Ah, Penland
Monday, October 28th, 2013
Ah, Penland.
My fourth time teaching and the longest stint: eight weeks. It is pretty amazing being immersed in art making with 75 of your best art making friends in the studio and on fieldtrips, at breakfast, lunch, and dinner; the dialogue and discourse flows endlessly. With printmakers, blacksmiths, jewelers, potters and glass blowers. Amazing. This is a world class craft school and the experience is world class as well.
The landscape in the mountains of NC about an hour NE of Ashville is endless, as is the beauty. Autumn is upon us and the color hasn’t quit. The horizon is non-existent and the land is right in your face, relentlessly beautiful and way green. It is safe to say that the Carolina mountains are the polar opposite of New Mexico in all ways.
I am teaching a class called the Extended Image that deals with issues of narrative, typology, topology, and time leading to the discussion of what is a photograph supposed to look like any way. We talk about metaphor, meaning, voice and language. Photography as poetry and image.
We had two crits a day for the first couple of weeks working on some photo calisthenics then launching into a one week project of looking at the land, fashioning some panoramic pictures, breaking rules and making mistakes. More projects to come.
I am having a blast.
