In addition to the talented artists on campus as students and instructors right now, we are lucky to have Jenni Sorkin at Penland. Jenni is an Assistant Professor of Contemporary Art History at the University of California, Santa Barbara and our 2016 Andrew Glasgow Resident Writer. Like everyone else here, Jenni is spending her time at Penland deeply engrossed in craft. Specifically, she will be working on an essay about abstraction and textiles which will be published in the catalog for the exhibition Boundary Markers: Outlier Artists and the Contemporary Mainstream. The exhibition is set to open at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. in 2018.
Just last month, Jenni’s book Live Form: Women, Ceramics and Community was published by the University of Chicago Press. The book investigates the influences of ceramics on the “artistic avant-garde” during the second half of the 20th century. It highlights three women—Marguerite Wildenhain, Mary Caroline (M. C.) Richards, and Susan Peterson—each one a ceramic artist “whose careers throughout the mid-twentieth century expand and enrich our current understanding of what socially engaged artistic practice is today.”
Jenni will present a talk based on Live Form on Sunday, August 21 at 8:15 PM in Northlight. The event is free, and all are welcome and encouraged to join.
Read more about Jenni and the Andrew Glasgow Writers Residency here.
