If you can’t get to the Penland School of Crafts in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina (something I have longed to do), you can at least experience Penland at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, where “The Penland Experience” exhibition features work by nearly 50 artists who have taught or been students there.
Penland offers workshops in books & paper, clay, drawing, glass, iron, metals, photography, printmaking and letterpress, textiles and wood. The work in the show at UALR, open now through March 6, features work by familiar names: woodwork by Robyn Horn, a huge supporter of Penland, Stoney Lamar and Sandra Sell; metalwork by UALR professor David Clemons, multimedia printmaking by Delita Martin, letterpress by John Horn; pottery by Fletcher Larkin and Beth Lambert. Also with work in the show: Ken Baskin, Deborah Brackenbury, Robert Brady, Elizabeth Brim, Cynthia Bringle, Edwina Bringle, Hunt Clark, Einar and Jamex de la Torre, Susan Dewsnap, Ben Dory, Judith Duff, Robert Ebendorf, Dustin Farnsworth, John Garrett, John Geci, Dorothy Gill Barnes, Susan Goethel Campbell, Seth Gould, Julia Harrison, Hoss Haley, Julia Leonard, Andrew Hayes, Morgan Hill, Elisa Helland-Hensen, Anne Lemanski, Marc Leuthold, Ron Meyers, David Nash, John Rais, Sylvia Rosenthal, Tom Shields, Sandy Simon, Rick Smith, Tom Spleth, Toshiko Takaezu, Sally Williams, Kensuke Yamada and Gwedolyn Yoppolo. Works come from the UALR permanent collection and the private collections of John and Robyn Horn, Joe Lampo and Terry Jefferson and David Clemons and Mia Hall.
Sculptor Baskin will give a talk at UALR at 6 p.m. TONIGHT, Jan. 21, and Jean McLaughlin, director of Penland, will give a talk with Steve Miller, letterpress artist, at 6 p.m. Feb. 25, both in room 161 of the Fine Arts Building.
Penland was founded in 1929 by Lucy Morgan as an outgrowth of a craft-based economic development project. UALR has been actively collecting Penland artists’s work for the past three years because of its Applied Design curriculum.