so summer has begun and it's moving quickly. it's scary that my first year is over and i'm part way through year two. this summer i get to take:

Kathryn Osgood - Enameling: Botanical Forms in Metal
Juan Carlos Caballero - Texture & Metal Surface Embellishment
Joost During & Dianne Reilly - Raising, Forging, & Enameling
Abie Harris & Christina Shmigel - The Poetics of Place-Making
Vivian Beer - Hot Sheet Steel Forming

lots of metal classes. after being here for a bit i've totally rediscovered my love of metals. i've also launched a new site that is dedicated to my jewelry work www.aranmade.com.

currently i'm in juan carlos' class and it's great. he is an amazing teacher and i've learned so much which doesn't always happen in all levels classes, but he's so good with one-on-one instruction.

so, i'm excited about my classes but sad that there is more of the core program behind me rather than in front of me.

who knows what'll be next. we were just asked to move out of our place which is extremely sad. now we have a little over a month to find a place and to move in. we're going to miss this bizarre little building, that we've called home, immensely.

My jewelry was just featured on this site:
http://rarebirdfinds.typepad.com/rare_bird_finds/funky_jewelry/index.html

It's winter rental time. There are no classes at Penland for the next three months. This leaves me time to work for real money, work in the studio, and do a bit of traveling. I'm going to Pennsylvania and Virginia this month, hopefully New York in January, and to Portland and Seattle in February.

Right now I am working on these clay pieces that, hopefully, mirror my obsession with pores. Although yesterday John Britt said that they were about my obsession with the asian lady beetles that are infesting our house.



This is one that is completed



This picture is of pieces in progress. The plan is to make lots and lots, then they will all hang on the wall together.

So friday night was the opening of the 2006 Core Show. We all had a wonderful time. There was a special dinner for us of tapas, and some wonderful desserts. Several artist made us presents. Then we all went to the opening and a couple of after-parties. It was such a nice day. Unfortunately I did not take enough pictures, and none of the actual show, but here is a picture of our dinner.

Ok, so here are a couple of images of the firing of the Nina Hole sculpture:




This picture is the beginning of the firing. It is wrapped with a type of fiber-glass and we would open up these small flaps to feed wood into the fire.




This is after we pulled the fiber off the structure and at this point the structure is glowing red and we were throwing salt onto the piece so that it sparks. Effects for the crowd and to add a bit of salt to the firing.

Well, I finally updated my website. Also I just got back from the Nina Hole Residency that I assisted on. The firing will begin today and it is a 48 hour firing. The final revealing of the piece on fire will happen Saturday evening, and I will post pictures of that on here when I get them.

This is a picture of the interior as we are constucting it:


And here it is from the side:


This is the piece as it is drying. It is 12 feet tall.

Well session two, the "crafts and social consciousness" session, ended today. I was in a class called "The Relevance of Adornment" in which we spent a lot of time thinking about the importance of jewelry and what around you could be adornment. I also rediscovered my love of metals. It is such an intimate material.

Last session I took a wood class with Travis Townsend, who is a VCU alumni. I had lots of fun in that class, and I will post pictures of what I made in there as soon as I finish them.

I am going to take a printmaking class next session. Then I am off session four, so I will have time to finish all of my uncompleted projects. I'll also have time to take pictures of everything I have done thus far and post them. I did just post an image of a wall piece that I made in my textiles class. It is all hand stitched. Something that I never pictured myself doing.

So far, I am having a great time working hard and saturating my brain.

The session is almost over, and I will post pictures of what I have made then. We only have four studio days left now. I have learned a lot in the textiles class that I am taking. Some of what I have learned is that I don't want to do textiles. I'll continue to make functional quilts and wallets and whatnots, but I don't really like dying fabrics and I don't really like making non-functional art out of fabric. At the same time I am really pleased with the work that I have done thus far. Being here will be an interesting experience for my brain. Everyday that I am here I think of more things to think about. By the end of the summer my brain might pop because I have packed it too full. At some point during this class I decided that I no longer wanted to learn more about a process that I'm not interested.

So, I have this opportunity to work with this woman Nina Hole on her up-coming residency. Here is her site.

The view from our house.


Our new house.


The livingroom and bedroom.

Well, we’ve moved in and Matt is on tour already. We are mostly unpacked, but I am waiting to find out where my studio space will be. For right now all of my art supplies are in bins in the garage. Matt is planning on setting up a recording studio, but we haven’t figured out where that will be yet either. In the meantime I’m able to work in the textiles studio on quilts. Orientation is on March 2nd, and I’ll find out then where I get to set up camp. The school is under construction right now, so it is very muddy and everything is in flux.

I spent several hours the other day trying to find out what our address is to see if we can get a phone and internet hooked up here. The address that is on our lease doesn’t exist, nor does the one the power company gave us. After many hours of detective work I finally got an address that I believe to be right, but when I entered it into the Bell South site they said that they don’t have any record of that address. Today I am going to try to talk to a person there to see if I can get it all set up. For now I can sit on the porch above the coffee house and use the internet. It does get a bit cold there though after a while.

Ellie is adjusting well. She gets to go on lots of walks so she is enjoying that. It is amazingly dark and quiet here at night. I’m still not use to it so it freaks me out a bit. Ellie’s night time walks are very brief because of my fear that a bear will attack us and Ellie will just hide behind me.

The night that Matt left for tour I felt more scared then I had in Richmond. I told Matt that I needed some gunshots and yelling so that I could feel comfortable and safe.

No one locks their doors around here, and they leave their keys in the car. I always saw that in movies and thought, “Who would ever leave their keys in the car?” Well, now I know. I am participating in a combination of locking and not locking. I keep locking my car door out of habit, but I am not locking the house during the day. I lock up at night though so that the bears won’t get me.

Other than the bears it is absolutely beautiful here. Everyone is very friendly towards us and we have been invited to several social gatherings already. Tonight I may go to the bar for karaoke night. It is the closest bar and it’s in the next county.

sooo, we found a place to live in n.c. we are actually going to be closer to the main part of campus then the core student house is. it is soo exciting. ever since we found a place we have been so excited and really ready to go. we didn't want to come back. it is so amazingly beautiful there that richmond just seems that much more ugly now.

we will be living in this bizzaro studio apartment house dealy deal. it was used as a photography studio and living space. it's this odd house with lots of storage rooms and closets and not a ton of living space. it has a dark-room that will be our pantry and it has a garage that will be our speak-easy. a random room that will be matt's recording studio for his up-coming solo project. it also has a back spare bedroom/dressing room and two bathrooms. total of 7 rooms, 2 bathrooms, a garage, and a whole lot of doors and no key to the house. it promises to be a good time.

we are extremely excited about finding a place on campus. we were looking to buy a place, but not opposed to the idea of renting if that would be a better situation. so, after a day of looking at houses to buy, a property manager called us to tell us that they had a rental property on penland campus for $500 a month. it was so perfect that we couldn't pass it up. we were only able to sign a year lease, as apposed to two, but hopefully we'll get a chance to renew.

my plan for the room in the core student house will be my mini salon. i've ordered a stylist chair so that i can set up a station in there. the fact that i will be doing hair has spread already. when we went to visit penland employees were saying, "oh your aran, you'll be cutting my hair." starting out i will just do haircuts, then feel out if would be worth it to do color. so, if anyone needs a haircut and are in the ashville area...

I have chose my classes for spring concentration and my five summer classes. I'm going to be taking:

Peg Gignoux's "Text: Textile"
http://www.ingignouxity.com/collaborative.html

Susie Ganch's "The Relevance of Adornment"
http://www.velvetdavinci.com/artist.php?aid=32

Steve Miller's "The Artisan Printed Object"
(not of "The Steve Miller Band")

Mi-Sook Hur's "Hinge Making: Stories in Small Boxes"
http://www.ecu.edu/data-soad/MetalsFL/MiSook1L.jpg

Tremain Smith's "Encaustic Painting"
http://www.tremainsmith.com/

Janet Taylor's "Learn to Weave"
(not the porn star)

Here is the website for the school: http://penland.org/

This is what it says in the handbook:

"The experience of being a core student at Penland is tremendous. Core students have access to over on hundred and twenty instructors in fourteen studios over the course of one year. They also interact with 200 plus students each session, resident artists, staff, and the local crafts community."

"The core program has expanded over the years to give aspiring craftspeople an opportunity to take classes they could not otherwise afford. Some core students consider this program a substitute for graduate or undergraduate school, some use it to learn the basics of production crafts and some use it as a safety net while experimenting in new media."

I am working on picking my classes, and procrastinating at the moment. When I went to Penland in the past I was only trying to pick one class in a specific media. This time around I need to pick 6 classes and I am looking at 9 different media. I think that the only materials that I'm not really interested in are drawing/painting and glass. So that makes 5 summer classes out of 77 options. Whew.