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.

Penland School of Crafts Resident Artists "Rock Stars" Earn Prestigious Fellowships

Penland’s resident artists spend three years living on campus and working as self-supporting artists in their field. Their time at Penland is designed as an opportunity for them to deepen their studio practice, push technical and conceptual boundaries, or explore entirely new directions in their work.

The pieces that come out of each of the resident studios at The Barns are amazing, and the School takes pride to have such talented artists calling Penland home. Recently, three residents were recognized for their outstanding work with prestigious fellowships.

Annie Evelyn, “The Scotty,” aluminum, collaboration with Scotty Albrecht

Annie Evelyn
2016 John D. Mineck Fellowship by the Society of Arts and Crafts. The $25,000 award is presented “to encourage and support a young-in-career furniture artist… who demonstrates skill and commitment to their craft.” Annie plans to use the award to purchase tools to outfit her shop post-Penland. She envisions the space as a well-equipped communal studio that will also serve as a venue for community workshops, exhibitions, and events. “Annie’s spirit of community, generosity, and mentorship shined in her application, and will serve her well as she leaves the Penland community and establishes her studio,” the Society of Arts and Crafts stated. Annie is known for her explorations into hard/soft surfaces and applying traditional upholstery techniques to materials like wood, concrete, and metal.

Andrew Hayes, “Dure,” steel, book pages, paint

Andrew Hayes
Artist Fellowships from the North Carolina Arts Council for 2017. The fellows are chosen every two years from a talented pool of choreographers and visual, craft, and film/video artists. The Arts Council describes Andrew’s singular book and steel sculptures as “improbable objects of beauty.” They elaborate: “Formally, his sculpture has the spare elegance of mid-century modernism, each one an icon of untold meaning. But as much as his work may recall past styles and forms, it also boldly writes its own history and engages the viewer on its own terms.”
Andrew Hayes was honored as one of seventeen recipients of $10,000

Jaydan Moore, “Ends,” found silver-plated platters

Jaydan Moore
North Carolina Arts Council Artist Fellowships. He works in metals, primarily with found silver-plated platters and other serviceware that he carefully deconstructs, recombines, and reassembles into new forms. As the Arts Council explains, these pieces “gain a protean quality as they transition to the next stage in their evolution, one that honors their past purpose and history and, at the same time, looks forward to the possibility of something unexpected.”

The Penland resident artists will hold an open studio  October 21 at The Barns between 7-9 PM to meet the residents, see their spaces, and get a feel for their recent work.

This information was provides by The Penland Scketchbook, the blog of Penland School of Crafts.

Penland Iron Workshop Students Show Impressive Skills Completing Campus Project

photos and information courtesy Penland Sketchbook

Penland School of Crafts summer’s session 5 iron workshop with Hoss Haley and Warren Holzman brought together a talented bunch of students with big ideas and impressive skill. Together, the class designed, constructed, and installed a new bronze and steel handrail on campus. The project included eight custom supports, hours at the power hammer, 44 feet of forged cap rail, and a whole lot of teamwork. We think the results are just stunning.

Heat, patience, and an eye for detail make all the pieces come together smoothly.

The new railing is a big improvement over the standard blue railing it replaced.

Penland School of Crafts is a national center for craft education located in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina. Penland offers 1, 2, and 8 week workshops in books & paper, clay, drawing, glass, iron, metals, photography, printmaking, textiles, and wood. The school also sponsors artists' residencies, outreach programs, and an exceptional craft gallery. The gallery is open Tuesday through Sunday and is located on the campus at 3135 Conley Ridge Road in Penland NC, just outside Spruce Pine NC. 

 

Communicating Through Craft: A Profile of Aaron Hughes

this post written by Sarah Parkinson and submitted by Penland Sketchbook

Art, activism, performance, protest—for Aaron Hughes, the lines between them are blurred and insignificant. “All my work is about creating stories and sharing stories,” he explains. “I’m trying to find space for people to bridge the divides we have in our world through art and through stories.”

from “21 Days to Baghdad/Chicago,”  collection

As a veteran who served in Iraq and Kuwait for fifteen months in 2003-2004, Aaron is sharply aware of those divides. His deployment introduced him to a rougher and more complex world than he’d known growing up in the Midwest. “I felt like the ideas from my upbringing, my religion, my country didn’t make sense anymore,” he remembers. “But what did make sense was art. I felt like art was something I could invest in and believe in and put my energy into. It was something creative and not destructive.”

Aaron came home from his deployment determined to use art as a tool to generate conversations and connections about difficult topics like war, trauma, and oppression. In 2006 he graduated from the University of Illinois with a BFA in painting, and in 2009 he received his MFA in Art Theory and Practice from Northwestern University. Then he went on to work with organizations such as the National Veterans Art Museum, Iraq Veterans Against the War, and the Center for Artistic Activism.

In the summer of 2013, Aaron came to Penland for the first time with a Windgate Charitable Fund Scholarship. “I had spent so much time helping others to tell their stories and listening to other people’s stories that I had neglected any kind of personal work I needed to do,” Aaron explains. “I applied to Penland as a part of my transition back to focusing on my own art practice.”

Aaron Hughes artist and Veteran

He has returned to Penland each summer since to take classes in the printmaking and letterpress studios. “One reason I’m super invested in the printmaking program is that I’m interested in the way printmaking and politics can help to popularize language, stories, and movements,” he says. The connection is clear for Aaron: “Your ability to communicate lies in your ability to execute a craft. That’s what I’ve been gaining each time I come to Penland—the opportunity to develop my craft and to improve my communication skills.”

Aaron readily admits, however, that his time at Penland has been about more than gaining skills in the studio. “Penland is a generous space for me as a veteran,” he explains. “It’s a place of transformation and growth and learning. I’ve been encouraging other veterans to apply there because it’s such a healing, generative space.”

When he’s at Penland, Aaron describes himself as a “studio hound.” “I just want to make, make, make, make, make,” he laughs. But Aaron also values the quieter, more contemplative moments on campus. He describes the short walk back from dinner to the print studio: “There’s a little bench that’s halfway. I’ve often enjoyed sitting there, embracing the evening as it approaches and watching the Appalachian dusk. It’s so beautiful—transcendently beautiful. And I just sit in between all this creativity and embrace the present moment of being there. I feel like that’s healing. That’s wholesome for anybody.”

The Penland Sketchbook is the Blog for  

Penland School of Crafts in Penland NC 

 

Penland Receives Generous Donation from Blacksmith

Iron studio coordinator Daniel Beck overlooks smithing donation

Penland School of Crafts has received a remarkable donation from Ed Crane. Ed is a blacksmith who lives in Little Switzerland NC, just a ways uphill from Penland. His age forced him to give up blacksmithing, so he gave Penland everything in his shop: lock, stock, and boxes of nuts and bolts. 

The donation includes several large tools that will go right into the iron shop, many hand tools, and a few pieces of equipment that are needed elsewhere on campus. Thanks, Ed!

 Get more Penland news on their Blog, The Penland Sketchbook

Penland School of Crafts Announces Hot Glass & Electric Light Workshop This Spring

For art students interested in ways to take glass sculpture a step further, Jen Elek and Jeremy Bart's spring concentration "Hot Glass and Electric Light" will be the ideal opportunity to do just that. During the eight-week workshop, which runs March 13-May 6 2016, Jen will lead students through a strong base of hot glass techniques and Jeremy will add instruction in the fundamentals of incorporating various forms of light into glass, from neon to LEDs.

The Penland glass studio will be all about exploring the possibilities and ideas that open when glass and light combine. It’s an area that collaborating artists Jen Elek and Jeremy Bart are already quite familiar with. In their recent exhibition Look! See? at The Museum of Glass in Tacoma, WA, the two created a dynamic and interactive landscape of forms, colors, reflections, and luminescence. Just as with a single light bulb, their pairing of glass and light combines to make more than the sum of its parts.

Jeremy Bart and Jen Elek's Installation "Look See?" at The Museum of Glass

"Believe" a part of the Look See? Instaqllaation

Jeremy Bert and Jen Elek — Most of us live within the glow of electric light, often protected or filtered by glass. This class will empower the nontechnically inclined artist to harness these omnipresent media by exploring the mechanics of glass and light while considering the potential for electric light in sculpture. Jen will teach the fundamentals of glass furnace work for the full eight weeks. Jeremy will teach for four weeks to cover the basic principles, vocabulary, and techniques of neon and other forms of electric light, including LED and incandescent. Artists ready to explore the combination of glass forming and electric light will find this workshop a great fit. All levels.  

Jen has been a member of glass artist Lino Tagliapietra’s team since 2002; Jeremy is a certified welder, crane operator, and sign electrician. The two have previously taught at Pilchuck (WA) and have exhibited their work at Museum of Glass (WA) and Pittsburgh Glass Center. 

Human Heads" Collaboration by Jeremy Bert and Jen Elek

Register HERE for Hot Glass & Electric Light to give your work a literal jolt of electricity, and discover the potential for striking, communicative, and even humorous sculpture that the combination offers.

The information and photos in this post were provided by The Penland Sketchbook.

Penland Students Hold Empty Bowls Event This Week

November 2 - 6, 2015 at the Penland School of Crafts Coffee House:   Empty Bowls Project. Students in the clay concentration with Suze Lindsay and Kent McLaughlin are hosting an Empty Bowls event this week at the Penland Coffee House. Visitors can make a $20 donation to fight hunger, enjoy a simple lunch-time meal of soup prepared by the Penland kitchen, and take home a unique bowl made by a student in the class.

The Empty Bowls meal will be available at the Penland Coffee House from 11:00 AM to 4:00 PM.

photo courtesy Penland Sketchbook

The Empty Bowls Project  at Penland was started twenty-five years ago by Lisa Blackburn and John Hartom, who live nearby in Yancey County. The success of the project spread rapidly, and today communities around the globe join the Empty Bowls Project by offering a simple soup meal served in donated handmade bowls as a reminder of all of the empty bowls in the world. 

The money raised from each event goes to a hunger-fighting organization chosen by the hosts. The Penland project’s proceeds will go to Mitchell County Shepherd’s Staff, a non-profit organization providing food and heating assistance to Mitchell county residents in need.

Penland Participates at SOFA in Chicago

Come visit Penland School of Crafts at this year’s SOFA Expo in Chicago November 5-8. The event is an annual art fair that celebrates sculpture and functional art, complete with gallery exhibits, lectures, and special displays.

photo courtesy of  Penland Sketchbook

Penland staff will be part of two SOFA educational lectures:

The Penland School of Crafts Gallery & Visitors Center 2016 Expansion Friday, November 5, 9:00am
Penland gallery director Kathryn Gremley and Penland executive director Jean McLaughlin will give a talk about the new Penland Gallery & Visitors Center. The discussion will feature artists Stoney Lamar and Kate Vogel and will cover the new programming possible in the gallery’s expanded space.

Art Quilts: A Contemporary Conversation Friday, November 5, 10:30am
Penland’s Jean McLaughlin will be part of a panel discussion on trends in contemporary quilt making put on by the friends of Fiber Art International.

In addition to these lectures, Penland friends will be staffing a Penland table to tell you about upcoming workshops and events on campus. They will also be represented alongside Arrowmont, Haystack, Pilchuck, and Peters Valley at a table for the Craft School Experience. Stop by to see all the opportunities.

 

Penland School of Crafts in the News

WNC magazine’s current issue contains an excellent story, titled A Tradition of Innovation, that presents an illustrated overview of Penland School. You can read the article on the WNC website. Here’s a teaser:

While remaining true to its past, the world-renowned Penland School of Crafts never stops exploring the reaches of contemporary art. Still nestled into the hills above the tiny town of Spruce Pine NC, Penland has grown into a world-renowned center for contemporary craft, offering a 400-acre campus where more than 1,500 students, instructors, and practitioners collaborate each year in an international melting pot of art and community.

The more time one spends at Penland, the more one understands the sense of connectivity and pulse of mystery that’s hard to define to an outsider. Though almost everyone who visits can agree there is a certain magic to the place. “There’s a removal from the day-to-day that happens when you have to drive up and up and up, and then up some more into the mountains, and you come around a corner and there’s that valley with the studios behind it,” says Steve Miller, another trustee who runs the MFA program in book arts at the University of Alabama and has taught at Penland 14 times. “That remove, that temple at the top of the mountain phenomenon—it moves me every time.” 

Thanks to writer Brian Barth (who is a relative of Penland’s founder Lucy Morgan) and photographer Mike Belleme for their fine work on this piece.

Penland Annual Auction Catalog Now Available - and maybe a Few Remaining Tickets

You can now access the whole catalog for the Penland School of Crafts 30th Annual Benefit Auction online: right here.

The work on the cover is by the remarkable Susan Taylor Glasgow (it’s sewn glass). Inside the catalog you’ll find pictures of more than 200 pieces in all media. No matter where you are, you can place absentee bids on any of the auction pieces (complete information is online). This is a good thing, because the auction is more-or-less sold out. If you were thinking of attending the auction, please contact contact Jackie Head at 828-765-2359 x 112 or auction@penland.org to see if there are any seats left.

The  Penland School of Crafts Annual Benefit Auction will be held August 7 - 8, 2015. The Penland auction is one of the premier craft collecting events in the Southeast and is a perfect opportunity to support Penland’s educational programs. This year's featured artist is Susan Taylor Glasgow. Stoney Lamar will be honored as Penland's 2015 Outstanding Artist Educator. Absentee bidding is available.

Mug Lottery at Penland

Students in Cynthia Bringle’s fall clay workshop at Penland School of Crafts have been making a lot of mugs. So this day they had a mug lottery. Pay $10 and pull a number out of a bowl. Then you look through all the mugs on the desk and find the one that has your number; that’s your new mug. 

Cynthia and the class are encouraging everyone to take their mugs when they go to the coffee house so they can cut down on paper cup consumption. This is staff member Yolanda Walker finding her mug. As it happened the guy at the wheel behind her made one with her number on it.

Penland School of Crafts is located on Conley Ridge Road in Penland NC, near Spruce Pine. Get more photos and Penland updates by subscribing to the Penland Sketch Book.

Penland School of Crafts Welcomes Australian Artists

This June, Penland School of Crafts will turn Australian for two weeks when seventeen artists and educators from Australian National University’s School of Art in Canberra take over the fifteen studios–all during the same summer session, June 7-19, 2015.

Jemima Parker, Undefined (wearable) object

Richard Whiteley, head of the glass at Australian National University, and Ashley Jameson Eriksmoen, ANU’s head of furniture, developed the all-Aussie session with Penland programs director Leslie Noell. Both schools share an innovative, practice-centered philosophy, and the session presents an unprecedented chance for makers to study with ANU faculty in the U.S.

Students who attend the session will work with Australian artist-educators at the height of their craft. These artists include Richard Whiteley, gold- and silversmith Simon Cottrell, textile and installation artist Jemima Parker, book and multimedia artist Nicci Haynes, and the artists listed in the teaching studios below.

“There is always an easy, open conversation between studios at Penland, with students and instructors siting this creative exchange across media is one of the things that, in addition to the daily focused classroom experience, makes their time at Penland even more rich.  Said Leslie Noell. “Now imagine what this conversation will be like with seventeen vibrant instructors who have all known and worked together for years. (Not to mention the accents!) I expect the entire campus to crackle.”

Ashley Eriksmoen, who ​previously ​taught at Penland​ ​and will teach woodworking during the 2015 session, sees a progressive synergy between ANU’s ​hands-on ​approach to​ teaching​ craft in the academy and Penland’s intensive workshop context. “[ANU’s] ​undergraduate and graduate programs​ are centered on thinking through a material,” said Eriksmoen. “Our workshop discipline​​s​ involve art, craft, and design–and​ are closely aligned with those at Penland. We offer a high-caliber program Down Under. At Penland, we’ll offer it to students who wouldn’t otherwise make the antipodal journey.”

Among the Australia-based artist/educators who will be teaching during the session are:

Simon Cottrell’s jewellery and objects have been extensively published and exhibited worldwide since 1996. He is currently a researcher and professor in the Gold and Silversmithing Workshop, School of Art, at ANU. Metalsmith magazine published an 8-page feature article on his work and practice. 

Nicci Haynes stretches the definition of book arts to include prints, costumes and performance, video, projection, and spoken word collaboration. Her work explores the idea of the inner world being described physically. Nicci teaches in the Print Media and Drawing discipline at ANU. Nicci’s work was included in the 2014 exhibition Behind the Personal Library: Collectors Creating the Canon at the Center for Book Arts, NYC. 

Jemima Parker is a Canberra-based artist and screenprinter using traditional textile materials and methods, along with drawing and printmaking processes to create work that moves between disciplines and blurs boundaries of creative practice. She teaches textiles at ANU. 

Richard Whiteley is a glass artist renowned for his restrained yet monumental cast glass sculpture. Employing mass, negative space, transparency and translucency, Richard’s work and teaching career have helped shape the current state of contemporary glass. After several years of teaching and studio-based work, he is back in Canberra as Head of the Glass Workshop at the School of Art at ANU. He also maintains his own practice from his studio in Queanbeyan.

Featured Artist: April Franklin

submitted by Penland Sketchbook

April Franklin is back at Penland School of Crafts this winter, and for the first time, her job is simply to make what she likes. A former core fellow, April has previously appeared at Penland as a work-study student, a studio assistant, and an instructor. For the past week, she’s been a winter resident in the iron studio, making (among other things) two Damascus rings:

The rings, we’re happy to note, are for April’s marriage next fall to ceramic artist and frequent Penland instructor Kathy King. The couple makes their home in Watertown, Massachusetts, with April visiting Providence to forge and teach at the Steel Yard, while Kathy teaches at “that school in Cambridge.” April and Kathy met during Penland’s spring concentration in 2012. During the concentration, Kathy (instructor in the clay studio) broke her hand and underwent surgery. All is well now, and the accident “slowed Kathy down for me,” said April, half-joking. 

 During our visit to the studio, April helped current core fellow Meghan Martin with some strategy for a buckle. She also took some time to give a knife-sharpening demonstration this week. April had a dose of dry wit for fellow blacksmiths who specialize, as she does, in knife-making. “Do not tell anyone that you know how to sharpen knives. People will show up with a bag of them.” 

We’ll have more posts here about our winter residents in the coming weeks. In the meantime, you can keep up with the flurry of studio activity on our Instagram account.

Penland School of Crafts 2014 Core Fellows Show Opening a Success

On October 10 Penland School of Crafts held the opening reception for the 2014 Core Fellows Show. The Core Fellows  (left to right) are Joshua Kovarik, Jamie Karolich, Emily Rogstad, Sarah Rachel Brown, Will Lentz, Tyler Stoll, Meghan Martin, Angela Eastman, Audrey Bell.

See a slideshow of the exhibit opening along with a few pieces by each person HERE.

 

Penland School of Crafts Offers Fall One-week Workshops

BOOKS

Nontraditional Longstitch Binding

with Beth Schaible

Create an array of functional longstitch books, starting with basic stitching and moving quickly to nontraditional patterns.  All levels.  October 5-11.

GLASS

Other Possible Outcomes: Reexamining Glass Beads

with Amy Lemaire

In this workshop we'll reexamine glass beads as portable sculpture that is both personal and public, and we'll consider the body as a site for wearable sculpture. We'll cover traditional and experimental approaches to flameworking as well as cold-working and jewelry fabrication. All levels. October 5-11.

METALS

Surface Adornment on Steel

with Ben Dory

Using steel as a base, we will explore how to transform the surface of this rigid material with texture, thin layers of precious metals, and gemstones. All levels.  October 5-11.

CLAY

A Week of Shino

with Kent McLaughlin

Bring your stoneware or porcelain bisqueware suitable for cone 10 temperatures, and we'll explore a variety of shinos and some of the techniques that are possible with this intriguing glaze, including carbon trapping, wax-resist patterning, manipulated drying, carbon cooling, and glaze layering. All levels. October 19-25.

PHOTOGRAPHY

Rethinking Wet Plate Collodion Photography

with David Emitt Adams

In this workshop we'll explore tintypes and ambrotypes - two photographic techniques based on wet plate collodion materials. You'll explore the possibilities of these materials, experiment, and create alternative methods of display for your photographs. All levels. October 19-25.

WOOD

Foundations of Furniture

with Russell F. Gale, Jr.

There are so many things to think about when building a piece of furniture: design, material selection, joinery, edge and surface treatments, shop safety, etc. In this workshop we'll work through these issues and more as we each build a small table. October 19-25. All levels. Class is currently full; please contact registrar@penland.org to be placed on a waiting list.

  

LETTERPRESS

Letterpress Basics & Beyond

with Jessica C. White

Get to know your way around letterpress printing by learning the basics and exploring a variety of ways to create relief prints on a Vandercook press. All levels. Nov. 2-8.

 TEXTILES

Weaving: The First Layer

with Beth Ross Johnson

By learning to warp with multiple threads, to beam on without tangles, and other tricks of the trade, we can use the process of winding a warp as a way to establish a foundation for fabrics that will go where we want them to go.  All levels. Nov. 2-8.

WOOD | METALS

Carving Wooden Jewelry

with Sarah Martin

Looking to expand your jewelry repertoire? This class will show you how to carve wood on a small scale appropriate for jewelers. We'll cover how to safely carve with both knives and dremels and how to transform these carvings with surface embellishment, findings, and finishing techniques. All levels. Nov. 2-8.

Get complete details HERE

Find Registration Information and forms HERE

Penland School of Crafts is a national center for craft education located in North Carolina's Blue Ridge Mountains. Penland's focus on excellence, its long history, and its inspiring, retreat setting have made it a model of experiential education. The school offers workshops in books and paper, clay, drawing and painting, glass, iron, metals, photography, printmaking and letterpress, textiles, wood, and other media. Penland sponsors artist residencies, a gallery and visitors center, and community education programs. Penland is located at 67 Doras Trail, Penland, NC - near Spruce Pine. 

Penland School of Crafts Update

April at Penland find the studios are humming with activity. There are many ways to keep up with the action of Penland life: subscribing to the blog, the Penland Sketchbook; visiting their Facebook page for images from spring; following the Instagram feed for more instant views of what's happening  and checking Penland's community Tumblr page for images of Penland generated by you.

Above, Andrew Hayes visits Mike Rossi's spring iron workshop. Don't miss the upcoming Fire on the Mountain Blacksmithing Festival with demonstrations at Penland and in downtown Spruce Pine, North Carolina. Keep up with this annual event featuring a wealth of demonstrators, exhibits, and vendors here. This year's festival will take place on April 26-27.

You won't want to miss the Penland Gallery's spring Focus show, featuring drawing and painting by former Penland core fellow Eleanor Annand. The show will be on view until May 11. All the works are viewable and available for purchase online from the Penland Gallery. Below is Annand's Failed Logic, a painting on steel.

 

Summer Workshops:

Get ready for summer: consider diving into a Penland workshop. Kristen Martinic will be teaching relief mark-making and wood block printing methods to students of all levels, May 25-June 6. 

Needle to Paper 
an all-levels embroidery (on paper!) workshop with Nick DeFord, May 25-June 6. 

Owls & Antlers   
a printmaking workshop that asks: "what if you had time to make images of anything you wanted (kittens, anyone?)" Meow. Hoot. Grrr. (with Erika Adams)   All levels, June 8-20.

View the  list of open summer workshops.     Ready to dive in? Register here. 
 

If a workshop is full, there is no fee for signing on to a waiting list. Penland also offers half-price tuition to all K-12 teachers, current college, university, or community college faculty, and residents of several nearby counties (a complete list is available on the website) who take unfilled spaces. Click here for more information about Penland's standby program.

    

Penland's Gallery Launches Online Shop

The Penland Gallery has launched an online shop featuring a wide range of work by artists affiliated with Penland:  Shop the Penland Gallery HERE.

The Gallery has also started their own Instagram account.  If you're on Instagram, follow the Penland Gallery here. 

Penland School of Crafts  - A national center for craft education dedicated to helping people live creative lives. Classes are offered for both those with an art avocation and professional working artists. Penland NC

Annual Penland School of Crafts Community Open House

March 1   Penland School of Crafts holds its annual Community Open House. Each year, Penland's community open house welcomes hundreds of visitors into the studios for demonstrations and hands-on activities. The event is free and all ages are welcome. Hundreds of adults and children from the local Mitchell County as well as mountain visitors will engage in free, quality hands-on studio experiences with over 100 artist volunteers.

Activities may include making glass beads, rollerprinting copper bracelets, creating clay sculptures, screenprinting on bandanas, papermaking, forging garden stakes, painting colorful pastepaper, blowing glass cups or paperweights, making photographic “sun prints”, assembling wooden birdhouses, making souvenir books, and more.

Get local visitor information on The Spruce Pine NC Guide. 

Penland "Sketchbook" Visits Tom Shields Studio

This article was written by Elaine Bleakney for Penland Sketchbook, February 14, 2014

Photograph by Robin Dreyer

The chair. A form for one. A group of chairs: a human gathering, a table, a home. Gertrude Stein put it this way: Is there not much more joy in a table and more chairs and very likely roundness and a place to put them.

Photograph by Robin Dreyer

Tom Shields has been messing with wooden chairs—and our domestic contexts for them—for a while now. He collects, breaks, and alters–reworking flat-backs, ladder-backs, whatever chairs he can find by responding to and then rebuilding them into each other. (And away from each other, too.) Even the bank of discarded chairs that Tom keeps as raw material in his Penland studio (below) feels kind of irreverent:

Photograph by Robin Dreyer

It’s not just chairs: irreverence fuels all of Tom’s sculptural “furniture” work. Take this recent commission, made from a group of original Heywood-Wakefield tables:

Photograph by Robin Dreyer

“Blasphemer,” says Tom, grinning as he tells us what one studio visitor called him after seeing the commission. If you’re a mid-century modern junkie, Tom might just be your nemesis. But looking closely, the tables retain their modern context. Form is interrupted and not shattered: the “futuristic” lines and planes are made fluid by Tom’s choices. It’s almost as if the atoms in the birch went haywire and some happy blasphemer came along and set the forms into each other, responding to the tables as potential parts of a larger functional sculpture.



In the irreverence in Tom Shields’s work, reverence. To put a finer point on it: in irreverence, reverent play. Gertrude Stein, another blasphemer, would’ve raised her glass. She said in 1935: A very important thing is not to make up your mind that you are any one thing.
Subscribe to the Penland Sketchbook for the lastest information about Penland School of Crafts events, classes and artists.

Penland Announces New Fellows

Sarah Brown

Penland School of Crafts welcomes five new core fellows next month: Jamie Karolich, Joshua Kovarik, Meghan Martin, Emily Rogstad, and Tyler Stoll. They will spend the next two years living and working at Penland, joining our returning fellows: Audrey Bell, Sarah Brown, Angela Eastman, and Will Lentz. Read more about our new fellows on the Penland Sketchbook.

Also on the Penland Sketchbook, a January studio visit with core fellow Sarah Brown.