The Penland 2013 summer catalog will be mailed on January 3 or 4, but there’s no need to wait–all of our summer workshop information is available online now. You can peruse our one- and two-week summer offerings organized by studio or by session. (The studio listings include everything that’s currently scheduled, beginning with spring classes, so be sure to scroll down a bit to find our summer classes.)

As usual, most workshops are open to students of all skill levels: our generous instructors will meet you wherever you are. With 105 classes in a broad range of media, this summer at Penland covers an extraordinary range of topics, from pewtersmithing, functional pottery, fresco painting, making steel garden tools, and weaving with locally-harvested kudzu fibers to a class that exploring the space between still photography and video, a writing workshop, a class in business for artists, and three classes (two in metals and one in wood) combining craft materials with sensors, motors, sound, light, and microcontrollers.

Here at Penland we are dedicated to helping people live creative lives, and we think one of the best ways to enhance your creative life is to spend a couple of weeks completely immersed in something that inspires you. If you can do that surrounded by other people with a similar passion, and you’ve got someone making nice meals for you, well, it’s hard to think of anything better.

Scholarship application deadline is February 15: We are pleased to be able to offer hundreds of scholarships in several different categories. Complete scholarship information is here.

Lottery deadline is February 11: Although most applicants for Penland classes are enrolled in the class they want, a few very popular classes get a lot more applications than there are spaces available. To give everyone a shot at those classes, we treat all applications received by February 11 equally. After that, spaces are filled on a  first-come, first-served basis. We will start posting a list of open summer classes in April and keep enrolling students right on through the summer.

We hope to see you this summer.