June 2023 Class - Flowers in North Carolina

Now that I have been at Penland School of Crafts, I feel kind of embarrassed for how I ended up there. In early 2023, I was thinking about summer vacations, and I decided I wanted to visit a craft school for a week. I really wanted to take a class in flameworking, so I randomly did some searching online.

I found two – one at Penland, and one at Snow Farm. The Penland one was TWO WEEKS long, and was focused on making flowers, and the Snow Farm one was more my speed – making beads for only one week. I was leaning towards Snow Farm, ESPECIALLY after seeing the price tag of a two week, live on campus class.

I signed up for Snow Farm, but a nagging feeling kept me going back to the Penland website. I learned that they had scholarships, and one of them was geared towards women over 55. Cool! I applied. A few weeks ahead of class, I learned that I was awarded a partial scholarship, so I signed up! I can’t pass up a coupon!

Once I got to Penland, I was blown away!! There were something like 12 classes going on for the 2 week session, and each class had at least one instructor and one TA, all of whom were world class artists! My instructor, Kari Russell Pool, even has one of her pieces displayed permanently in the Smithsonian. ! Um… WHAT!!??

Needless to say, I learned a TON! With each step of the process of making the flowers, I also learned more about flameworking, the glass, the heat, the type of flame, annealing, etc, etc. Our TA Marshall Hyde was always there with help on the technical aspects of the process.

In addition to the class, we took a few field trips. One was to the Spruce Pine Batch, where the professional artists in the group were like kids in a candy store! We also visited the studio of Kit Paulson and saw her absolutely amazing flameworked objects. There were pieces that she made that looked so much like fabric that I wanted to touch it to prove to myself it was glass – I didn’t dare though – it looked SO fancy! We also went to the studio of Shane Fero. He was sitting in his studio making an amazing glass bird, while holding a conversation with the 10 of us gathered around. Beautiful!!

I was in the studio so much! Many nights, we didn’t shut down until midnight, and each day we started right after breakfast. There were breaks for meals, and the field trips, but I wanted to get as much time in the studio with the other students and the instructors as possible – this opportunity doesn’t come around that often!

A few of the key take away from this:

1. I learned so much at this class, not only from the instructors, but also from each one of the other students!

2. Having shared dorms is fine at a place like this, by the time you get back to the dorm, you just want to sleep, and you could care less who else is in the room. They are in the same boat.