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A Tradition of Innovation

KT Hancock at Penland
Student KT Hancock working in the Penland iron studio. Photograph by Mike Belleme for WNC Magazine.

 

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:

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.

 

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Photo(s) of the Week: Canoes of Bamboo and Plastic

Tom Huang skinning a canoe

Instructor Tom Huang and his assistant, Reed Hansuld, putting the skin on a canoe outside the wood studio. The ribs of the canoe were cut from plywood, the shell was made from strips of split bamboo. The skin they are applying is recycled grocery bags laminated with spray adhesive. They applied 6 or 8 layers of plastic to each canoe. The class built five canoes using this method.

 

Bamboo canoe on the water

It sounds a bit sketchy, and the boats were intended to be somewhat ephemeral. But when they put them on the water, they behaved just like canoes.

 

Bamboo canoes on the water

Here’s the flotilla (plus one dog) on its way down the Toe River.