Category: Penland People

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John Ehle: Writer and Visionary

John Ehle and Rosemary Harris with ceramist Tom Spleth at a Penland event in 2002.

Novelist John Ehle has died at age 92. He was the author of 17 books of fiction and nonfiction, including “The Winter People” and “The Journey of the August King.”

As a special assistant to North Carolina Governor Terry Sanford he helped create the North Carolina Governor’s School and the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. He is also counted, along with Sanford and Governor James Hunt, as one of the founders of the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics.

John shared a long marriage with the actress Rosemary Harris; the actress Jennifer Ehle is their daughter. The Ehle family often spent time at their cabin near Penland School, and John and Rosemary supported the school over many decades. John was particularly close with Penland’s second director, Bill Brown, and worked with him on some of Penland’s first fundraising campaigns. He served on the board of trustees from 1981-1985 and was made an honorary trustee in 1987.

John Ehle will be remembered as a great writer, a great citizen of North Carolina, and a visionary of education. At Penland School of Crafts, he will also be remembered as a neighbor and a friend.

Read more about John Ehle’s remarkable life in this article from the Winston-Salem Journal.

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Molding James

Penland resident artist Dean Allison making a mold of James Haley's head

This is Penland resident artist Dean Allison beginning the process of creating a mold from the head and shoulders of 10-year-old James Haley. The mold will be used in the creation of one of Dean’s mesmerizing cast-glass portraits. James’s mother, Penland program director Leslie Noell, was close at hand to coach him through the 45-minute process. James got to pick the soundtrack, so Hamilton was playing throughout.

Penland resident artist Dean Allison making a mold of James Haley's head

The first step was to coat James’s hair with cold cream. Then Dean began to carefully cover his face with a silicone rubber that starts to set up in about about 10 minutes. He used his fingers to make sure all the details of James’s face would be well molded. He also took care to maintain breathing holes for James’s nose.

Penland resident artist Dean Allison making a mold of James Haley's head

With his whole head and shoulders covered, James began to acquire a Halloween-enviable, Creature from the Black Lagoon look. At this point it was important for him to sit very still as the material began to set up. “Pretend you are thinking about the hardest math problem you’ve ever had to do,” Dean instructed.

Penland resident artist Dean Allison making a mold of James Haley's head

The next step was to create a two-part plaster shell that will be used to keep the flexible mold rigid later when filling it with hot wax. Dean and his assistant Sarah Beth Post formed the shell using the same kind of cloth/plaster strips that are used to make a cast for a broken bone.

Once both halves of the shell were complete, they were left briefly to harden and then were carefully removed.

Here’s the front half of the shell coming off.

Penland resident artist Dean Allison making a mold of James Haley's head

Dean carefully slit the mold up the back while Sarah Beth separated the rubber from the shirt.

Penland resident artist Dean Allison making a mold of James Haley's head

And with Mom’s assistance, the mold was removed as gently as possible.

Penland resident artist Dean Allison making a mold of James Haley's head

There it goes.

Penland resident artist Dean Allison making a mold of James Haley's head

And James emerged intact!

“I was thinking about bagels the whole time,” he said to Leslie, “so now we need to go get a bagel.”

Hmm…well played.

This process is just Dean’s first step. Here’s the rubber mold back inside the plaster cast (upside down on the chair). The next step is to fill it with hot wax to make a wax positive.

Here is the wax model of James. Dean will clean this up quite a bit and do some additional sculpting—particularly on the hair.

He will use this wax model to create a new mold made of reinforced plaster, which will retain all the detail that’s in the wax. Finally he will melt out the wax and fill the plaster mold with molten glass to create the glass sculpture. After the glass cools Dean will put in hours of polishing and cold work to refine the piece before it will be ready for mounting.

Before joining the Penland residency, Dean Allison was Penland’s glass studio coordinator. He has a Masters of Art in Visual Art from Australian National University. His work has been exhibited recently at the National Portrait Gallery in DC, SOFA Chicago, and Blue Spiral I in Asheville, NC. You can see many examples of his portraiture on his website.

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Planting Time!

A view of the Penland garden from the knoll.

Yes, there’s snow in the forecast for tonight. But no, it’s not too early to start planting the Penland vegetable garden. In fact, thanks to a basement propagation room and the careful planning of Penland gardener Casara Logan, seedlings are already in the soil and sprouting!

Though the Penland garden often goes under the radar, it’s one aspect of our school that touches nearly everyone who sets foot on campus: Penland-grown vegetables go into hundreds of meals at The Pines spring through fall, herbs from the beds flavor drinks in the coffee shop, and the food scraps collected from everyone who dines here get composted and worked back into the rows to enrich the soil. This is no small thing: last year, nearly twenty tons of food waste were redirected into our steaming compost piles.

Some of the first seedlings of the 2018 season. (Photos: Casara Logan)

The Penland garden is a modest 100 ft x 100 ft of soil tucked into the curve of the road below The Pines. It is worked mostly by hand—or, more specifically, by the diligent hands of Casara, Penland WWOOFer Irvin Carsten, core fellow Luke Gnadinger, and a handful of work-study students. What can such a small team do in a small space? We’ll let the numbers speak for themselves: during the 2017 season, the garden produced over 25 varieties of vegetables and herbs, including 7 lbs of mint, 36.5 lbs of radishes, 96.25 lbs of arugula, 100 lbs of broccoli, 245 lbs of lettuce, 580 lbs of kale, and 765 lbs of chard, for a grand total of nearly 1.5 tons of produce!

Irvin and Casara harvesting chard last summer.

The vegetables are tasty, to be sure, but what’s the connection between cultivation and craft? A lot of it comes back to care, to love of process, and to appreciation for material. Like throwing a mug from a lump of clay, growing vegetables takes a commitment of time and attention. There are rows to turn, seedlings to water, weeds to pull, and pests to manage. Doing any of these steps well requires a real focus on the the task at hand and a sensitivity to the sun, the soil, and the rain. We can (and do) buy vegetables, but we believe that—as with a handmade mug—growing them ourselves provides real value to our gardeners, our students, our community, and this little piece of the Blue Ridge Mountains we love. It’s probably no coincidence that, before they were farmers, Casara and Irvin were both artists first.

A harvest waiting to be turned into lunch outside The Pines last summer.