The Craft School Experience

Podcasts

Many of you know the Maine Poet Laureate Stu Kestenbaum who served as the Director of Haystack Mountain School of Crafts for 26 years. Stu is now the interim director at Maine College of Art and he is working with The Craft School Experience, a consortium of five craft schools, listed below. All of them have fabulous learning opportunities!

• Penland School of Crafts Penland, North Carolina http://www.penland.org
•  Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, Gatlinburg, Tennessee http://www.arrowmont.org
•  Pilchuck Glass School, Stanwood, Washington http://www.pilchuck.org
•  Haystack, Deer Isle, Maine http://www.haystack-mtn.org
•  Peters Valley School of Craft, Layton, New Jersey http://www.petersvalley.org

From The Craft Schools website: Craft schools across the U.S. offer an educational opportunity like no other. Here, you’ll find internationally-renowned instructors, intensive and focused study, and time for exploration in beautiful residential settings. Those of us who have be fortunate enough to spend time making art at Haystack know how true the statement is about the place.

Stu has interviewed five artists so far in a continuing series of podcasts available by CLICKING HERE. The interviews are very interesting and a great resource to share with students who are interested in learning about the lives of artists and/or are considering being artists themselves. The artists and information on them, taken from The Craft School Experience website is included below.

Roberto Lugo is a potter living and working in Vermont. He grew up in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia and began his creative life writing graffiti. Roberto is a professor at Marlboro College, and he talks about the different languages of academia, the pottery room, and the community where he was raised and the challenges and joys of truly communicating across cultures.

Rowland Ricketts is an indigo grower and artist based in Bloomington, Indiana. He studied traditional indigo making and dyeing techniques in Japan, where he was living after college and where he met his wife, Chinami, who is a weaver.

Vivian Beer is a furniture designer and the winner of HGTV’s Ellen’s Design Challenge. Its about learning how to blend traditional making with new technology, and how her time on the tv design contest showed her that not only can great design be made more cheaply, but it should be.

Sonya Clark is about family, roots, textiles, and the joys of making art in a community.

Tim McCreight is a jeweler, teacher, publisher, writer, and activist.

Sculptor Tom Joyce trained as a blacksmith when he was a teenager. His art work can be found in museums across the country, including the National September 11th Memorial and Museum in New York City.