Penland People – Page 11 – The Penland Sketchbook

Posted on April 15, 2022May 18, 2022 by Penland

Introducing the 2022 Featured Artists for the 37th Annual Penland Benefit Auction!

To choose only three artists to honor at the Penland Benefit Auction from hundreds of talented current and former guest instructors, resident artists, and core fellows is the hardest of tasks, taken on with great care.

Our Featured Artists embody the spirit of Penland’s craft education programming. They represent a range of media and a balance of tradition and innovation, skill and imagination.

This year, we are very proud to honor Nancy Blum. Paul Briggs, and David Chatt. We look forward to celebrating these wonderful individuals and sharing more about their work with you!

The Benefit Auction is Penland School of Craft’s major annual fundraiser. A joyous and festive celebration of craft, community, and all things Penland, we will welcome collectors, curators, artists, and friends from far and wide.

Nancy Blum is known for her large-scale botanical drawings and public artworks. At Penland, she has empowered others to develop their own public art practices. Nancy’s ongoing “Black Drawings” series explores the interconnectivity of all living beings, playfully rendered depictions of scientific imaginings, abstractions of the natural world, and riffs on the brilliance found in pattern. She has created large-scale public art projects around the country, including a suite of botanically themed mosaics, located at the New York MTA’s historic 28th St. Station. Her drawings and sculptures have been represented in numerous exhibitions at galleries and other venues such as the Weatherspoon Art Museum at UNC Greensboro and the International Print Center and the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, both in New York City. She has had recent solo exhibitions at Reynolds Gallery in Virginia and Ricco Maresca Gallery in New York City. Blum’s work is held by the World Ceramic Exposition Foundation in Icheon, South Korea, the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art in Arizona, and the Boise Art Museum in Idaho, among many others. Her work can be found in New York City at McKenezie Fine Art and Ricco Maresca Gallery.

Paul Briggs is known for his pinch-formed vessels and slab-built sculptural forms. His unique pinching process is neither additive nor subtractive but expansive, growing the form from one chunk of clay. Paul’s slab-built forms are generally more planned, measured, and intentional. Combining these two ways of working and thinking becomes a means of expressing ideas neither can accomplish on their own. Paul is an artist-teacher with training in ceramics, sculpture, and education. At Penland, he has shared his innovative techniques in the clay studio. His work has been featured in many exhibitions including Lucy Lacoste Gallery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Friedman Benda Gallery in New York City, The Clay Studio in Philadelphia, the San Angelo Museum of Art in Texas, Design Miami, and Eutectic Gallery in Portland, Oregon. His work can be found in the collections of the Fuller Craft Museum in Massachusetts, the Columbus Museum of Art in Ohio, the San Angelo Museum of Art in Texas, the Alfred Ceramic Art Museum in New York.

David Chatt is a sculptural glass bead artist whose work has created space for beadwork in the world of contemporary craft. He creates vessels, objects, and sculptures by hand, sewing glass beads using a right angle weave stitch that he adapted. A Penland resident artist from 2008-2011, Chatt has been a Penland student and instructor many times over. His career has been chronicled in books and periodicals and was recognized by a retrospective at the Bellevue Arts Museum in Washington. In 2014, David received a North Carolina Arts Council Fellowship, and in 2019 his work received the Grand Prize at the Irish Glass Biennale. In 2021, “Love Dad,” a piece created while he was living in North Carolina, was purchased by the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery and is included in its current 50th anniversary show. His work can be found in the collection of the Bead Museum in Arizona, the Racine Art Museum in Wisconsin, the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City, and the Tacoma Art Museum in Washington.

Registration for the 37th Annual Penland Benefit Auction opens and invitations will be mailed in May. An illustrated online catalog will be available in July. LEARN MORE ABOUT THE PENLAND BENEFIT AUCTION.

Posted on March 16, 2022March 17, 2022 by Penland

Jane Peiser: Ceramics Pioneer and Beloved Neighbor

We are saddened to note the passing of ceramic artist Jane Peiser: former Penland resident artist, frequent Penland instructor, strong supporter of the school, and beloved neighbor for more than 50 years. She died at home on February 23 after a short illness. She was 89.

Jane had a Masters of Science in education from Illinois Institute of Technology and began her career as a teacher of art history in Chicago. She was also a painter for a time, but eventually turned her attention to ceramics. Her former husband and lifelong friend, glass artist Mark Peiser, explained that her interest was always in people and faces. “She had some issues with backgrounds,” he said, “and this caused her to start making compositions by putting ceramic tiles onto things.”

Mark said that she became frustrated with buying tiles, so she got a kiln and some clay and started to make her own. This allowed her to make different shapes. “They became leaves, and then they became figures, and she started glazing and painting them to create imagery dealing with faces and people.”

GLASS TO CLAY
Jane and Mark moved from Chicago to Penland in the late 1960s to join the resident artist program, and it was at Penland that she saw glass artists using the Italian techniques of murrine and millefiori. This method involves making a bar or slab of glass that has colored imagery embedded in it. The images are only revealed when the glass is cut into slices.

ceramic work by Jane Peiser — Untitled, salt-glazed porcelain, 8 inches tall

Jane was already working with colored clays and saw that she could adapt this glass technique to her material. “I don’t know when, exactly, the light bulb went on for her,” Mark said, “but she started doing a lot of work with colored clays and what glass people call ‘compatibility.’ She got that figured out and the colored clays really became part of the imagery. Then she started adding painted details. The final thing, what really made it all work, was that she started salt glazing the colored clays to create texture and brighten the color. It gives them so much life. The pieces are truly astounding.”

Mark added that, although Jane was not aware of this when she was developing this work, there is an Asian ceramic tradition (known today as nerikomi) that is similar to her method.

Her handbuilt forms are functional or figurative (sometimes both) and always incorporate fantastic, brightly colored patterns. Sometimes the patterns themselves contain narrative imagery. In her studio, she kept an inventory of carefully built, patterned clay slabs that were available to her as she created new forms and scenes.

Once she started working in clay, Jane left teaching and was able to support herself from studio work. “I think it’s probably true,” said Mark, “that she was the first ceramist in the city of Chicago ever to make a living from her work alone. Her work was pretty much always supported and cherished.”

Portrait of Jane Peiser — Jane at home, 2021

JANE OF ARTS
She was a generous teacher who led workshops at Penland, Oregon College of Art and Craft, the Archie Bray Foundation in Montana, Hawaii Arts and Craft, and other venues. She received two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, and her work is in collections including the Smithsonian Institution in DC and the Mint Museum of Art in North Carolina. She also contributed a chapter to The Penland School of Crafts Book of Pottery (1975).

A great supporter of Penland, she held an open house at her studio each session for many years, she frequently donated work to scholarship and annual benefit auctions, and she was simply kind and welcoming to everyone.

A lovely obituary written by her daughter Martha, ends by saying this: “Jane’s constant action and attention to detail also grew lush, jewel-toned gardens. She made clothes, weavings, and hooked rugs all with her unique colors and imagery. She joined political, social, and professional projects of all sorts and was notoriously practical, energetic, and generous. She treated every person she met with dignity. She leaves behind a host of friends who appreciated her gentle, generous spirit, her unpretentious ways, and her highly original art.”

Mark added that when she lived in Chicago, she helped start a community arts center on the North Side. “Because of her zeal for the project,” he said, “she was known as ‘Jane of Arts.’”

Jane will be remembered with an informal event on the afternoon of April 2 at her house near Penland School.

Jane Peiser in her ceramics studio in 2008 — Jane (right) in her studio near Penland School, 2008.

Note: several years ago, Jane’s friends and family established a tuition-free, work-study scholarship in her name with a goal of continuing to increase the endowment so that the work requirement can be eliminated from the scholarship. If you are interested in helping with that effort, please contact Joan Glynn at 828-765-2359, ext. 1206.

Posted on February 21, 2022 by Penland

Wearable Black History

A young, African American woman working at a jewelry bench — Nancy Sanderson working in the Penland metals studio during the 2022 winter residency.

Nancy Sanderson did not have the typical reaction to the souvenir shop at Mount Vernon. Nancy is African American, and she was visiting the home of President George Washington with her husband’s family. She had been thinking about souvenirs because the metals class she was taking at Virginia Commonwealth University had given her an assignment to create a souvenir. (That class was taught by Adam Atkinson, who is currently a Penland resident artist.)

She had been thinking about the people who were enslaved at Mount Vernon and how some of them were the laborers who built the place. “And then I just thought, it’s crazy that there is a souvenir shop here,” she remembers. “To me, and I know this is a big jump, it was like if there was a souvenir shop at Auschwitz or Guantanamo Bay or some other place where people have suffered, and people are like, hey, let’s grab a shot glass or a needlepoint. I do understand that the institutions have to have income if they are going to preserve these places, but I would like to see it done in a more respectful way.”

Souvenir for the Enslaved by George Washington at Mount Vernon

A previous metals assignment already had her thinking about architectural elements as jewelry components, and so she responded to the souvenir assignment with her brooch called “Souvenir for the Enslaved by George Washington at Mount Vernon.” The piece includes a small profile of George Washington’s house made from painted wood. This is seen through a barred window in a brick wall made of copper. Chains, ending in a shackle, hang from the wall. The shackle, she explains, is silver, because that’s the part that would have touched the body.

Making this piece caused Nancy to imagine a series of jewelry works inspired by the estates of other slaveholding American presidents. Her studio access is limited currently as she is on hiatus from VCU, caring for her newborn daughter and navigating the pandemic with her family. But she was able to participate in Penland’s winter residency, giving her the opportunity to start work on the second piece.

A sheet of copper with a relief image and three holes sits in front of an architectural model made from small copper bars — Components in progress for Souvenir for the Enslaved by John Tyler at Sherwood Forest Plantation

More ambitious in scale and complexity than the first, this piece will be the “Souvenir for the Enslaved by John Tyler at Sherwood Forest Plantation.” The John Tyler house is a 301-foot-long structure that is essentially seven buildings attached end-to-end and is claimed to be the longest frame house in America. Nancy’s piece will be a three-finger ring with a simple model of the whole house sitting on top of it.

The ring itself will be a hollow form that contains a relief image of an enslaved man with arms crossed and head bowed. Two children stand in front of him. “It’s a play on Atlas,” she explains, “and the house will rest on his back. There are children in the image because it’s not just about the enslaved, it’s also about that legacy and how it goes to the next generation and the next generation.”

A sketch on graph paper — Nancy’s original sketch for the John Tyler piece

“It’s truly heartbreaking,” she continues, “to imagine that you’d probably be proud of what you contributed to that house and that plantation, but then to not be allowed to be proud and to not have any type of ownership of your contribution. To live your whole life and to know that no matter how hard you work, you will never have this. It’s not allowed. That’s what I’m thinking about in making this.”

Nancy is rendering these ideas as jewelry because, she explains, “I want them to be wearable and not just sculptures because I want people to touch them and interact, and that’s how they bring you in.” She hopes to complete five pieces in the series; she already has a vision for a piece based on James Monroe’s Highlands. “I think that enslaved people are just overlooked in their contributions to architecture and building,” she says. “So I want to highlight the architecture that enslaved people helped create and combine this with what I enjoy doing with metals.”

A man and a woman in a grassy field in winter, pulling a sled with a baby sitting in it — Nancy with her husband, Adam, and their daughter, Mary-Sue, at Penland