Category: Photo of the Week

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Handmade Bonnets, Handmade Eggs

This past Sunday, Penland students, instructors, staff, and friends celebrated Easter and the arrival of spring the best way we know how: with craft, community, costumes, and a bit of candy thrown in for good measure. The annual Easter Bonnet Parade included some impressively creative entries, including a panoramic “Bunny Retirement Home” hat that took first place in the 12-and-under division, a hat adorned with marshmallow peeps and layers of pink flowers, and a rather fashionable leather cap with a giant paper bow. The handmade eggs for the egg hunt were similarly impressive: a fried egg made of white and yellow leather, carved clay eggs with dinosaurs and roses, eggs decorated with hundreds and hundreds of sewn glass seed beads, and turned wooden eggs made on the lathe, to name a few. Take a look at the slideshow above for more views of the fun!

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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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Photo of the Week: Core Fellows, 2018 Edition

Penland's 2018 core fellows

Here they are, our 2018 crew of core fellows! These are the talented, knowledgeable, caring, helpful faces that will be working alongside you in the studios this year, helping out in the dining hall and kitchen, organizing parties, hosting slide nights, and so much more. Penland’s core fellows really are at the heart of this community, and we’re so glad to have these nine here with us. Back row: Joshua Fredock, Elliot Keeley, Katherine Toler; front row: Corey Pemberton, Luke Gnadinger, Devyn Vasquez, Stormie Burns, Kento Saisho; seated: Sarah Rose LeJeune.