self-practice towards a regenerative lifestyle internally and externally. He is excited to continue helping people outside of Abuela Gardens with broad acreage land and water regeneration.