During our recent Fall Short Session, clay instructor Andy Shaw and his students visited Daniel Garver and Sean O’Connell, two Penland Resident Artsits who are currently working in clay. The first stop was Daniel Garver’s studio, pictured below.
Wrapping up a day of plate-making, the clay lovers walked down to The Barns after dinner to talk shop.
Though both residents work in clay, their processes are very different. Daniel Garver is using his residency to refine and expand his use of slipcasting to create clean, geometric objects.
Daniel shared some of the secrets of his work, from the challenges of working with porcelain to his use of “deflocculent” in his process.
Daniel’s work is linear, organic, and colorful!
Fall Short Session instructor Andy Shaw was intrigued by Daniel’s unique use of molds
When students arrived at Sean O’Connell’s studio, he was busy carving wooden spoons.
Sean is mastering the use of the wood kiln and exploring organic, spontaneous surface design in his work.
Students had lots of questions, the most common one being, “How did you make this one?”
Making use of wax resists, multiple firings, and gestural embellishments, Sean’s work is a cornucopia of texture and color.
Penland is currently home to eight resident artists, working in different media. The residency is intended to be an opportunity to test ideas and take risks that will have a lasting effect on their work and lives. Penland Resident Artists live and work at Penland for 3 years. Both Sean and Daniel arrived at Penland in the fall of 2021, so we are looking forward to watching their practices evolve over the next two years.
You can visit Sean’s and Daniel’s websites to learn more about their work. If you’re in the area, don’t miss the opportunity to stop by for a visit!
Together with Adam A., Everett, Ellie, and Adam W., Julia will join our Resident Artist Program to set up her studio for a three-year residency at The Barns this month. These newest residents will be joining current residents Nate Cotterman, Jason Hartsoe, and Kit Paulson. Please get to know them below, give them a follow, and say hi!
Julia Harrison
Julia is a sculptor, jeweler, and public artist. Woodcarving is her core practice, but she also enjoys experimenting with a variety of materials and techniques. Recently she has been carving amber, casting concrete, building paper lamps, and creating installations out of cookie cutters. Julia earned an MFA in Metals from the University of Washington and a degree in Metalwork Conservation from West Dean College (UK). She teaches regularly and was the Jewelry/Metals Studio Manager at Pratt Fine Arts Center in Seattle for five years. Julia has previously participated in residencies at the Center for Art in Wood and the Bunnell Street Arts Center.
Adam Atkinson and Everett Hoffman are cross-disciplinary artists and collaborative partners, whose studio practices intersect in their shared connection to craft, adornment, and identity. Having both grown up in the Pacific Northwest, their individual artistic paths question the hyper masculine tropes associated with the wild west. From the perspective of a queer male experience, they make work through mixed-media installations, wood carvings, photography, and body adornment. Atkinson and Hoffman both graduated with a BFA from Boise State University in 2013, and an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2018 (Hoffman) and East Carolina University in 2019 (Atkinson).
Atkinson and Hoffman have participated in a number of exhibitions nationally and internationally including the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, Contemporary Craft in Pittsburgh, SOIL Gallery in Seattle, Wayne Center for Contemporary Craft in Pennsylvania, the Benaki Museum in Greece, and Nogoya Zokei University in Japan. They are co-curators of Spectral Matter Projects, an annual exhibition platform for LGBTQIA+ artists navigating queer perspectives in craft. Slippery and Subversive marked the first exhibition in this series, highlighting artists whose work takes a position of slippage and ambiguity as a way to redefine body-object relationships.
Ellie Richards looks to the tradition of both woodworking and the readymade to create eclectic assemblage, installation, and objects exploring intersections of labor and leisure. In addition to mining the histories of furniture and forestry as cornerstones in her research, she has traveled extensively to investigate the roles that play and improvisation have on the artistic process. Her work, both furniture and sculpture, has been included in exhibitions at the Mint Museum, Center for Craft, SOFA Chicago, and the Society of Contemporary Craft. After receiving an MFA at Arizona State University, Richards participated in residencies, fellowships, and teaching appointments, respectively, at Anderson Ranch, Peters Valley, the Vermont Studio Center, and Appalachian Center for Craft. From there she was Penland’s wood studio coordinator from 2015-2019. This year Richards was awarded Windgate residencies at the Center for Art in Wood and in the wood/furniture design programs at San Diego State University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Adam Whitney is a metalsmith who focuses his work on forming and shaping sheet metal into volumetric forms by means of raising, chasing, and repoussé. He is constantly exploring and pushing his understanding and knowledge of the craft. When not in his studio, Adam travels for various projects and to teach workshops, bringing his passion for metalsmithing wherever he goes.
Adam received his BFA in Crafts / Materials Studies from Virginia Commonwealth University, where he concentrated in metalsmithing. He has worked as a bench jeweler and metals studio coordinator, taught jewelry design at Raffles College in Kuala Lumpur, and now runs his own studio, AW Metalsmith.
This crew, from the TV show A Craftsman’s Legacy, was at Penland last week filming in the studio of resident artist Seth Gould (in the gray and white check shirt). That’s host Eric Gorges (in the blue and black check shirt) next to Seth. The weird thing on the tripod is a camera jib. There’s a camera on one end and a counterweight and monitor on the other.
The show is available online and also airs on CreateTV. We don’t know when Seth’s episode will be available, but we’ll keep you posted.
