Travel with Bennett-Watt and discover the School of Crafts in Penland North Carolina.
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Male: In the hills of western North Carolina, the Penland School of Crafts. Robin: Penland is a workshop school. We don’t have any standing faculty, all of our instructors are guest instructors. They come along with the students for the duration of their class. The classes are 1 week, 2 weeks, or we also twice a year have sessions that are 2 months long. So that’s the duration of the classes. And students and instructors show up at the same time and they live here for the duration of their class. And students are enrolled in one class at a time. They're working with 1 instructor on 1 subject matter. And you can learn a tremendous amount in a very short amount of time that way. We have students all the time tell us that they came to Penland for a couple of weeks and they took them a year to really absorbed and then putting the craft that they have learned in that time frame. So we have this concentration of studios where all these different media are going on. So someone who is studying glass blowing can very easily walk down and see what the potters are doing. Well, in a sense, they're doing similar things. They got things going around and they're shaping them with their hands or with tools. And so you got glass blowers who are going down and looking at people throwing pots and thinking, hmm, I wonder if I can make that out of a glass. And that kind of thing goes on all the time. So there's lots of ideas and inspiration that move around in that way. I would say that we call ourselves Penland School of Crafts because that’s our history. And the other thing is that our programs are primarily rooted in a very strong sense and love for particular materials. And that in a sense is very typical of people who are identifying themselves with craft and it’s a way of looking at things that’s understood and respected in the craft world. People who make pots tend to really love clay. And we really respect that and honor that. And so, that in a larger sense, I think is why we're Penland School of Craft, because our classes tend to be quite rooted in understanding and a love of particular materials. Male2: I can only do so much of this, I find even at times I get lost by pulling the handle. And even spend an hour on a handle, which is not cost effective. But there is joy is just getting the right arch in the handle. The right feel in the handle on a cup or a pitcher. Female: This is studio is in its 5th year of being used. It started in the fall of 2000 and we designed it as a place to teach blacksmithing, primarily. But it is also a fabrication area and we done a little bit of bronze casting here. So we have 12 coal forges here and we have some gas forges too. And we teach additional classes here and we also teach contemporary conceptionable sculpture classes using blacksmithing techniques. And that is what I'm teaching. It’s a class in sculpture using traditional blacksmithing techniques. In a different visionary kind of way.
With over 45 years of experience working in 40 countries, the South Pole and North Pole, the Watts present their travel, fly fishing and cooking videos.
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