Month: September 2011

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An Artists’ Retreat


 
Jason Burnett demonstrating screenprinting
Former Penland core fellow Jason Burnett demonstrating screenprinting for a group of Penland instructors.

This week at Penland is entirely out of the ordinary. We are hosting a five day retreat for 100 Penland instructors. All fifteen of our studios are available for the participants. Along with our excellent studio coordinators, each studio has a studio assistant to help folks find things and figure things out. Many people are working in studios they are unfamiliar with.

Everyone was polled ahead of time to find out what sorts of demonstrations they might like to see and/or offer and then our program staff worked with everyone to create a schedule. All of this is optional of course; some folks may decide to stay in one studio and work on a project, others may move around a lot; we expect a lot of people to be teaching each other.

Steve Miller in the letterpress studio
Steve Miller covering the basics of letterpress printing.

We hope that participants will share their teaching ideas and philosophies, strengthen connections with each other, try new materials, explore new ideas, learn from each other, get back in touch with what it means to be a student, and, of course, have fun.

Furniture maker Richard Prisco discussing power tool use in the wood shop.

Artist/educators Christina Shmigel and Jeff Goodman worked with program director Dana Moore to plan three evening events (also optional) that are aimed at stimulating ideas and discussions.

These pictures are from Sunday, the first full day of the retreat. We’ll be posting on the blog regularly during the week, so stay tuned.

Mark Aspery
Blacksmith Mark Aspery demonstrating in the iron studio.

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Fred Fenster Talks Pewter

Renowned pewter smith and educator Fred Fenster, Penland’s 2011 Outstanding Artist Educator, gave a luncheon lecture in the metals studio at this year’s annual benefit auction, about the history and possibilities of pewter as a craft material. The roar sounding in the background is the first of several sudden, violent thunderstorms that blew across the mountains that weekend. If you’re a fan of metals and metal casting, you should have a look:

Thanks, Fred. We’re so pleased that you keep coming back here to teach.

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A letterpress “T” for the Times

Penland letterpress instructor Bryan Baker was the subject of a nice feature on the New York Times culture blog on September 6. The Times has commissioned a series of artists–including Bryan–to create original works interpreting the paper’s iconic “T” logo. Bryan has been working for several years on a series of images made by creating layouts of casino dice in the bed of a Vandercook press and printing directly from them. There’s almost no limit to the number of ways you can arrange a grid of dice, and Bryan uses them to create subtle and clever compositions. For the Times prints, he carved the “T” as a linoleum block and printed it over several different dice patterns.

Among other things, the blog post by Naomi Reis says this:

“I love the physicality of letterpress printing — it is a very sculptural process, as you more or less have to ‘build’ what you print from,” Baker said. “It’s a blast to be working in this day and age and not be bound to the digital landscape. My main tools are lead, wood, linoleum, ink, paper, saws and knives.” His prints remind us that off the digital grid, there’s magic to be found in the everyday: that through the gamble of trial and error, basic analog tools can create things that are once utterly simple and utterly beguiling.

You see Bryan’s five “T” prints and read the post here. (Be sure to click on “full screen.”)

Bryan’s website is here.