Repair Studios

Hi, I'm Gabby! I started with kintsugi about two years ago, when I was more than two years into a doctorate in depth psychology (which focuses on the unconscious and metaphor). I come from a family of many artists-- woodworkers, ceramicists, oil painters-- but I myself had pretty much dropped off in all my art practices. My partner, a ceramicist, encouraged me to learn kintsugi as a kind of art therapy. I took to it really quickly, and it turned out I have a knack for it. I spent a few months learning as many of the techniques as I could and shadowing his classes at the SF Zen Center, until eventually he gave me his blessing to take over the teaching.I was lucky enough to spend a month in Tokyo and Kyoto in 2019, before I ever learned kintsugi. The animism in the Shinto tradition really spoke to me: the idea that everything is ensouled, that your kintsugi bowl kind of has a life of its own. I had no idea that I would eventually aspire to embody any piece of that tradition.I love teaching because I have the honor and privilege of creating a space where people can slow down and work with their hands, in a world full of tech tools that tend to foster disembodiment. So many of us spend so much time staring into our phones, consuming, consuming, consuming. For a few hours, we get to move away from consumption and into creation, honoring and cherishing the things we already have, and being around other humans. I find that really beautiful.I'm so touched by the way people sometimes come to these workshops as a closing ritual for a breakup, or to process grief, or to mark a transformation they're going through. I do love the metaphor that is kintsugi, of course, but I never try to turn these classes into therapy. Simply the experience of doing it is what's transformational. Something in its broken state already embodies its own kind of wholeness, and kintsugi just makes that concrete.I've taught over 700 students at this point, including at Meta, Pinterest, Atlassian, and Fortune 500 pharmaceutical companies. I've taught 150 people all at once, with a headset mic and cameras on my hands.Current projects: I've just started a project to repair pieces made by a fantastic local ceramicist for a two-star Michelin restaurant here in San Francisco. At the end of the project, I'll have the honor of presenting them to the chef, which is thrilling.