We’re grateful and pleased to announce a new scholarship opportunity at Penland this year – the Larry Brady and Edward Jones Scholarship Fund, which provides one work-study scholarship for a summer class. This endowment fund was established by Dr. Larry Brady, with friends and family, in memory of his partner, Edward K. Jones, a real estate broker at Dickens-Mitchener and Associates, and a well-known DJ at events and clubs in the Charlotte area. A devotee of beauty and patron of the arts, Edward loved Penland and had a strong desire to support artists. He passed away in July.

Together, Larry and Edward visited Penland often; they were students, passionate, avid collectors of Penland artists, and longtime auction patrons. “Ed loved going to the student show on the day of the auction,” Larry recalls. “He enjoyed the incubation of artists that happens there. What we cherished most was the relationship between the artists, the work, and ourselves.” Of the scholarship which celebrates his partner’s life and passion, Larry says, “We wanted to give someone who might not have the opportunity a chance to go to Penland. We wanted to let them interact with all the media, to meet and interact with other students from all over, to be in that phenomenal environment where there is so much talent and beauty.”

For more information about this and other scholarship opportunities at Penland, click here to visit the scholarships page on our website.

Family Finance: A Gap Year Need Not Break the Bank, an Associated Press article that’s been picked up by several online news magazines, features Sofi Hernandez-Crade, a student in Brian Ransom’s Throwing Strange & Unusual Forms class in fall concentration 2008, talking about her time at Penland during a “gap year” between high school and college. With a  work-study scholarship and savings from a summer job, Sofi made a Penland workshop part of her year of experiential learning while she took the time to figure out what would come next.

” …WORK AND STUDY
Sofi Hernandez-Crade applied to a few expensive art schools during her senior year in high school in Woodland Park, Colo., but she knew long before her 2008 graduation she wanted a year off first. Her mother, Mary Crade, supported the idea, having taken some time before completing her own undergraduate degree: “She just didn’t seem ready for college.”
Hernandez-Crade was drawn to programs offering experiences like painting murals in South America, but the price tags were prohibitive. Such programs, often run by nonprofit organizations, typically do not pay or cover living expenses. “It was really sobering to realize that,” she said.
After saving money from working as a waitress, she enrolled in an eight-week program at Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains, where she studied sculpture….
“Penland was eye-opening,” she said. “It was extremely inspiring, and a wonderful experience being in a community of artists…”

Click here to read the full article.

Note: The article refers to a Penland concentration costing about $7,500, however, Sofi attended with a work-study scholarship (including room and board), which would have put her tuition cost at around $2,900.