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Photo of the Week: Experimental Drawing

working on a collaged sketchbook

Up in the drawing and painting studio, Evie Woltil Richner and her students are experimenting with mark making, process, and play. They workshop is called Experimental Drawing & Sketchbook Development, but a quick look around the room reveals that the first week has gone far beyond drawing to include collage, photography, brushwork, and more. Above, student Amy Robinson adds text to the richly detailed book she is creating. Meanwhile, core fellow Kento Saisho experiments with 3D forms in cardboard and gesso. The goal of it all is less about a product and more about revitalizing each artist’s flow of ideas and energy.

developing maquettes with cardboard and gesso

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Painting Northlight

The new Northlight Building at Penland School

With the photo and paper studios scheduled to be in use during fifth session, and annual benefit auction events planned for the social hall, the new Northlight building is nearing completion. On Friday, June 22, these guys were busy with exterior painting.

A nice touch is this siding on the south side of the social hall. It looks pre-weathered because it is; these boards were salvaged from the old Northlight building.

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Thread, Color, Attention

Two embroidered tapestries by Ruth Miller. Left: “The Evocation and Capture of Aphrodite,” 36 x 30 inches. Right: “Blue Peace,” 38 x 25 inches. The piece on the left was on display this spring at the Penland Gallery.

This spring, visitors to the Penland Gallery got the chance to see a piece by Ruth Miller as part of the exhibition I dwell in Possibility. The work’s vivid colors and rich texture were the first things that drew the eye upon stepping through the doorway, and many visitors were overheard exclaiming something along the lines of, “I need to get a closer look at that painting!” It wasn’t until they were within a few feet that they realized the work they were admiring was embroidery.

Through a lifetime of needlework, careful observation, and inquisitive self-reflection, Ruth Miller has mastered the art of embroidery as portraiture. She works large and with impressive realism, combining the precision and color sense of a pointillist painter with the narrative skill of a novelist. Her work, above all, is thoughtful and thought provoking, and it’s been a thrill to gain a deeper sense of her process this session as she’s been teaching in our textiles studio.

Ruth (in the red shirt) talking through her process during a demonstration in Upper Textiles.

In her workshop Embroidered Portraiture, Ruth and her students are approaching needle, fabric, and yarn as tools to transmit what they see, not merely what they think they see. In the process, Ruth has presented them with a crash course in observational drawing, color theory, stitching patterns, and more. To see the tables strewn with reference photos and pencil sketches and yarn samples doesn’t fully illustrate the time and care that go into these works—a full portrait generally takes Ruth about a year to complete!—but it does help to deepen our appreciation for the craft and mastery behind each one.

Stitching samples, color theory explanations, and colored pencil drawings from Ruth's Penland workshop

If you’re intrigued, we’d highly recommend taking a few minutes to read Ruth’s own description of her process and motivations on her website.