First Week at Penland

I've been at Penland in North Carolina for one week of a two week book arts class. It's so beautiful here! There's often fog in the morning and I can resist taking lots of foggy photos. This building is The Pines where we eat all of our meals.

These are a couple photos from our class taught by Laura Wait. We started by writing with sticks and cedar shingles dipped in Sumi ink on full sheets of paper. We added layers of paint and writing and then cut the sheets up into book pages. The bottom photo is Laura demonstrating binding a book.

There are beautiful hand-made things everywhere you look around the school. This is a really long mosaic wall near the metal and clay studios.

Lots of the buildings are from the 1930's. They have lovely wood and stone details. There's a nice history of Penland on their website.

One of my favorite studios to visit this year is the Woodworking Studio where they are building guitars! The instructors are Wayne Henderson & Michael Peyton. The top photo is a guitar in progress. The bottom photo is a bluegrass jam session that happens often in the evenings in the studio. They sound incredible!

I couldn't resist photographing the dress forms huddled in the corner of the Fiber Studio.

And back to the Books Studio where I'm working. This is the book I just finished about a night walk. It's more subtle than usual for me, but I really like how it turned out.

One more fog photo! I'll post about the second week here toward the end of the session.