Last summer, Cameron Cooper attended a workshop with Mike Rossi in the Penland iron studio. Like 50% of Penland’s students, Cameron’s experience was made possible by a scholarship. As we approach our fall scholarship application due date, Cameron has generously shared his experience so that other’s may be inspired to apply:
Cameron Cooper’s Penland Experience
When I arrived in Penland, I knew my name, my favorite color, and my favorite food, but I didn’t know my hands. I had been longing for a space to create, build, and connect with nature and art, and Penland provided just that. It was a place where I could let go of my thoughts and live from the heart.
Two words that come to mind when I think of my time at Penland are freedom and grace. I had the freedom to explore and wonder, and the beautiful landscape and studios provided endless inspiration. I loved being able to visit other studios and see what others were working on. The community was warm and welcoming, and I felt a sense of love and warmth from the moment I arrived.
The process of forging iron was challenging at times, but I was surrounded by a supportive instructor in Mike Rossi and peers who were happy to help. Penland has a magical quality that makes you feel safe and at peace. It reminded me that creating is a state of being, not just doing, and that the more I can be myself, the more my work will reflect how I see the world. Everyone at Penland made me feel capable and valued, and I grew in my ability to express myself through a new material.
Since graduating in 2020, I had felt lost and creatively blocked, but Penland gave me permission to fail, forgive, and have fun. It’s a place that fosters democracy and provides space for everyone to explore and express themselves. I am immensely grateful for my experience and look forward to returning for a concentration or residency.
Scholarships at Penland
Penland’s robust scholarship program exists to make workshops accessible to those who are not able to participate without financial assistance and to create educational opportunities for people who have been underrepresented at Penland and in craft. In recent years, Penland has taken steps to streamline our scholarship application process, removing image requirements for most scholarships, reducing the application fee to $5, and removing the requirement for letters of recommendation, resulting in an increase in applications.
Immersive craft workshops are at their best when students are surrounded by a diversity of skill, experience, and means. Apply now for fall scholarships (Due March 15) and additional summer scholarships for select workshops (available on a rolling basis).
An outpouring of support for 2023 Outstanding Artist Educator Elizabeth Brim has helped establish the Elizabeth Brim Scholarship! We invite you to help endow a scholarship in honor of Elizabeth Brim’s pioneering and sustained contributions to the blacksmithing community! Any amount is greatly appreciated.
“Few people have been as committed and have contributed as much to Penland as Elizabeth Brim. Not only is Elizabeth a rockstar in the blacksmithing world, she is a great friend and inspiration to so many who enjoy the Penland experience. If Elizabeth has touched your life, directly or indirectly, we invite you to be a part of her legacy by donating to the Elizabeth Brim Scholarship. We are thrilled to honor Elizabeth Brim’s legacy by creating this opportunity for future generations. ”
Elizabeth was Penland’s iron studio coordinator from 1995–2000 and then settled permanently into a house and studio just a mile from the school. Over three decades, she has taught many workshops at Penland and other craft schools including Peters Valley in New Jersey and Haystack in Maine. She has demonstrated at numerous blacksmithing conferences, organized two symposia at Penland, and been a role model and inspiration for countless aspiring blacksmiths. She continues to be an integral part of the Penland community.
Iconic, Innovative Work
Elizabeth Brim is known for her life-sized, steel replicas of traditionally feminine objects such as hats, dresses, pillows, and flowers; for her expressive and fluid use of the material; and for her facility at inflating steel forms with compressed air.
Elizabeth Brim, Excess, 2008. Steel. Metal Museum Permanent Collection 2009.8.1. Gift of John & Robyn Horn.
Over the summer, Penland honored Elizabeth as Outstanding Artist Educator at the 38th Annual Penland Benefit Auction. Twenty blacksmiths who are near and dear to Elizabeth created special works of art, inspired by her for the occasion. Friends and colleagues shared how Elizabeth has touched their lives. Many of these artists have contributed to the Elizabeth Brim Scholarship fund, bringing us closer to our goal of endowing a scholarship that will provide opportunities for blacksmiths for generations to come.
Elizabeth has given so much to Penland and to the blacksmithing community. We invite you to be a part of her legacy by donating to the Elizabeth Brim Scholarship fund. Donate today!
The weather is warm, the mountain views are dense with green, and the food is great—but the biggest joy of summer at Penland is welcoming students and instructors to our studios. We’ve really missed getting to foster the creative discoveries and connections that happen regularly in our workshops this summer. Even so, finding new ways to stay inspired and connected with you all has been a highlight of 2020.
We are reaching out to each of our summer 2020 instructors with an invitation to share a bit of their recent creative endeavors with the Penland community. Our hope is that these windows into their studios and explorations will spark something exciting in you, too. Enjoy, stay safe, and keep making! #PenlandEverywhere
Session 2 Metals—Fabrication for Sculptural Jewelry
With shelter-in-place orders in effect in North Carolina, April and May were somewhat challenging months because my jewelry studio is not in my home. I was only able to bring some of my equipment home to continue working. After a bit of discombobulation, I started focusing on work I could make in a reduced capacity studio. I’ve been revisiting old pieces, exploring new ideas and new materials, and (finally!) fixing up my website, things that I don’t normally get to do when I’m busy preparing for craft shows. The sterling silver and paint pieces in the first image are from about 8 or 9 years ago—work I’d forgotten about until recently. The second image contains elements made from brass tube with gold vermeil and some test pieces in enamel. I miss the camaraderie and excitement of craft shows and classrooms, and I find myself thinking a lot about what the future holds for artists and makers, but I also think that the challenges of these bizarre times can be seen as opportunities to consider new ways forward.
It’s been surprisingly hard to concentrate over the last few months. What might have seemed like an ideal opportunity to get work done was in fact a haze of anxiety, attempts at online teaching and dealing with the sadness and turmoil of the students whose last two months of the semester had been torn away from them, heavy-duty parenting and attempting to homeschool my 8-year-old daughter, and latterly, facing up to what has always been here: the pandemic of racism and white supremacy. Having said that, I found working in my shop, when I could get there, to be therapeutic and calming. A chance to be out of myself. I don’t mean to suggest that craft is not connected to the world in all its wonderfulness and awfulness, but that sometimes, its role for an individual can be to allow focus on material and physical being.
1. A wall hung cabinet nearing completion, just a couple of doors to go on. Inspired by the paintings of Nathalie Du Pasquier. Exploring 2 and 3 dimensional conventions of representation, and part of an intermittent ongoing series. Title: Interrupted. The painting is Formagramma by Nathalie Du Pasquier.
2. A small sketch model of a chair. I’m thinking about two coopered shells, one for the back and one side, the other for the seat and the other side.
3. Poignantly, some boxes I had started to prepare for my class at Penland, partially made. I was going to bring them along to various stages of completion when the pandemic restrictions hit and cancelled classes. The finished box is titled Fool’s Gold.
Left and right: I was planning to bring these engraving samples with me to Penland this summer; middle: My assistant manager Michenyanlangelo.
I’m trying to think positively and to spend this time studying painting and English, completing ordered work, and making my new works with my cats for an upcoming show.
I really hope everyone is safe and healthy. I believe we can overcome this difficulty and hope it will make us more resilient, more creative and imaginative. Please take care.
When I was doing my master’s degree at the Corcoran School in DC around 2012, I constantly heard about Penland in the studios and in the hallways, a new word that became stronger as the summer approached. As a Latin American student at that time and today as a Brooklyn-based immigrant artist, my practice has constantly been focused on the search for new learning and experimentation processes through printmaking, a medium that appears not just as a technique but rather an aesthetic; a conceptual medium to study history, memory and trauma through a variety of representation strategies. When I was invited to teach at Penland, I couldn’t believe I was going to try those studios with my own hands to teach, and share some Book Arts concepts, and surrounded by that extensive nature!
During quarantine, far from the shared studios I work in in the city, I was more connected to printmaking than I have ever been before. With the aim of making visible the injustices produced by the pandemic and especially in the most vulnerable sectors of the population, I started to use printmaking as a critical tool to think about the social and political order and its effects throughout the crisis. These relations resonate with printmaking processes as metaphors of resistance between oil and water, the action of carving a surface of wood, and drawing in an etching plate. With the lack of a professional studio/equipment, I explored alternative techniques and materials using what was “in place”: I used a bottle of vodka instead of alcohol, a window instead of a plate, and kitchen food and stuff as solvents.”
Session 2 Glass—Form, Color & Professional Practice
In the past few months we have been working together in our home studio in Seattle. Being in the shop has helped us maintain a positive outlook while allowing us to escape through the creative process; focusing on a bright and cheerful color pallet has been healing. In light of our course cancellation at Penland this summer, we plan to meet with our class virtually this month to get to know each other, talk shop and share the beauty of Penland with them!
Before the lockdown, I was working on the possibility of inserting willow branches in my creations. I was dedicating myself to the realization of some prototypes. Glass and willow jewels, an initial idea, a hint of something that could be interesting and poetic. There was barely time to take some photos and then the project stopped, but not in my mind.
Photo credits: Chiara Nicolosi e Francesca Nicolosi, @pretaphoto
Ben sent us a touching, thought-provoking story about a recent print project he completed and distributed in his community. It was such a lovely example of the power of craft and the written word that we made a whole blog post about it! Read the whole thing here.
Daniel wrote to us about his 20-year history with Penland and his co-intructor Stephen Yusko and the traveling school he started to bring blacksmithing to rural areas of his native Venezuela. His story is craft at its most powerful, and we decided to feature it in its own blog post. Please read about Daniel and LaCaravanaEscuela here.
Elizabeth Brim, Excess, 2008. Steel. Metal Museum Permanent Collection 2009.8.1. Gift of John & Robyn Horn.
