Christina Shmigel Returns to Penland School of Crafts for Spring Workshop

This spring, Christina Shmigel will bring her keen observations and relentless inquiry back to Penland School of Crafts, where she will teach the eight-week concentration Sculpture with Fierce Intention. The workshop is for students with an ongoing studio practice who are eager to uncover the “why?” behind the work they make. It will take place in the Penland iron studio but will welcome a wide range of media based on student interest. Guest instructors Mike Rossi and John Watson will each join the workshop for a week to teach their specialties of steel and wood/plaster.

Sculpture with Fierce Intention will run March 11 – May 4, 2018. Registration is open now for all spring workshops.

 

Christina Shmigel, “The View in Fragments: Demolish” (left), 

“The View in Fragments: Nouveau Riche” (middle), 

“The View in Fragments: Green Sheath” (right) 

There’s a certain fearlessness to Christina Shmigel’s sculpture. Her pieces include traditional materials such as steel, wood, and paint, but they don’t stop there. From bright plastic pinwheels and cardboard to plumbing parts and found furniture, everything is fair game as a building block in her thoughtful, observant tableaus and constructions. Each finished piece is like a reflection of the world around her filtered through her keen eyes, skilled hands, and the particular quirks of her attention. There’s a fearlessness in that attention, too.

Christina comes to her sculpture practice with a particularly broad base of experience to draw on. Her BFA from RISD is in painting, and she followed it with an MFA from Brooklyn College that she describes as “more conceptual.” Later, she returned to school for a second MFA at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, this time with an emphasis on technical skills like blacksmithing and casting.

 

Christina Shmigel, “The City in Which I Love You: Da Shi Jie (Great World Sheathed)”

REGISTER FOR SPRING CONCENTRATIONS AT PENLAND
clay  |  letterpress  |  painting  |  metals  |  textiles  |  wood  |  sculpture
March 11 – May 4, 2018 

Penland School of Crafts is located at  67 Doras Trail, Penland, NC near Spruce Pine NC.  All information and photos provided by The Penland Sketchbook.