Author: Penland

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Aloft!

Spring printmaking class outside their studio

Program director (and photographer) Dana Moore and I had a thrilling experience last week riding in a helicopter over Penland so we could make some aerial photographs of the campus. We’ll be using a few of them in our upcoming fall/spring catalog and we’ll find lots of other uses for them as well–starting with this blog. The photo above shows the letterpress and print studio in the middle and the clay studio on the left.

Main campus from over the meadow (Dana Moore)

Here’s a long view from above the meadow. The red spot in the middle of the frame is the roof of the Craft House.

Main campus from above the Craft House (Robin Dreyer)

Here you can see from the Craft House (lower right) all the way up the hill to the wood studio.

Main campus from over the wood studio (Robin Dreyer)

Now we are above the wood studio looking down the hill with the meadow in the distance. To the left of the wood studio is the iron studio. The next two buildings down the hill are glass and Northlight.

The back side of Horner Hall

This is Horner Hall, home of the Penland Gallery. There is a larger group of aerial photos on our Facebook page if you want to see more. And the answer to your question is: helicopters are really, really fun.

–Robin Dreyer

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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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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