Penland Spring Concentration 2010: Week 3 in Review

Last week’s wild weather has given way to sunny skies, low humidity, and summer-like temperatures all week. Its been tough striking a balance between enjoying the surrounding environment and pushing on in studio. I’ve been trying to make time for long walks after dinner on the surrounding trails. Its a nice way to digest, take in the sunset, and either bounce ideas off a friend or find that elusive solitary time. I find I work better if I take that little break from the studio.

Tom Spleth gave a slip cast demo to start the week off. Since everyone in the class is making a wide range of projects, Tom began teaching us how to formulate our slips so that we can all run tests.

The image below is me throwing one of Tom’s models out after he finished his mold. I have to admit there was some hesitation when he asked me to trash it, but as you can tell by my grin I got a kick out of it too. The plaster model has a distinct beauty of its own. Eventually when I own land, I’d like to amass a graveyard of old models and watch them slowly deteriorate  in the woods.

The vase below is one of Tom’s. It literally is as thin as an egg shell. When you lift the piece, it feels like it could soar into the sky. This is very different from his newest series of “Sinkers,” which are cast up to a half inch thick and have a real sense of being grounded.

I finished my 2nd mold this week. I speculated that it would require up to sixteen pieces in my last post, but I manged to do it in only nine parts. Below is an image of all the pieces laid out by the model.

Its a real puzzle to assemble and I definitely need a second pair of hands when assembling it. This mold will be difficult to handle when casting too because of the scale, but I’ve got a strong back.

Matt Provancha, my good buddy and art handler extraordinaire, came up to visit from Asheville and took me for a spin on the Blue Ridge Parkway in his 64 Corvair. Between that cruise and eating lunch outdoors all week, I’m starting to get a pretty sweet farmer’s tan.

Today is Easter and Penland invites the surrounding community to a covered dish lunch and egg hunt every year. Of course a Penland egg hunt is in a league of its own because it uses handmade eggs from the students and instructors. They also host an Easter bonnet contest. My egg was a little uninspired, just a plastic egg dipped in plaster and sanded smooth. I wish I had put a treat inside the plastic egg before coating it. I just imagine a young kid with the conundrum of whether they should break the egg for the prize or preserve the object. Fortunately a lot of folks put more effort into their eggs and I saw a lot of happy egg hunters.

There have been an unusual number of dance parties this week. I held it down with my ghetto blaster beside the Wood studio’s burn barrel Wednesday night after I completed my second mold. I found myself pushed into an interpretive dance with my friend Sarah. You really forget how long Journey’s Don’t Stop Believin’ is until you commit to a performance. We also did some late night shadow puppetry.<3 Puppetry!

Thursday night a power line caught fire in Spruce Spine and set acres of land on fire. It also knocked Penland’s power out right as dinner was being served. Enter Action Man. I took a fully-charged-ipod-equipped-boombox to the kitchen crew and work study students for their otherwise somber dinner cleanup. While they were cleaning I decided we needed to have a fire on the knoll. I ran it by Neal the nightwatchman, rounded up a truck, and loaded up a more than ample supply of wood. I got everything set up with the assistance of Penland’s gardner, Ryan Cooper, and decided to light the fire after slides started (they rigged it up with a truck battery I think). Unfortunately, we had to call it off at the last minute due to poor burn conditions and the rapidly spreading fire on the next mountain over. We’ll set a time aside for the fire one night soon. With no power on campus, working in the studio was for the most part out of the question so I gave Penland its first true mobile dance party of the session.

Friday night Small Metals had an officially sanctioned dance party. Saturday night Letterpress and Drawing had a pre-party/ gallery hanging before the officially sanctioned dance party in Glass. So yeah, four straight nights of dancing and a band is visiting tonight.

Amongst all of this dancing I have been developing ideas and working out trades. There is an incredibly broad range of skills and thought processes present, so I feel like I am being productive even when cutting loose. This week I am going back into my first mold and making a high silica version of it so that I can make this glass kiln cast happen. I’m also working on a production line of flasks. Right now I plan to make them with a porcelain casting slip stained black. I am going to do one or two color image transfers onto the flasks. I’ve been working on the idea of fetishizing hand tools. Hand tools are made to relate to the body, but often times these tools reflect human anatomy as well. I am going to work off diagrams of tools and translate them with my hand, then lay them over images of the human body. I am really excited about this line of work and believe these will be a hot trunk item on my summer tour of craft schools. I’m also working with my buddy Chad Evans in Raleigh to come up with a watermark to use on business cards. Danielle Stevens, the studio assistant for small metals, is going to make the mark into a silver knuckle ring so that I can stamp each flask like a king. The initial design concept is a boom box with a T and A in the speakers. Aside from being my initials, it lends itself well to an already suggestive project.

Ok, off to swim in the Toe River!