First week at Penland

This is what it looked like at Penland when we arrived, and the weather has generally been pretty nice. You spend a lot of time walking from studio to housing to dining hall, so the weather is important.  We did have a night of freezing cold and it spit snow for a day, but spring is definitely on the way.

 After an 8 hour work day, since I'm a work-study student (more on that in a minute), it was time to get set up in the books and paper studio.  There are 8 students, all women except for a male college student. One woman is my age and another 4 are in their 20s -30s.  There's also a retired gal who is probably 75 plus.  Melissa Jay Craig, from Chicago (below) is the instructor.  In this photo  she's instructing us on how to use the Holland beater to make pulp out of cut up denim blue jeans.

Here are some examples of her books (left), the ones that look like "books." Others of them are more sculptural in nature.  Here's her web site (below):
http://web.mac.com/melissajaycraig/Melissa_Jay_Craig/Melissa_Jay_Craig_Home.html

Here's a quick look at my desk: you can see the beginning of a shaped cover and some miscellaneous sheets out of pigmented cotton rag.  I'm also collecting tea bag packets just because I like the colors.

Now, a little more about work study.  There are only about five of us who are 40 to 60 years old, and the others are mostly college-aged people.  Most of us are doing institutional kitchen work or gardening.  On our Saturday full-work day, one of my responsibilities was to clean all the ceiling lamps and exposed pipes and wipe down the walls in the dining room from a ladder  (below).  Now I generally spend 3 to 4 hours a day, six days a week, sweeping and mopping floors and hauling stacks of dishes.  I'm "off" on Saturdays. Luckily the food is really excellent and I'm eating like a truck driver.  This is a lot more daily exercise than I am used to!  It takes some getting used to and means I'm not as productive in the studio as I might otherwise be, but the tuition break is substantial so it's worth it to me.

Here are a couple of the younger folks (above).  You should hear the music, they are really rocking in the kitchen and it goes pretty quickly.

Here I am getting ready to go to work (hair has to be covered so we all wear hats and scarves).

There are four of us work study students  in a room: Leila from New York City, Ann from Alaska (above), me, and Cathy from.... Charleston!  They are all taking a pottery concentration.  Cathy, Ann and I are all about the same age and go to bed fairly early because we're pretty worn out.  Leila, who's about 40, stays up into the wee hours and parties a bit more.  We're waiting to see how long she can keep it up.

Getting used to our work schedules and getting started in the studio were the major preoccupations for the first week.  More, later, on what we're doing in the studios and social life at Penland.