I am fortunate to have been the 2014 recipient of the Andrew Glasgow Writer in Residence Fellowship at the storied Penland School of Crafts in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina. This state contains a disproportionate number of my favorite people, so I am happy to be here.
The point of the fellowship is to offer writers a retreat to research future projects. In a lecture at the Center for Craft, Creativity and Design (CCCD) in Asheville just before I got here I was asked what I had in mind. My answer, too quick and too flip, was “relaxation.” However, it was honest in the sense that I first had to let go of a period of intense work and activity to rest my brain long enough to answer that question.
Today is Thursday, almost the end of the first week. Now I can give a more informed answer. I found that I wanted to write two things. One is a bookend piece for my viral lecture “How Envy Killed the Crafts.” Its working title is “How Design Saves the Crafts.” It has teeth and claws but it can purr as well. I like the positivity of the theme.
The other essay, and perhaps more important, is to thank CFile’s followers deeply and sincerely for supporting CFile at every level, whether as a subscriber or a donor. Both are essential to our future. It is not that I am suddenly grateful, I have been so from day one. But the difference was having the time, in a grand bucolic setting of 480 acres, to articulate my thoughts. Nothing is better for rebooting the mind than the ego-diminishing awe of nature.
Indeed, my stay was borderline Disney. I lived alone in a handsome handcrafted wood frame house, Bonnie’s Place, bordered on one side by 40 foot oaks and on the other by a glen of bamboo fronds. The path was covered in crushed micaceous rock, dense black and gleaming with silver light. On my return from breakfast a red cardinal got into the habit of greeting me and accompanying me up the path. While I opened the door a plump squirrel would descend the trunk of a nearby tree and watch my progress. And— I am not embellishing— two red deer, a mother and child, stood at the head of the path one morning.
It sounds sappy but any Penland attendee can offer the same accounts. The place is magical. However, while nature can give it also can take away. Returning from an errand I found a 200 pound branch lying across my path that had fallen from above. It was not there ten minutes earlier.
The sign that welcomes you to this 58-building complex in the Appalachian Mountains.
Free from CFile’s ever-demanding schedule, I was seized with an overwhelming sense of gratitude to the entire CFile family. What if we gave this party and no one came?
We are nearing our first year anniversary and we have already posted over 686 articles and reviews. We are read in 125 countries and seen by up to3 0,000 people a month. Not big by web standards but growing.
So thank you to every subscriber and every donor over the last year. The subscribers add to our metrics and that allows us to attract support and claim credibility. The donors are key to our daily existence and they are the reason why anywhere in the world at any time anyone interested or involved in ceramics can click, for free, and enjoy our cutting-edge knowledge center. Special thanks must go to Sara Morgan whose early support with a $100,000 challenge grant made all the difference to a small, new nonprofit.
Then to our gifted staff: Sean Di Ianni, Bill Rodgers, Amy Slater, Eric Zetterquist our New York editor and our consultants Jordon Rupp and Kristin Carlson (yes, we are a small, overworked team). Lastly, but by no means least, gratitude to our indefatigable volunteer-in-chief, Mark Del Vecchio.
We have the pleasure of delivering key information every week about ceramics at a time of amazing flux. Markets are closing, markets are opening, technology is changing the way things are made and new aesthetics are sweeping on different fronts. Also, step-by-step, creative-by-creative, we are bringing together a new community from studio pottery, art, design, architecture and technology. When our conference program opens in 2016 we will be doing that face to face.
In seeking a good metaphor “building bridges” seems perfect. CFile links communities that have not before connected to each other to share our wealth of knowledge and experience, to learn from each other’s success and to connect ceramics, a field sometimes too deeply rooted in the past, at that point where the present flows into the future.
Please continue to follow CFile, lend your support and become another bridge builder in our growing community.
Fondest,
Garth
Garth Clark is the Chief Editor of CFile.
Above image: Bonnie’s Place, the house Garth stayed in, under construction in 2003.
Any thoughts about this post? Share your thoughts in the comment box below.
Thank you Garth. How lucky I am for your creative effort and your free sharing. There is so much to glean. Rutgers Uni. LAB has made something similar available without me deserving it. For that I am grateful too. May I in some way be able to thank by bearing some kind of ‘fruit’.
And thank you Garth from Penland School of Crafts and neighbors . We really enjoyed your talk at Penland. You left us with much to think about.