Newspapers / Penland Line (Penland, N.C.) / Oct. 1, 2005, edition 1 / Page 6
Part of Penland Line (Penland, N.C.) / About this page
This page has errors
The date, title, or page description is wrong
This page has harmful content
This page contains sensitive or offensive material
CT Penland Line Fall 2005 RESIDENT ARTISTS Cristina Cordova and Mark Maiorana have completed their residencies. Cristina is currently teaching a fall Concentration class. She and her husband Pablo have bought a house nearby and they are cur rently building a studio. Mark is also staying close; he’s found a house and studio in Asheville. We are happy to welcome three new resident artists to the program. Potters Matt Kelleher and Shoko Taruyama will be sharing a studio. Matt has an MFA from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, he was a resident at the Archie Bray Foundation, and he recently taught a semester at Hartford Art School in Connecticut. Shoko recently completed her MFA at Wichita State University in Kansas. She says she gets inspiration for her work, “from growing up in a traditional Japanese household full of events with religious and seasonal themes.” They are planning to use the residency to establish themselves as full-time potters. THE PENLAND EXPERIENCE We asked Kent Leslie, who has taken many Penland classes, to write about her experience here. Kent is a retired history professor and author oj the book Woman of Color, Daughter (^Privilege She sent this note. A wise and lovely Robin Dreyer blacksmith (dressed in pearls and steel toed shoes), once told a class in which I was enrolled, "I always liked to make things." I, as an essentially unsuper vised child on a farm in Marietta, GA, also loved to make things: out of clay from the creek bank, out of boards and old paint, and out of small scraps of glowing iron— scraps cut off of Kent Leslie in the Penland horseshoes in the making by the local blacksmith. For years I remembered the thrill of dashing by an anvil and picking up tiny, glowing squares with a pair of old pliers, and trying to reshape the iron into a flat round coin before it cooled. Many years later I came to Penland seeking solace and a rebirth after my youngest daughter, Kate, went off to col lege in the frozen north. I took pottery for two summers. I had taken so much biology at Queens College that the pow ers that be told me I couldn't take any more hours in that beloved subject, and having then gone to the art department and taken sculpture and pottery, I had at least some background in that craft. David Macdonald (a very wise man who said, "Live like your hair's on fire.") taught his class to make birdbaths using a Korean mallet and I decided that I would take an iron class so that I could make stands for my birdbaths. With fear and trembling I ventured up the hill and into the dark cave of the old blacksmithing studio—a place decorated with works of art by the most famous blacksmiths in the country. There I learned to make a proper fire, to gently ham mer out a fine taper, to make iron tools, iron flowers, iron bugs, and to master (mistress?) a difficult medium. During the last seven iron classes I have taken, I have operated power ham mers (which actually make heavy black- smithing possible for iron studio the not so mighty), marveled at the creativity of the young and old alike, enjoyed the camaraderie of a community in the throws of learning. And I listened to the wisdom of a south ern lady who followed her true calling; of a handsome and unassuming teacher whose shop is geared to 1793 and thinks everybody should operate that indepen dently; of a lovely mother who came to Penland at 18 and never left, living twen ty years with no running water or elec tricity; and of a 7 3-year-old genius and peace activist, all of whom were my teachers in the broadest sense of the word. I found a new joy in being a beginner, a place where I was nurtured and respected for myself—a pilgrim on a journey toward wholeness. Furniture maker Vivian Beer has an MFA from Cranbrook Academy in Michigan. She uses both metals and wood in her work, which she describes as falling, “on a spectrum between ergonomics and image, play and use, intimacy and performance.” Angela Bubash just finished a sterling silver teapot which will be shown at SOFA Chicago by Mobilia Gallery. She is working on jewelry which incorporates a variety of materials encapsulated in glass vials. Thor Bueno has been refining his tech nique of encasing paint in glass. He has a new group of pieces which he completed while taking a class with Karen Willenbrink this summer. Jennifer Bueno has been working on a group of pieces combining blown glass ele ments with gathered natural materials. Thor and Jennifer have also been spending time preparing to teach a spring Concentration class. Anne Lemansky is working on a project creating a series of ten sculptures rep resenting female hairstyles from each decade of the twentieth century. She recently had a piece win first place in the Wills Creek Survey, an annual juried exhibition in Cumberland, MD. Jenny Mendes will have work in an upcoming exhibition of narrative ceramics which will originate at the Ohio Craft Museum and then travel. She is glad to be reunited with her husband Mark who just finished hiking from Georgia to Main on the Appalachian trail. She also has a new web site: www.jennymendes.com. STAFF Julie Stefano is our new coordinator for the textiles and drawing studios. She is a recent graduate of the professional crafts program at Haywood Community College (NC), and she played horn in the Marine Band. April Horton has joined the devel opment staff. She comes to us after several years working in development at Salem Academy and College in Winston-Salem, NC. The development office is sad to be los ing Betty McLure who, for several years, has kept track of information and tended to numerous important details. We will miss her seasonally-appropriate appliqued cloth ing; she, however, will not be missing the fog she had to drive through every morning on her way to work from Little Switzerland. John Renick has returned to the Penland kitchen after a leave of absence to help his parents. He got back just in time for a major landscape project to interrupt the volleyball season, but this, too, shall pass. Clay coordinator Matt Pogatshnik isn’t actually here anymore, but he’s still ranting about national politics via email, so it seems like he’s still aroimd. He and his wife, Katie Reilly, who w'as our program assistant, heard the call of the north wind and returned to Minneapolis. Just before he left. Matt told us that he had a mortgage and a baby in his future, so they must be getting settled in. Matt’s job was filled by Lyman Edwards, an MFA grad from Louisiana State University. Before coming to Penland, Lyman ran a business selling New Orleans- style shaved ice snow balls, which he assures us are vastly superior to regular snow cones. If you’re looking for a job, his snow ball truck is for sale. We can’t quite get used to the absence of Suzanne Pugh, who was our metals coordinator for seven years. She left to take an interim teaching position at City College San Francisco. She’s having a great time and is applying for the permanent position. It’s impossible to describe the exact shape of the void Suzanne has left, so we’ll just say, “We’re all rootin’ fer ya, matey!” Our interim metals studio coordinator, who stepped in quickly, is Adrienne Grafton, a recent MFA grad from Eastern Carolina University where she studied with our friends Linda Darty, Bob Ebenorf, and Tim Lazure. Finally, a note on an important person who was never actually on staff. For five years, Kristi Pfeffer was here almost every Saturday, working on publication design. A skilled and sensitive designer (with a full time job in Asheville), Kristi refined the look of our publications and shared incalcu lable amounts of information and expertise. Positive changes in Kristi’s life made it hard er for her to give up her weekends and for mer core student Leslie Noell, who has also been helping with publications for sev eral years, has been able to fill the gap. Kristi designed the wonderful book. The Nature oJCrc^t and the Penland Experience, and, as part of her job at Lark Books, the recently published Penland Book of Jewelry. We hope to work with her from time to time in the future, and w'e are grateful for all those Saturdays. Mi 1^
Penland Line (Penland, N.C.)
Standardized title groups preceding, succeeding, and alternate titles together.
Oct. 1, 2005, edition 1
6
Click "Submit" to request a review of this page. NCDHC staff will check .
0 / 75