Chunghie Lee is teaching a workshop second session (June 13-25) on a traditional Korean textile/paper technique called “pojagi.” Here’s a nice video of Chunghie that was made at the Rhode Island School of Design (the class still has some spaces).
Keiko Ishii, glassblower
Keiko Ishii is a first time Penland student who came all the way from Japan to take Scott Benefield’s glass Concentration. She learned of Penland and Scott from other American glassworkers who have to taught at Tama Art University in Tokyo, where she takes classes. In particular, Karen Willenbrink-Johnson and Jasen Johnson both recommended that she attend Penland specifically because of the two month Concentrations sessions. In addition, she hoped that the American style of glassworking would breathe new life into her work and that the diversity of students would be beneficial as well.
Keiko first started working with glass six years ago after she recovered from a serious car accident. Her recovery and rehabilitation was a six year process during which she knew that she wanted to switch her artistic medium and career from graphic design to glass, but had to wait until her body was ready for the physical demands of the glass studio.
After Keiko completes the spring glass concentration she hopes to visit the Corning Museum of Glass and take a workshop there as well. She also plans to take some time to travel around the United States before returning to her glass studies at the Tama Art University in Tokyo.
–Karen Mahardy
Penland Gallery Artist of the Week – Sarah Loertscher, Jeweler
Spare, precise, and exacting – and yet – complicated. There is a visual economy in Sarah’s jewelry, removing all the extraneous fluff and fuss and paring it down to the line or form that is most important to her. But so often that “simplicity” is the result of endless hours of skilled craftsmanship and labor-intensive technique. To quote Sarah about the ring pictured – “18k yellow gold bimetal is lovingly, obsessively, painstakingly scratched with an x-acto blade until it’s surface glitters like a disco ball “. While the end results would satisfy an ardent minimalist – the technical path getting there is impressive.
Sarah was a Core student at Penland in 2005-2006, spending the majority of her time in the metals studios with a foray into the print studio now and then. In printmaking she applied her metals skills to intaglio prints with the same exactitude and meticulous results she achieved in her jewelry. She left Penland on a serious trajectory upward and full of redheaded determination. Her resume since 2005 outlines how well that has played out – teaching cred and name-dropping gallery shows, a strong wholesale business and a lot of experience.
We have been showing Sarah’s work in the gallery since 2006 and look forward to each box of her jewelry – new ideas and elegant forms.
About Sarah
My name is Sarah Loertscher, and I’m a studio jeweler in Seattle, Washington. I’m a transplant from North Carolina, where I spent two years washing dishes and making art as a Core Student at Penland School of Crafts. Originally, I hail from Indiana, the land of agriculture, Indy cars, and sweeping sky. I earned my BFA from Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, where I started working with metal. I’ve been making jewelry for eight years.
From an interview with Sarah:
Where did you get started, and how long have you been working in steel?
Officially, I got started at Ball State University in Indiana- I had to take all these survey courses as an undecided art major, and six weeks into my metals class I declared metals as my major. Working in that shop was the first time I can remember vividly losing time; sinking so far into a project that hours would drift by unnoticed. I remember the feeling that I had found a partner- like – THIS THING was what I was going to spend my life exploring. The only other time I felt that was when I met my (now) fiancé.
About the Work
My work is based in fabrication and typically I work in sterling silver and 18k yellow gold. I am interested in crystalline structure and how simple shapes can grow into large, chaotic, complicated masses of their own. Usually when I am making a piece of jewelry, I am either trying to build up a line or a shape into a more dynamic design, or I am distilling shapes down into their structural supports. The facets on rocks and crystals are also visually interesting to me, and creating my own faceted objects.
My current work is fabricated by scoring and soldering sterling silver into a variety of polygons, and assembling these polygons into crystalline structures. The end result is light, linear jewelry that echoes the structural aspects of both minute crystalline growth patterns and large-scale architectural design.
Inspiration comes to me in the form of illustrated field guilds, diagrams of any sort, frost, columnar basalt, and the subtle landscape of my Indiana homeland. My favorite materials are sterling silver and mild steel.