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Pysanky Party

Decorating eggs with wax resist

This Sunday, Penland will hold its annual Easter celebration and egg hunt, which always includes an impressive range of handmade eggs by students and instructors. Many are crafted using the materials at hand in the session’s workshops—wood, glass, iron, clay, and more—but there are often wildcard entries made by Penland’s friends and neighbors, too. This year, thanks to an egg decorating party hosted by Penland’s Community Collaborations Manager Stacey Lane, the hunt will also include a bunch of eggs dyed using the traditional Ukranian method of pysanky.

The pysanky technique is a layered wax resist technique, something like batik on eggs. With a skilled hand, highly complex patterns can be built up with successive applications of wax and dye, wax and dye, wax and dye. The final step is to warm the egg over a small flame, wipe off the hot wax, and reveal the vibrant pattern hiding beneath. Keep an eye out for these beauties tucked around campus this Sunday!

Finished eggs in a variety of colors

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Penland at VisArts!

work by Susan Feagin, Ellie Richards, Ian Henderson, and Amanda Thatch
Ceramic tray by Susan Feagin, wooden boxes by Ellie Richards, metal hammer by Ian Henderson, indigo sample by Amanda Thatch

Penland’s studio coordinators keep everything ticking in the studios—they communicate with instructors, order supplies, ensure that our spaces are equipped and ready for a wide variety of workshops, and troubleshoot on the fly. They’re an incredible source of knowledge in their areas and a primary point of contact for our students. But outside of their jobs, each coordinator is also a talented artist, and we’re thrilled whenever they get an opportunity to show their work or teach a class.

This spring, we’re excited to have seven Penland studio coordinators heading up to Virginia for a weekend “Penland Takeover” at the wonderful Visual Arts Center of Richmond. Their workshops will run Saturday, May 12 and Sunday, May 13 from 10 AM until 4 PM. If a weekend of learning something new with some of our favorite people sounds like time well spent, then we’d encourage you to sign up! Registration for each of the following workshops is open now.

The Sculptural Box
Ellie Richards, All Levels

Indigo Paste Resist
Amanda Thatch, All Levels

Slip Transfers on Clay
Susan Feagin, Intermediate Level

Exploring Letterpressed Objects
Jay Fox, All Levels

Blacksmithing Spoons + Bottle Openers
Daniel T. Beck, All Levels

Tool-Making for Jewelers
Ian Henderson, Intermediate Level

Printing + Manipulating Cyanotypes
Betsy DeWitt, All Levels

Over the years, so many artists have benefitted from time at both VisArts and Penland. We’re grateful to VisArts for putting together this awesome weekend of programming and for strengthening the connections between our two organizations!

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Community Open House 2018

Every year, the Penland Community Open House falls on a Saturday afternoon in March, one week before our spring workshops begin. With the help of over a hundred expert volunteers, we run activities in each studio that highlight the different mediums we teach at Penland, from ceramics and letterpress to hot glass and wood. All afternoon, visitors come through to watch and learn and—especially—to get their hands dirty and make something themselves. It’s the perfect way to wake up our studios after the sleepy weeks of February and to celebrate the craft and community that have been at Penland’s heart since the very beginning.

This year, we welcomed roughly 700 visitors to the Community Open House—young, old, experienced, and complete beginners alike. Some activities were returning favorites, like learning to throw a clay pot on the wheel, forging a steel hook with hammer and anvil, casting a small object in pewter, decorating a sheet of paste paper, and blowing a glass cup. But there’s always something new, too, even for those who come back to enjoy the open house year after year.

In the photo activity, for example, visitors got to decorate their very own cyanotype tote bags to take home. The process started in a “dim room” where UV light had been blocked from the windows with a red film. There, visitors laid out patterns on their coated bags from cut paper stencils—geometric shapes, their initials, mountainscapes, and more. Once complete, the patterns were held in place by sheets of clear plastic and exposed in the sun for twelve minutes. The coated areas that saw sunlight turned a deep, rich blue, while the areas under the black paper remained white.

Also new this year was a raku activity on the kiln pad of the clay studio. Visitors got to choose a bisqued pot, glaze it, and then watch as our expert volunteers loaded it into the kiln, heated it up to a glowing orange, and then quickly transferred it to a smoking barrel of wood chips and sawdust. The whole process took under an hour, and a certain aura of magic seemed to cling to the pots as they emerged with shiny coats of bright red and jewel green. Not a bad souvenir to take home with you!

We couldn’t make all this fun happen without the dedication and hard work of our wonderful volunteers. We also owe a big thank you to Dr. Taylor Townsend, DDS of Spruce Pine, who generously supports the Community Open House each year. And finally, thanks to all our visitors for joining us—we love sharing Penland with you!

See more of this year’s activities in the slideshow below.