Penland School of Crafts and blogger hiatus

On Friday, I will be heading on down to North Carolina to attend a 2 week class in the iron studio at the Penland School of Crafts with the very talented Nathan Blank (a fantastic blacksmith and former iron studio coordinator), with the focus being on hand-forging functional household items. Now, as I've mentioned many times before, I am a glassblower, albeit one that only gets to spend only a few hours a week in the studio. It's going to be exceptionally hard for me to take a class in anything other than glass, but while I know I will pine for the hotshop, I'm really excited to try out a new medium. Not that the iron studio is going to be any cooler than the hotshop. The summertime is notoriously brutal for a glassblower, as our work involves molten glass. So you'd think that when I decided to try a new medium, it would be something a little less hot, like letterpress or photography. But oh no, not this girl. Anyway, I'll be out of town from July 3-19th, and will take a blogging hiatus for that time. While I'm taking my computer with me, my days will be divided between the iron studio and my work-study duties in the kitchen, and I know from experience that I will barely have time to sleep, much less blog. So for these next few days, as I get ready to get back into the 24/7 creative environment that is Penland, I'm going to share the work of some of the amazing, hard-working artists who reside at the school full time.