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Photo(s) of the Week: Painted Warps

alke groppel-wegener painting a warp at Penland

Student Alke Groppel-Wegener experimenting with warp painting in the weaving studio. Alke teaches writing to art and design students at the University of Staffordshire in England. The university gave her a term off so she could take Robin Johnston’s weaving Concentration. The class was introduced to painted warps by visiting artist Andrea Donnelly.

 

painted warp

This is a single warp with a section painted by each member of the class. It will be wound onto a loom and woven into one long piece of cloth.

 

 

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A Short Story About a Knob

ultrasonic cleaner

A couple of weeks ago, staff member Elaine Bleakney posted this picture on our Instagram feed. It was captioned with an interchange she had with metals coordinator Ian Henderson, which mentioned the missing knob. (If you can’t read it, click on the picture to make it bigger.) Our friend Joe Lee (a.k.a. @clockfeathers on Instagram) suggested that someone could 3D print a new knob.

 

ian hendrson and daniel beck with printrbot

Joe follows Penland pretty closely, so he probably knew, from this blog or Facebook, that Ian (left) was half owner, with iron coordinator Daniel T. Beck (right), of an assemble-it-yourself 3D printer called a Printrbot.

 

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Here’s the printer, fully assembled.

 

knob-1

So Ian, who is quite the tinkerer, designed this knob in the 3D modeling software, which he had learned quite a bit about while working on this excellent project.

 

ultrasonic cleaner

He sent the file to the printer, and here is the ultrasonic cleaner, made whole again.

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Smash Party

 

Smash party. Definition: a gathering where breakable objects are hurled at the concrete.

Inside a certain coffee house at a certain craft school located in the (usually) tranquil Blue Ridge Mountains, a smash party occurs when a certain Crystal Thomas declares to a certain Loring Taoka: smash party. Then they wait. They wait, their caffeinated hearts pounding, until the aforementioned coffee house is clear of those with more delicate sensibilities.

At this point, a sacred box of chipped or broken mugs and glasses– set tenderly aside for the purpose of the smash party–is brought to the counter.

 

smashparty1

 

The first rule of smash party: smash.

Second rule: enlist a certain Y-Sam Ktul to sweep up the pieces.

The third rule of smash party: destruction enables creation. Or something like that.

 

smashparty2