New Resident Artists

April 1, 2008

Penland School Welcomes New Resident Artists

Penland School of Crafts is pleased to welcome four artists to its resident artist program. Devin Burgess, David Chatt, Margaret Cogswell, and Sarah Martin began their residencies this winter, joining current resident artists Vivian Beer, Matt Kelleher, and Shoko Teruyama. The program provides three-years of low-cost housing and studio space to full-time, self-supporting artists at transitional points in their careers. It allows participants to develop their work in an atmosphere of learning and community where they may choose to interact with the hundreds of studio artists, teachers, and students who pass through the school each year. It also provides Penland students with models for a life in craft.

Devin Burgess is a glassblower who has been running his own studio in Bakersville, North Carolina for the past three years making production and one-of-a-kind pieces. He has a BFA in sculpture and printmaking from Alfred University in New York. He has been a Penland instructor and has exhibited his work at the Mint Museum of Craft + Design (North Carolina), the Philadelphia Museum Craft Show, and the Smithsonian Craft Show (D.C.). He plans to use the time at Penland to concentrate more fully on sculpture.

David Chatt is a sculptor from Seattle who has worked with glass beads for the past 23 years. He has a BA in design from Western Washington University, and he has taught at Penland, Haystack (Maine), and Arrowmont (Tennessee). His bead sculpture has been widely exhibited and is in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Tacoma Art Museum (Washington), the Museum of Arts and Design (New York City), and the Bead Museum (Arizona). He has been exploring glass casting for several years and his goal for this residency is to expand his skills with cast glass and integrate it with his knowledge of form, structure, and assemblage.

Margaret Cogswell is a book artist from Asheville, North Carolina. She has a BA in sculpture from Rhodes College (Tennessee). She has had three solo exhibitions in North Carolina and her work has been exhibited at the Columbia College Chicago Center for Books and Paper, the Fayetteville Museum of Art (North Carolina), The Women’s Center (North Carolina), and in several touring shows. At Penland, she will be expanding her work in the direction of interactive and movable sculptural books.

Sarah Martin is a furniture maker who has been living and working in San Diego, California. She has an MFA in woodworking and furniture design from University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. Her work has been exhibited at the Fuller Craft Museum (Massachusetts), the Lux Center for the Arts (Nebraska), the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft, and the Worcester Center for Crafts (Massachusetts). Her goal for her residency is to develop a conceptually-based body of experimental woodworks that use furniture forms as vehicles for personal narrative.

More information about the Penland School of Crafts resident artist program is available here.

Penland School of Crafts is a national center for craft education located in Western North Carolina. Penland offers workshops in books and paper, clay, drawing, glass, iron, metals, printmaking, photography, textiles, and wood. The school also sponsors artists’ residencies, an outreach program, and a craft gallery open to the public. Penland is a nonprofit, tax-exempt institution which receives support from the North Carolina Arts Council, an agency funded by the State of North Carolina and the National Endowment for the Arts, which believes that a great nation deserves great art.