The Art of Mud: Cocoon

Becky Gilling (England)

Rebecca Gilling is a craftswoman, artist, and facilitator dedicated to celebrating the harmony between nature, creativity, and community. Her passion for natural materials shines through her sculptural and decorative plasterwork, where she weaves clay and lime into soulful expressions that span from artisanal wall finishes and historic building conservation to large-scale sculptures and functional earthen furniture.

Becky has worked on historic buildings throughout the UK, creating decorative plasterwork, as well as high-end contemporary projects in England, the USA, and Belize. She trained at The Canelo Project in Arizona, apprenticed in traditional Japanese plastering, and studied figurative sculpture at the Florence Academy of Art, alongside working with leading figures in natural building. Her global journey also includes learning Moroccan and Italian finishes, and completing the Prince’s Foundation Building Craft Programme.

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Her most celebrated works include the giant earthen beings she co-created for Medicine Festival, weaving prayer and mud into community sculpture. These diverse experiences fuel her passion for empowering women in construction and for exploring building as a practice of prayer, embodiment, and connection to the land.

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Currently a nomadic mud gypsy, Becky continues to share her love of earth and craft through workshops that blend technical mastery with creative exploration. She integrates her work with medicine music, yoga, and community living, inviting participants to not only learn hands-on skills in natural plaster, sculpture, and building, but also to reconnect with themselves, each other, and the living earth.

Anna Kiesser (Germany)

Anna Kiesser is an interdisciplinary artist, facilitator, and ritualist, whose work blends earthen sculptures, natural building techniques, and transformational healing. Rooted in the exploration of consciousness, land connection, mythosomatics, and art, Anna creates trauma-informed spaces that engage the hands, heads, and hearts of participants, fostering deep personal and cultural transformation. Anna’s art, facilitation, and rituals are invitations to spaces where bodies can ground, hearts can soften, and the earth can speak. Her work reminds us that healing is a shared journey, that earthen art can be a bridge to the sacred where each sculpture becomes a form of prayer.

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Anna holds a Master’s degree in Arts and has studied sculpture under renowned teachers at the Florence Academy of Art, deepening her foundation in classical craft and form. She further expanded her path into the healing arts through Art Therapy training with Svagito Liebermeister, bringing a depth of psychological and therapeutic insight into her creative and ritual work.

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Before shifting her path, Anna’s love and passion for the art of mask making and prosthetic make-up were expressed by transforming actors and performers into different characters and creatures. This passion took her on adventures all around the world, working on Hollywood film sets like Star Wars, Wonder Woman 1984, and The Hunger Games. Five years ago Anna began weaving her artistic background into healing spaces, using natural materials to guide inner transformation through Land-art, Eco-sculptures, Mask workshops, and more.

Her offerings integrate a wide range of tools, including Breathwork, Bodywork, Psychodynamic healing practices, Meditation, Primal Movement, Ritual, Tantric practices, Mythosomatics, Art Therapy, and Natural Building.

Nomadic by soul, Anna has been living on the move for the last 10 years, forming and reforming connections with the land and its people, learning from different traditions, and building an international community of people who value soul-based living and form spaces where the raw humanness of each person is welcome.

Erika Lomelin (Mexico)

Erika originally trained as an Architectural Designer, but found her true calling in the hands-on, lived experience of Natural Building. She has a particular interest in Earthship design, though her experience spans a wide range of earthen techniques.

She is passionate about collective work with a social purpose, loves sharing knowledge in accessible and practical ways, and sees teaching as a reciprocal process where she learns just as much. Erika enjoys creating spaces where building, play, and care come together.

She has taken part in various community-based projects, including co-leading the cob building at Protopia, supporting the Daughters of the Earth gathering in January, co-facilitating The Art of Mud in May, and will return in December to support The Cocoon.

When she’s not covered in mud, Erika can often be found riding her bike or dancing, two passions that keep her connected to movement, freedom, and the joy of being alive.