Student Amber Chambers working on a large head in Jenny Mendes’s fall clay class.
Month: November 2012
Robin Dreyer: What I Learned at Penland
Several weeks ago I attended a three-day workshop offered by the Center for Digital Storytelling. The subject was audio slideshows, a.k.a. “digital stories.” My reason for going was an interest in making short audio-visual pieces for this blog, telling stories from Penland students and instructors. However, the workshop is structured around first-person stories (they want you to “tell a story that only you can tell”), so I decided to tell a Penland story of my own.
The story comes from a photography class I taught in 2008. The class was called “A Day in the Life,” and you can see a slideshow of the whole class project here. The video above has to do with something important I learned while teaching the class.
If this style of media interests you, I can highly recommend the CDS workshop (they teach them in several different locations). You can see many other pieces made in their workshops on the CDS YouTube page. Many thanks to our excellent leaders Stefani Sese and Lisa Haynes and to all the great people who took the workshop with me — they were so supportive and generous, I thought I was at Penland.
–Robin Dreyer, communications manager
Spring into Wood-fired Pottery with Kevin Crowe & Dan Finnegan!
If you love wood-fired pottery, Penland’s spring clay concentration offers a rare opportunity to build and fire a wood kiln with two of the most knowledgeable and experienced teachers in the field.
“This century will bring an even more digitized life to the developed world; the information river will be up and out of its banks and the pressure to eat it in the car will seem normal. Many of the functions we make pots for will merge, transform and disappear. Making pots will be an act of civil disobedience. Time has become money. Our pots will be needed more than ever before. A bowl of tea between silent lovers, the salad bowl at the table of noisy friends and family, the coffee mug just before the kids rise – all quietly keep our souls alive. They make love stay. When the moon is right, we make pots that recognize and define sacred spaces, mystery and tenderness. At this brittle and exciting edge of the 21st century, we will make pots with a renewed awareness of how essential our work is, that what we do matters. We make a quiet difference and sometimes that’s all it takes.” – Kevin Crowe
Kevin Crowe has 30 years’ experience as a studio potter, and 20 as a teacher.
You can click here to visit Kevin’s website, where you can learn more about him and his work.
“It wasn’t until I went to college that I got to make my first pot. I eventually attended three different schools, getting more and more interested in clay, but with very little idea of what it could lead me to other than teaching. I found my direction when the opportunity came to train with Ray Finch and his small team at the Winchcombe Pottery in Gloucestershire, England. A pottery has been on this site for 200 years, and Ray has led it making ‘domestic ware’ (pots for the table, pots for cooking and serving, and pots for the garden) for more than 50 years. Ray and his mentor, Michael Cardew, drew inspiration from rich 17th century slipware forms and the sturdy pots of medieval Europe. Not only do I admire the basic ideas of form that those old pots possess, but I’ve also grown to appreciate the important connection between food and pots that inspired their work…
I set out to make useful pots that honored the tradition of Winchcombe without being mere imitations. Using multiple layers of traditional materials and techniques, I try to make pots that fit in with today’s world.” – Dan Finnegan
Dan Finnegan has also been making and firing pots for at least 30 years and teaching for at least 20.
You can click here to visit Dan’s website, where you can learn more about him and his work.
Or click here to visit his blog, where you can read up on his current projects.
Together, they will be teaching:
Building Fire, Feeding Flame: March 10 – May 2, 2013
We will thoroughly engage with wood-fired pottery by building a two-chambered wood kiln with one chamber set up for salt firing. As we build, we will explore kiln design, construction techniques, and combustion cycles. We will also throw pots for the first series of firings, developing forms, slips, and stacking patterns that best exploit flame and ash. Kevin will be with us for the first month as we build the kiln. During the second month, Dan will be joined by three guest artists, local potters Michael Hunt, Michael Kline, and Mark Peters, who will each lead a firing. Kiln building is empowering and exciting, and it’s also a construction project, so each student should bring work shoes, eye protection, and gloves, and expect to engage in manual labor. Each person should also bring a pot, any pot, to discuss and a poem, any poem, to share. This class is open to students of all levels, but a sense of humor is required.