A Penland Studio Style photo of jeweler and instructor Lola Brooks from Spring Concentration 2011 makes it’s glamorous public return in the pages of Ornament Magazine this month! Click here to check out the preview on Facebook. Or click here to read the full article.
“279forgetmeknots” brooch of thirty continuous feet of knotted stainless steel (914.4 centimeters), fourteen karat gold, broken Victorian coral petals, 8.9 centimeters high
Metals instructor Lola Brooks, and her extravagant jewelry, is featured in this month’s Ornament magazine. The article begins,
Lola Brooks is a little intimidating. She is tall and thin, with features that are angular, but delicate. Dark curls frame her pale skin and her eyes are hidden behind oversized rhinestone glasses (one of about a hundred vintage pairs she stores in a mock python-skin-covered suitcase). One arm is covered with tattoos of thorny roses, diamonds, bows, and a heart with a dagger. Her attire is remarkably precise. A natural introvert, she masterfully puts up a cool exterior, honed by two decades spent in New York City. Now she has retreated to the Georgia countryside and “the crust is flaking off.”
Read the whole article here.
Bill Thomas’s recent workshop at Penland School of Crafts was a sort of homecoming for the woodworker, whose parents, Vern and Shirley Thomas, live in nearby Spruce Pine. “Most of my family is buried in Bandana,” he recalls. “I was born in Spindale, and my father was born near Micaville. He moved out in the early ’40s, looking for work. He moved back the day he retired.” Thomas taught “Building the Fox Canoe,” a class featuring his technique for fabricating a sleek, lightweight canoe from plywood panels and fiberglass, in Penland’s wood studio the week of April 7 – 13. He has been a professional woodworker for over 35 years, designing and building custom projects from cabinetry and furniture to sailboats, powerboats, kayaks and canoes, for a wide range of clients. He lives in southern Maine, where he says the environment reminds him of North Carolina. There’s more information about Bill at billthomaswoodworking.com.
Jack Mauch, Tavern mug, 2012, pewter, 11 x 5 x 5 in. Photo: Jack Mauch
Congratulations to recent former core fellow Jack Mauch on his gorgeous spread in the April/May issue of American Craft magazine:
“It’s hard enough to pull off humor in art, much less combine humor and elegance in the same piece. The whole thing can end up a painfully awkward match, like a bad blind date.
“When it works, though, the union can be sublime. And Jack Mauch seems to have the touch. Not only can he switch effortlessly from one extreme (his exquisite salt and pepper shakers) to the other (the chicken-legged tavern mug), he can blend the two into one seamless whole…” – Judy Arginteanu
Click here to read the complete article.
John Hodgman’s column in the Sunday New York Times is accompanied by a portrait of him done by former Penland core fellow Kreh Mellick. Too danged cool!
Penland instructor Michael Bondi was featured in the Wall Street Journal on March 28 in a nice article by Sarah Tilton. The article begins with this:
Michael Bondi didn’t set out to be a blacksmith. After starting a doctoral program in biology, the Washington, D.C., native took a year off to travel that led to an introduction to a blacksmith in Italy. Mr. Bondi then spent six months studying the craft, took a job with another blacksmith in Los Angeles and, eventually, launched his own studio in 1977 in Berkeley, Calif., with his brother, who also took up the waning art form.
More than three decades later, Mr. Bondi, 62, says he has never been without work. He is known for architectural blacksmithing using combinations of wrought iron, steel, bronze, copper, nickel alloys and aluminum. While most metalworking is now mass-produced using molds in factories, Mr. Bondi continues the tradition of working freehand, using the same tools that blacksmiths have relied on for hundreds of years. “I’m working directly on the metal,” he explains. “I’m not melting it into a liquid and pouring it into a mold.”
The story is accompanied by a beautiful slideshow of Michael in his studio (if you like tools, you’ll want to look at these pictures). You can read the rest of the story and see the photographs here.
Our first one-week class at Penland this spring was a special treat, added to the schedule only a few months ago: Slow and Savor, a workshop on mindfulness and service in the craft arts led by beloved Penland neighbor and many-time clay teacher Paulus Berensohn and meditation teacher and former core student Caverly Morgan.
The class practiced daily meditation and mindful-attention to their actions from the walk to lunch to the studio bench, created handmade journals, made bowls for the Empty Bowls Project, wrote love letters to their future selves, and became more deeply acquainted with clay – its story, properties, and behavior.
The workshop reunited Paulus with one of his first students, Jeff Carter. Jeff took a class with Paulus at Swarthmore College (Paulus’ first, he says) many years ago. He came down to Penland in summer 1966 with Toshiko Takaezu and Byron Temple, staying on at the invitation of Bill and Jane Brown to manage the clay studio, in effect becoming one of the school’s first studio coordinators. He’s since had a long career as a physical therapist in Charlotte and Boone, and recently retired to Deep Gap, North Carolina.
