Penland School of Crafts and The Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts cordially invite you to attend a lecture celebrating the William R. Kenan Jr. Fellowships at Penland.

Tuesday, January 24, 2012, at 6:00pm

Featuring Leslie Walker Noell, artist and Penland Core Fellowship Program Coordinator

In the Visual Arts Department, Fourth Floor Workplace Building, University of North Carolina School of the Arts, Winston-Salem, North Carolina

For information and directions, call the Kenan Institute at 336.770.1432.

Leslie Walker Noell is an interdisciplinary studio artist and designer. Her background includes a design degree from NC State University, two years of study as a Core Fellowship Student at Penland School of Crafts, and an MFA from the University of Massachusetts. In 2001, Leslie was a resident artist at Caversham Press in Kazulu Natal, South Africa. In 2006, she was a resident artist at the Jentel Artist Residency Program in Banner, Wyoming. Leslie’s work has been shown throughout the country in a number of exhibitions, including the Holter Museum of Art, Asheville Art Museum, and Mobile Museum of Art. She lives and works in Asheville, NC.

As part of the 2012 Fire on the Mountain Blacksmithing Festival, Penland School of Crafts and Spruce Pine Main Street present a master demonstration workshop with Nol Putnam, Friday, April 27, 2012, from 9:30am – 4:00pm in the Penland iron studio. There’s $50 fee and advance registration is required; space is limited.

Nol Putnam (photo: Megan S. Smith)

“I imagine there will be leaves and vines, perhaps something with pipe, assorted peculiar movements with iron, and illustrating questions from the floor. In between there will be philosophy, stories, anecdotes, encouragement and laughs. It should be a great time, a convivial group dance around the anvil. We will also discuss how to handle big work in a one-man shop; drawing; surviving large commissions; design elements; and whatever else may come up.” – Nol Putnam

Nol Putnam opened his first forge in 1973. He taught himself the craft with the help of books, stubbornness and a mentor. Starting in the early 1980s he undertook large architectural commissions – gates, balconies, curved handrails. While he still does a few commissions, his work since 2001 has largely been sculptural, ranging in size from the palm of the hand to architectural scale.

Click here for more information and a downloadable registration form (PDF).

If you would like to ask questions about the workshop, please call Stacey Lane at 828.765.8060 or e-mail staceylane@penland.org.

Kurt Wilberding/The Wall Street Journal

From Tuesday’s Heard on the Runway, a style blog of The Wall Street Journal:

‘As a New York-based fund-raiser for Penland School of Crafts, Laura Taft Paulsen knows a thing or two about craftsmanship…. “Fashion is wearable art,” she says.’

Click here for a complete outfit breakdown in the original post.

Thanks for the shout-out, Laura! Looking good!

A new year, and with it five new Core Fellowship students soon to make their way to Penland to join our little community of creativity and learning. Here they are:

Zee Boudreaux is a textile artist who earned a BFA at California College of the Arts in 2009. He lives and works in San Francisco where he has worked for several years as a dyer, studio assistant, baker, delivery person, and administrative assistant. Zee wants to make a living as a textile artist and hopes to take classes at Penland in textiles, books, and metals with a focus on production, technique, and practical application. He has proven himself talented and resourceful and now wants an educational experience that will propel him towards his professional goals. Zee was a studio assistant at Penland in 2007 and 2011, and (most recently) was a studio assistant during the Instructors Retreat this fall.

Liz Koerner is a woodworker and furniture maker with a strong designer’s eye. She grew up in Iowa and earned a BFA from California College of the Arts in 2009. She is currently working as an assistant in a metal fabrication shop in Oakland, CA. She is a resident artist at a cooperative artist’s studio where she works as the facilities manager in exchange for studio space and shop time. Liz wants to continue learning everything she can about wood and furniture design and is interested in incorporating iron, glass, and metals in her designs. Liz was a work/study student in the Penland wood studio this summer.

Michael Krupiarz is a glass artist, originally from New York, who lives and works in Spruce Pine and the Penland area. He is currently studio assistant to Cristina Córdova and Pablo Soto and has worked for Thor Bueno, Kenny Pieper, Greg Fidler, and Martin Janecky. He earned a BFA from Alfred University in 2005 and has also worked at Pilchuck Glass School. Mike is seeking the chance to step out of his role facilitating other people’s creative process and put his own work first. He plans to continue his glass education while experimenting in complementary classes. He was also the Penland auction assistant in 2010.

Rachel Mauser is the recipient of a 2011 Windgate Fellowship which she has used to expand her education in book arts. She has taken workshops at Haystack, Penland, and Anderson Ranch in wood, books, and letterpress respectively. Originally from Louisville, Kentucky, Rachel earned a BFA from Murray State University. She seeks to increase her knowledge in books, papermaking, printmaking, letterpress, and metals in order to expand her repertoire in sculptural books. Rachel aspires to be a studio artist and educator in the craft field. She was a work/study student at Penland last summer.

Molly Spadone is a potter with specific interests in atmospheric firing. She grew up in Maine and recently graduated from Guilford College with a BFA in ceramics. She is currently apprenticing with her mentor (and Penland instructor) Woody Hughes in Maine. She also works at a Bed & Breakfast and on an organic farm. Molly’s focus will be on functional pottery, and she intends to explore ideas for presentation and display for her pots. Her interests include classes in wood, glass, books, and printmaking. Molly was a work/study student at Penland in 2010.

Click here for more information about the Core Fellowship program at Penland School of Crafts.

It’s our pleasure to tell you about the three incoming Penland Resident Artists for spring, 2012:

Micah Evans

A lampworker from Austin, Texas, Micah taught the Fall 2011 flameworking concentration, Creative Engineering, and was the assistant for Carmen Lozar’s Narrative Flameworking class this past summer.  Largely self-taught, he has worked in glass since 1999, and has been a visiting artist and consulting flameworker at the University of Miami and taught workshops at several small glass centers. He’s run his own lampworking business in Florida making functional work and small sculpture inspired by natural forms, and says he’s now ready to leave the production world to develop a more personal body of work. He’s interested in storytelling through objects and in translating his family history through his work.

Click here to visit Micah’s website.

Dustin Farnsworth

Dustin is a mixed media artist currently living in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. He has a BFA from Kendall College or Art and Design in woodworking with a minor in printmaking. Currently he’s in a year-long residency at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, where he has taught woodworking, printmaking and drawing. Dustin was a winter resident in printmaking at Penland last year (we blogged about him then) and assistant for Sylvie Rosenthal’s fall wood class, Experimental-Traditional-Sculptural-Furniture Mashup. Dustin’s work includes kinetic sculpture, furniture, and hand-carved figurative sculpture, reminiscent of marionettes. He received a 2010 Center for Craft, Creativity, and Design Windgate Fellowship. Dustin’s work has been exhibited at SOFA Chicago, and published in 500 Cabinets (Lark Books), I.D. magazine, Sculptural Pursuit magazine, and Woodwork magazine.

Click here to visit Dustin’s website.

Rachel Meginnes

Rachel is a textiles artist specializing in works on cloth and currently living in San Francisco. She has an MFA in fibers from the University of Washington-Seattle and is the co-founder of Dorjé Contemporary, a rug company where she worked as sole designer & business manager for six years. Her textiles work involves drawing individual threads out of the cloth, altering the inherent structure, before working with gesso, ink, and paint on the surface. Rachel has travelled extensively researching and studying weaving and dyeing traditions in other countries, including Nepal, India, New Zealand, Japan, Germany, Austria, Denmark. She says she’s now ready to leave the rug business behind to devote time to her personal work.

Click here to visit Rachel’s website.

We’re looking forward to welcoming them into the community, and seeing what sorts of amazing things they’ll do here.

Helen Stolyarenko & Sasha Strekopytova, two young glass artists from Russia, travelled to the U.S.A. from Russia this past summer to work a two-month, 3 city internship, including a stay at Penland. They are writing some guest posts about their adventures on the Looking at Glass blog.

At the auction.

“Penland is a wonderland where you immediately feel like home, no matter how long you stay there” they write. “It was our home for 2 weeks, which we’ll never forget. As well as kindness of the school’s stuff, a special thanks to Jerry Jackson (the school deputy director) and Dean Allison (the glass studio coordinator), – people who made our trip possible.” They also had fun working at the Penland auction, which they describe as having a “hot gambling atmosphere.” Of course, the auction is not a gambling event, but it’s easy to see how it might feel like one.

You can read more about Helen and Sasha’s adventures here.

Want to see the future?

Let us pull back the veil of mystery and show you the fabulous wonders that lie ahead! How about the fabulous classes that lie ahead at Penland for Summer 2012, for a start? They’re pretty wonderful.

Click here for complete descriptions of all Summer 2012 classes, photographs of instructor work, links to instructor websites, and registration information.

Paper catalogs will be coming soon by mail, for those who prefer something they can touch.

SUMMER… Summer… summer… whispers that inner voice. Time to dream, time to plan. Eyes ahead!

When Kathryn Gremley greets members of the public at the Penland Gallery and Visitors Center, she does so with a knowledge of the school that is both broad and deep. She has worked at the Gallery and Visitors Center for fifteen years—for the first ten years as the exhibits manager and for the past five years as director—but her relationship with the school goes all the way back to 1981. “I had gone to several colleges for art and dropped out several times,” she laughs. “I was reading American Craft and I kept seeing Penland in the artists’ bios. I figured if all these great people went to Penland, I should check it out.”

She came for a fall Concentration in weaving and fell in love with the place. She returned in the spring, then stayed on as a core student, and was then invited to become a resident artist. She settled permanently in the community and continued her work as a production weaver of textiles for clothing and also worked in various capacities at the school. “I have worked in the kitchen,” she says, “I was a studio coordinator, I taught weaving and clothing design, I worked in the school store, and then I started working at the gallery.” She was also selling her work at large craft shows and a dozen other galleries. She was the first person involved with Penland Gallery who was also a selling craftsperson. “I didn’t have a background in conventional retail,” she says, “but I knew about the relationship between a gallery and an artist.” She also had a keen eye for good work and innovative displays. In her time at the gallery she has installed 135 instructor exhibitions and curated and installed approximately eighty invitational exhibits, both in the gallery and off campus.

As Kathryn became increasingly involved with the gallery, she gradually wound down her own craft business. Today, as director, she functions as curator and exhibition designer and manages a staff of four—working with them as they arrange tours of the school, set up displays, keep track of inventory, and answer hundreds of questions about the art work, the school, the artists, and, of course, the location of the bathrooms.

Although she has set aside her loom, Kathryn’s background as an artist informs everything she does. “I enjoy trying to create the presentation the work deserves,” she says. “Whether we are selling a greeting card, a mug, or a $20,000 sculpture, it should all be of the same quality. You go to a museum to see these beautiful paintings and sculptures, and then you go to the gift shop and it’s commercial products made in China. Here we want everything to have the same level of excellence.”

Especially close to Kathryn’s heart are the invitational exhibitions mounted each year. These are built around themes and are intended to expand the public’s understanding of craft. They are also meant to reflect aspects of Penland’s educational programs, and Kathryn works closely with program director Dana Moore when planning the shows. “The exhibitions,” she says, “encourage people to slow down and thoughtfully view the work, so they are more likely to engage with the process and the intent behind it. If Penland is trying to advance the perception of what craft is in the world, the gallery is trying to have a role in that by having exhibitions that help create a deeper understanding of what it is to be an artist.”

For Alex Anderson, from Seattle, Washington, a workshop with potter Sam Chung at Penland was a perspective-changing experience. “Before that, I avoided handbuilding, because I saw it as imprecise and less elegant than thrown forms,” he admits, “but the techniques I learned from Sam expanded my understanding of what is possible with clay.” In Sam’s class, Alex felt encouraged to explore altering the forms he throws on the wheel, and combining handbuilt and thrown pieces. “It changed my approach to my work,” he says.

Alex’s participation in Fusing Form, Surface, and Idea, in the clay studio in July and August, 2010, was made possible for him by the Orville and Pat Chatt Memorial Scholarship. Named in honor of the parents of recent Penland resident artist David Chatt, also a Seattle native, the scholarship offers full tuition for a summer session to a student living in the Pacific Northwest who shows artistic promise and financial need. “I would definitely not have been able to take this class without a scholarship,” Alex says, “because my college tuition is quite high, so an additional educational expense would not have been possible. I’m grateful for this wonderful opportunity.”

Now in his junior year at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, majoring Studio Art and Chinese, Alex is spending the current semester abroad, exploring and studying China’s famous “city of porcelain,” Jingdezhen. “So far I have been exposed to amazing artists and masters of every segment of the ceramic world whose families have worked in their respective fields for generations,” he relates. “It is truly exciting to be in a place where tall porcelain vases line the streets and artists’ studios are everywhere and always open.” Alex has been keeping a blog to document his adventure in China, and its effect on his own work in ceramics, which you can follow online at http://alexandersonceramics.tumblr.com/

Alex describes his current studio work as functional sculpture. “I appreciate a strong, functional teapot or vase, but I also like my work to have meaning,” he says. “However, I also make many pieces with the simple purpose of being beautiful.” He recently finished a series of oyster-shaped teapots intended to represent the process of creating beauty and value from negative experiences, inspired by the manner in which oysters deal with irritants by turning them into pearls. He plans to work next on a series of vases, beginning with the idea of “the societal pressures people face to achieve an image that aligns with what they consider to be attractive.” “Beauty,” he adds, “is a powerful force.”

If you’re in the area this weekend, don’t miss the Toe River Studio Tour. This twice-yearly event is a great chance to have a look at all the fabulous art being made here in Mitchell and Yancey counties (and to fill your holiday stockings with the local and handmade). Studios will be open to visitors from 12:00 to 4:00 pm on Friday, December 2, with a reception at the Spruce Pine TRAC Gallery from 5 to 7 pm. Visiting hours will be 10 am to 5 pm on Saturday and Sunday December 3 and 4. These free, self-guided tours offer visitors an opportunity to search out the professional artists and craftspeople working in the coves and hollows of the two rural mountain counties. More information, including a list of participating artists and galleries, and downloadable tour maps and studio tour guides, is available at the Toe River Arts Council website.