CLICK HERE to see a very short slideshow of current Penland fungi.
Photos by Betsy Dewitt with ranting commentary by Robin Dreyer.

No Flash? Too bad. Here’s a link to the slightly inferior YouTube version.

Here is a 3-minute slideshow from our Annual Benefit Auction, which took place on August 13-14. You can also navigate through the slides one at a time by using the arrows in the lower right-hand corner. If you are using a Flash-challenged device, you can also watch it on YouTube (but it doesn’t look as good).

Penland’s 25th Annual Benefit Auction was a brilliant success. Thanks to all of the artists, attendees, staff, and the 200+ volunteers who made it a great weekend and an amazingly smooth event.

Revenue from art sales: $333,716
Fund-A-Need revenue: $34,750
Total revenue for the weekend: $514,069
Total attendance: 527

We sold 223 pieces of work in the four auctions for an average of 104 percent of retail value.

Total revenue was $33,884 higher than 2009.

We are collectively thrilled!

OK, anyone who was here will tell you that this parade actually took place on July 3, but wouldn’t it look kind of dumb to put July 3 Parade in a headline? Or maybe that’s just silly enough that it would get more attention than July 4 Parade, but we were, after all, celebrating July 4 (a day early for reasons that were not entirely clear) so this was, conceptually at least, a July 4 parade even if it didn’t take place on July 4 (the whole problem can sort of be avoided by calling it an Independence Day parade, but it also did not take place on Independence Day).

In any case, it was lots of fun with the usual homemade shenanigans (you might think the Little Rascals are in charge of this place). Click the picture to see a 3-minute slide show of the parade (with music!).

Please note: If you are using a device that does not like Flash (iPhone, iPod, iPad) then this won’t work, but you should  be able to watch it on YouTube, which doesn’t look quite as good, but should work. (We didn’t embed a YouTube player here, because then everyone would just click on that, and the other version really does look better–especially in full screen. Tradeoffs, you know.)