Tag: penland benefit auction

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Penland Benefit Auction a Success


We did it! The 39th Penland Benefit Auction was a beautiful gala weekend, filled with friends, music, art, and great weather. We honored our friends, celebrated craft, and enjoyed demonstrations in the letterpress, glass, and clay studios. We shared a cocktail party, coffee at The Barns, studio visits with the Penland Resident Artists, a Penland Core Fellows pop-up, curated gallery shows, and artists talks. We admired and acquired art during two silent and one live auctions, and we soaked up the beautiful views from Penland’s Blue Ridge Mountain campus.

Over the course of the weekend, we used our revelry to support a special place that is greater than the sum of its parts. Mia Hall, Penland’s director, reminded us that our storied auction supports our mission of making lives meaningful through making, and helps make manifest the ideas in our strategic plan: “leading with access, inclusion and sustainability.” 

Next year, the 40th Annual Benefit Auction will be held August 22-23, 2025. Please save the date!

-More photos HERE.
-Short video HERE.
-39th Annual Penland Benefit Auction Catalog HERE
-Please enjoy this slideshow of all the fun:

Sustaining Funds for Penland

This year’s “Fund-a-Need” invited guests to directly support improvements to The Barns complex, home of the Penland’s Resident Artist Program. Established in 1963, the Resident Artist Program is one of the longest-running residencies in the US. Inspired by former resident artist David Chatt who regaled us with tales of indoor woodland creatures, patrons donated $84,250 towards renovations of The Barns studios and living spaces for Penland Resident Artists.

More than 200 inspiring works of art, donated by generous invited artists, found new homes as we turned our love of craft into funds that will sustain our mission of making lives meaningful through making. Thanks to a bevy of artists, collectors, and donors, we raised a total $467,000 for Penland.

Auctioneer Jesse Miller with Director Mia Hall, “Captain” Corey Pemberton, and contributing artist Mercedes Jelinek. Photo by Jennifer Sudul Edwards

Inspiring Art

Dan Friday, Kreh Mellick, and Hitomi Shibata and Takuro Shibata were the 2024 Penland Benefit Auction Featured Artists . The school commissioned original short videos to highlight their work, and each artist donated a piece that was featured in the auction. We invite you to click on the name of each artist above to view the videos and learn more about them.

Featured Artists Hitomi Shibata and Takuro Shibata and their beautiful work at the Penland Benefit Auction

Over 200 works of art were donated to the 39th Annual Penland Benefit Auction by invited artists. Each was created by a Penland affiliated artist, and we celebrated works in clay, books, paper, drawing, painting, glass, iron, metals, photography, print, letterpress, textiles, and wood.

A newcomer at this year’s benefit auction, Judilee Reed, president and CEO of United States Artists, remarked upon the event’s place in the wider craft world–

“When you come to an event like this you can see work that is very resonant of a long history of the discipline of craft as well as work that shows artists innovating on that history. Its’ lovely.”

We are deeply grateful to the more than 200 generous artists who donated their work and made this event possible–and special! You can see all of their beautiful pieces in the auction catalog. 

This stunning piece by Thomas Campbell created a stir when it sold for four times its retail value!

Morgan Hill, Jack Mauch, Nick Fruin, and Courtney Dodd created a special moment with their item, “Round of Drinks,” including a round of handmade cocktail glasses (with cocktail), marquetry coasters, and cocktail-themed jewelry for the winning table.


Special Honors

Named for Penland’s founder, the Lucy Morgan Award celebrates people who have made an extraordinary contribution to the school. This year’s award honors three long-time staff members: Kathryn Gremley, Robin Dreyer, and Stacey Lane. We celebrated their combined 100 years of dedication to Penland. Together they have led us with honesty, humor, empathy, and kindness– our tastemaker, our voice of reason, and our goodwill ambassador. 

Thank You!

The Penland Benefit Auction is a labor of love, made possible only by the collaboration of hundreds of dedicated individuals. We are so grateful to our volunteers, contributing artists, staff, patrons, and sponsors. It was complex, ambitious, and totally worth it.

Thank you to the over 100 volunteers! We could not have done it without these wonderful folks.

Thank you to our staff! Here Clay studio coordinator Susan Feagin demonstrated how to apply her famous “floofs” to create surface design on clay.

Thank you to our patrons. Here admiring featured artists Dan Friday’s piece, “Aunt Fran’s Woven Basket.”

Thank you to our contributing artists! Clay buds and contributing artists Kurt Anderson, Sean O’Connell, Julie Wiggins, Suze Lindsay, and Courtney Martin get silly in the photo booth.

Thank you to our Sponsors! Seen here Kevin Bitterman and friends from of the Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts with Judilee Reed, president and CEO of United States Artists.

39th Annual Penland Benefit Auction Sponsors

Auction Leader ($10,000)
Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts

Auction Supporters ($5,000)
Brown Brothers Harriman
Society of North American Goldsmiths

Auction Patrons ($2,500)
American Craft Council
Art in America
The Laurel of Asheville
WNC Magazine

Artist Table Sponsors ($1,500)
Norman Audio Video
Sysco Foods of Knoxville
US Foods
Classic Event Rental
EbenConcepts
Sculpture Magazine
John Marek

Beverage Sponsors
Pennycup Coffee
Pisgah Brewing Company

Auction Contributors
Grassy Creek Hardware
Edwina Bringle

Individual Artist Sponsors:
Alan Peterson & Priscilla Kistler
Virginia A. Kraus 

Table Sponsors:
MINT Museum
Char Walker and Dianne May
Tom Oreck
Lillian and Greg Giornelli
Gina Phillips
Greenhill Center for North Carolina Art

 

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Hitomi and Takuro Shibata: Featured Penland Benefit Auction Artists

Penland Benefit Auction featured artists Hitomi and Takuro Shibata live and work in Seagrove, North Carolina, which is home to the largest community of potters in the U.S. Before they came to the States, they were based in Shigaraki, one of Japan’s oldest pottery villages.

They are both members of the International Academy of Ceramics. They have participated in dozens of group shows and taught numerous ceramics workshops, including at Anderson Ranch (CO) and Peters Valley (NJ).They are co-authors (with Matt Levy) of the book, Wild Clay: Creating Ceramics and Glazes from Natural and Found Resources.

Hitomi manages their pottery business, Studio Touya, where they make pottery and sculpture using local wild clays and firing in their wood kilns. Takuro is the director of Starworks Ceramics in Star, NC.

 The Whirlwind triptych featured in this year’s auction is a rare collaborative work. The shapes were inspired by the wind, but Takuro says the pieces also reflect their experience at Penland. “Instructors and students come to Penland, and it’s like a whirlwind that’s mixing ideas, mediums, knowledge, techniques, and personal and cultural backgrounds together and creating something meaningful and beautiful.”

This exciting Studio Touya triptych will be featured in the 39th Annual Penland Benefit Auction:


Hitomi Shibata and Takuro Shibata
Whirlwind
Woodfired North Carolina stoneware, slips, red iron oxide, clear glaze, wood ash
Largest: 14 x 20½ x 20½ inches

Video produced by Jeff Goodman using photographs and video supplied by the artists.

 

 

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Penland Auction Mug Maker, John Quick!

Meet Artist John Quick, official mug maker of the 39th Annual Penland Benefit Auction.

Quick’s works can be easily recognized by their minimal forms and bright colors. Sure to light up anyone’s day with their glowing presence, these beautiful mugs will be selected by guests at our Saturday morning auction tradition: Breakfast at the Barns.

Making 500 unique, slip cast mugs
John joined us for a week in the Penland clay studio back in the spring, slip casting and glazing 500 beautiful mugs, each of them with a unique signature.

For the Penland benefit auction mugs, Quick employed a “two-part strategy for efficiency.” First, they created a mother mold – a durable mold made of rubber – for both the handle design and the mug body. This master mold allowed them to cast multiple, less-durable plaster molds (around twenty for each component) to expedite the production of 500 mugs. To add visual interest to the uniform design, Quick used colored slips with a variety of stains. This approach introduced variations in color and pattern across the mug set.

Why was slip casting the right choice? “While slip casting ensures the consistency I seek in functional ware, it also offers flexibility in terms of surface decoration and final outcome,” they told us. 

About John Quick
John is a queer artist who recently swapped the sandy shores of Saint Augustine, Florida for the bustling streets of Philadelphia. Their work is a captivating fusion of practicality and artistic exploration. Earlier collections featured airbrushed functional pieces with meticulous wheel-throwing and slip-casting techniques combined with stunning airbrushed gradients. These pieces, often minimalist with an emphasis on refined details, showcased a fascination with simple forms. Recently, Quick’s artistic voice has taken a new direction, embracing a more conceptual approach that centers on themes of identity, nostalgia, and the Y2K aesthetic. This experimental body of work delves into new forms, surface decoration, and personal narratives that hold deep meaning for the artist. Quick aspires to bridge the divide between functional and conceptual art by finding connections between their beautifully crafted wares and this evolving dialogue.

John’s Penland Connection
John’s  journey as a ceramic artist took a pivotal turn in the fall of 2022 during their first visit to Penland as the studio assistant for Matt Repsher’s fall concentration workshop, an experience they remember as transformative. Fueled by newfound connection to Penland and the ceramics community, John returned in the summer of 2023, this time assisting Brooks Oliver in his mold-making class. John had this to say about the effect that Penland has had upon their artistic journey:

As a ceramicist who has largely charted my own course through self-study, these experiences at Penland were invaluable. Assisting these renowned instructors not only honed my technical abilities but also provided a crucial link to the wider ceramics community. The knowledge, guidance, and camaraderie I gained at Penland have been instrumental in shaping my artistic path. So much so that I now share a studio in Philadelphia with a former core fellow (Molly Bernstein) and former work-study student (Claire Whitehurst), both of whom I met during my incredible time there in the fall of 2022. This shared space fosters a constant dialogue and exchange of ideas, further enriching my artistic journey.

We are honored to have John as the 39th Annual Penland Benefit Auction Mug Maker.