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Tom Spleth Makes a Plaster Form at Slide Night

When instructor Tom Spleth did his slide night at the beginning of his eight-week class in making ceramics from plaster molds, he projected slides of his work on the wall, then poured plaster on a large piece of masonite, cued some lovely music, and demonstrated his method for making a sculptural form from drying plaster. Staff member Mark Boyd was on hand with a camera and made this beautiful 5-minute video titled Fluid Form.

A technical note on what Tom is doing: The plaster form he makes in the video would be the first step in the creation of a hollow, porcelain sculpture or vase. After the plaster form dries, Tom refines it with scrapers and other tools, then he makes a multipart plaster mold from the form. The next step is to pour clay slip into the mold, let it sit for a bit and then pour it out again, leaving layer of slip clinging to the inside of the mold. The mold is then opened and the clay form inside can be glazed and fired.  –Robin Dreyer

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Penland Gallery Artist of the Week – Joanna Gollberg, Jeweler

Prong Necklace
Prong Necklace

We have been showing Joanna’s work for nearly 10 years in the gallery. Her relationship with the school has changed from student, to studio assistant, to extraordinary Penland instructor. She has been published quite a bit, including authoring a number of really smart metals books herself. Her work evolves and reinvents itself – pulling in some surprising materials and reinterpreting traditional techniques in ingenious ways.  The body of work we have been showing this spring is from her Prong Series – cut stones – some polished and others matte and rough – mostly set in delicate but exaggerated prong settings or clustered luxuriantly.  Not surprisingly, the work has a magnetic attraction.

Moss Brooch
Moss Brooch

About Joanna
My grandmother spent a large part of her life as an enamelist. In 1992, she gave me all her enamels and her enameling kilns. I decided to learn how to use them by taking a class at the Penland School of Crafts. I enjoyed this basic metalsmithing and enameling class so much that I set up my own beginner’s studio in the basement of the English building at my college. I continued to make jewelry while still studying for my BA degree. After graduating from Warren Wilson College in 1995, I went back to school at the Fashion Institute of Technology where I received a 2-year degree in Jewelry Design, after studying with some of New York’s most fabulous industry jewelers and designers. I began my jewelry business in 1997, and I currently spend my time making jewelry, teaching people how to make jewelry, and just absolutely loving my job. I live in my hometown of Asheville, NC with my husband, our son, two dogs, and a cat.

Prong Series Rings
Prong Series Rings

About the Work
My work is based on elementary design forms. I love using repetition of simple shapes in ways that make the forms come alive. It is exciting for me to explore the relationship of my hands with tools, and the tools with the material. I am interested in movement in my jewelry, and how the jewelry will move in relationship to the body when it is worn. I strive to make jewelry that is interesting and new, that reflects my way of looking at how things should be made, and that is wearable without going out of style.

Penland Gallery web page
Joanna’s website

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Mysterious lights hover over Northlight lawn

edwina-nightSadly, this is not a fabulous UFO sighting. It’s a picture made by student Edwina Bringle during a session of night photography that was part of a photo class I taught at Penland last week. What you are seeing is an exposure of about 30 seconds made while visiting teacher Jeff Goodman was running up the hill making circles with a bright flashlight. Although most folks are used to thinking of cameras as stopping time, this is an example of how you can use a camera to record time (which, really, is what they always do, it’s just that we usually use them to record very, very short amounts of time). Both the floating lights and the circles on the ground were made by the whirling flashlight. Cool, huh?

The class was about black and white film photography, which is how Edwina made her picture, but for our night session we also made some digital images so we could get an idea what was happening in the cameras. This is one of the digitals of our studio assistant Rebecca Moyer making stars in the grass with a green laser. We love making pictures in the dark.  –Robin Dreyer

Rebecca Moyer making laser stars
Rebecca Moyer making laser stars