Western North Carolina is known for its high population of artists and its numerous artistic opportunities. Unknown to many, however, is Penland School of Crafts, only an hour north of Asheville in Mitchell County. Penland School of Crafts is renowned for its support and development of artists and craftspeople, something that its staff likes to call “the culture of the hand.”
The school's Core Fellowship program enables emerging artists and craftspeople to come to the school and be students for two years and take advantage of Penland’s studio workshops, explains Leslie Noell, the program manager. There are nine fellows at any given time living on campus and using the studios to investigate their creative process, study with top instructors, and learn about various media. And the fellows do this with ultimate creative freedom and engagement, without grading and program constraints typical in a higher education institution.
Leslie’s experience with the program extends over many years, as she became a core fellow in 1992. The program has changed a lot since then but one thing that has remained the same is its unique capacity to create and develop artists in a profound way.
Leslie started out in the design field at a time when the field was “moving from a hands-on field to a computer-centric field,” she remembers. Her first experience with typography and printmaking in Prague revolutionized her understanding of the field and her emerging identity as an artist. “The program pulled me out of the design field and into the studio working,” she says.
She continued her artistic and design work in other places but eventually returned to Western North Carolina and, along with being a studio artist, began managing the core program. Leslie likens it to the apprentice system in Europe.
Interested fellows are typically artists who share an unusually strong drive to cultivate their skills, concepts, and artistic integrity. They are highly engaged in the conversations of their field and media and have decided to pursue the program as a way to enhance their overall life experience. Thinking more about this, Leslie notes that they set themselves apart through their desire to “utilize life experience to learn exactly what they want to learn.”
She says it’s not surprising that this unique program attracts an “incredibly high caliber” of applicants from all over the nation each year. Thinking about the fellows, she says, “It’s an amazing experience, and I can help them completely personalize that experience – help them set a goal and a course.” On October 5, Leslie and the Penland community invite the public to an exhibition of the fellows' work at the Penland Gallery.
