After we leave the visitor Terry leads us on a tour of the facilities, which include studios for glass and ceramics, a gallery and a complex of greenhouses where traditional horticultural techniques are combined with hydroponics, aquaculture technologies. All of these facilities are heated with methane gas, which naturally occurs as a result of the decay of organic materials in the landfill. Even the ceramic kilns and glass furnaces are powered by this fuel source. In the studios we meet ceramicists preparing for their next shows and learn that they were selected through a competitive process to obtain two-year residency opportunities at the EnergyXchange. In addition to subsidized studio rent and firings, resident artists benefit from small business coaching in marketing and book keeping. This is all part of the EnergyXchange strategy to encourage the development of sustainable craft-related small businesses that are already significant contributors to the regional tax base. Next we meet horticulturalist Tamara McNaughton who tours us through four greenhouses where herbs, vegetables, ornamental plants and rhododendron are being raised. Students are most interested at the large plastic pools containing fish that they find in the last greenhouse. Tamara explains that the tilapia in the tanks function as part of a system along with specific plants to act as a passive filtration that cleans water of microbes that might be harmful to the plants. Known as “gray water”, once passed through this system, it can safely be reused for hydration of plants or returned to the water table minimizing negative impact to the environment. (View Image)

Tamara then leads us back to one of the previously visited greenhouses where she shows us large planting flats, each filled with hundreds of tiny plants. She explains to us that these seedlings are part of another economic development project that is being conducted to assist area farmers with transitioning away from tobacco to other cash generating crops. Rhododendron, which are native to this area had previously been harvested from wild lands and sold to nurseries. Through the EnergyXchange, seedlings are now available for direct sale to wholesale nurseries, area farmers and occasionally on a retail basis to community members. She explains to our group that the growth stage and handling of these seedlings is at a critical point. We can help her by working in small teams to carefully lift individual seedlings out of the flats and transfer them into new flats, which are divided into cells. Once transplanted individually, these plants will now have room for their roots to develop for a later transplantation into pots and eventually the outdoors. We work delicately with our fingertips to loosen the roots of each plant using a small length of pointed dowel rod known as a dibble. A partner transplants the seedlings using another dibble to make a hole in the each of the potting soil filled cells in the second flat. After about an hour we have transplanted all of the seedlings. (View Image) We spend our remaining time in the gallery where wares made by the resident glass and clay artists are available for sale.

After returning to Penland for lunch we divide into two groups for afternoon tours of area studios. The surrounding counties are home to well over 200 craftspeople, many of them nationally recognized. Over a thirty year period, most of these artists came to Penland first as students and later returned to purchase property and develop studios. Many have also worked at the school for a period of time. One of our tour groups will have a glass focus and the other will be more ceramic in orientation. The first stop for the glass group is actually with potter Nick Joerling who had been a visiting artist at Manchester Craftsmen's Guild in 2001. Nick warmly welcomes the group and talks about his unique approach to making functional pots that incorporate the gesture of figurative forms. Nick's studio is relatively small and yet it also houses a sizable gas kiln where he fires his work, which is shipped to galleries and exhibitions throughout the country. He freely discusses successes and disappointments in the work on hand at different stages of the process.

Soon it is time to move on to the studio of Billy and Kathy Bernstein, a husband and wife artistic team that has pursued a forty year career in glass. They began their careers in the late 1960s at the Philadelphia College of Art and have been making original glass pieces ever since. The imagery in their pieces uses a process known as hot cane drawing. The artists use thin, colored glass rods known as cane, to apply the design to the molten glass. An assistant follows the artist with a high temperature torch, fusing the rod into the glass much like a welder. When the drawing is complete, it is worked into the body of the glass and eventually expanded during the blowing process much like the printing on a child's balloon. Each piece is blown free form without the use of molds or patterns, and incorporates their distinctive style and use of color. Though the Bernsteins' furnaces are shut down due to recent travel, it is apparent that their workspace is another example of design economy. The furnaces are hand built from an original design and they reserve waste glass, known as cullet in a large outdoor pile for future projects and sometimes for recycling. They generously offer each student a small paperweight made of softly melted ends of cane then lead us up to their nearby house. The house like the studio is predominantly handmade and they take great joy in relating to the students how they built on to the existing shack as their family grew. In the woods nearby is a small camp cabin with a small kitchen area and sleeping loft—no indoor plumbing. They explain that over the years, this quarter has been home to their apprentices who have stayed with them on an average for two years. The students are fascinated with the lives the Bernstein's have created and the fact that it is filled with photographs of their two sons from early childhood to their now adult lives. Before we leave, the artists express their hope that one of our students might one day return as an apprentice.

Another short ride out of the hilly woods takes us back to flatter paved rods that lead to the studio of Rob Levin. His workplace is the most modern one we've seen, though it is still modest in size. It contains a small gallery, a wood working area and in the far back, glass furnaces and annealing ovens. Levin's work is more sculptural than anything we've seen up to this point. Considered a consummate glass blower, his work has been exhibited widely throughout the United States as well as Denmark, Japan, and the former Soviet Union. His current explorations involve wood, metal and rope as well as glass. The resulting objects evoke a sense of tension and ambiguity. Levin entertains students questions about his process and artistic goals while an assistant discusses design of the glass studio and the nature of their collaboration on individual pieces.

It is time to head back to Penland to begin setting up our exhibition. Students carry their work from various studios up to Northlight, which becomes transformed as a gallery space by bringing in pedestals and a few vertical panes on which we prepare signage. Each student elects to design a small environment for the display of their work. Templates are passed out for the students to create labels for their works on display. We take a brief break for dinner and return to complete the installation. At about 7:00 p.m. the crowds start to arrive. By 7:30 around 100 visitors are in the space, speaking with Guild students and staff about their week and their work. Students invite Paulus Berensohn who started the week out with a poem in the Ridgeway book studio to bring symmetry to the week by now reciting a poem by Billy Collins called Horizon.

As long as you draw the line a third

The way up from the bottom of the page,

The effect is the same, the world suddenly

divided into elemental realms.

A moment ago there was only a piece of paper.

Now there is earth and sky, sky and sea.

It's a good reminder that this week has involved not just learning about new art making techniques, but that art at its core is a process of world making. By attaining skills, giving back to the Penland community, communicating with and helping one another each of the students has earned a sense of personal accomplishment and contributed to an effort bigger than any one individual. Students from the Guild then finish out the evening reciting poems of there own, which are met with rousing applause from the gathered crowd.