Robbie is a classically-trained musician with an emphasis on the music of the Episcopal Church. In addition to owning and operating Speckled Dog Pottery, he is the organist and choirmaster at Trinity Episcopal Church in Spruce Pine.

Finding a comfortable balance between backgrounds in mixed media printmaking, woodworking, and handcrafts, I have created a perspective and aesthetic that is colorful, whimsical, and my own.

Since 1993, beginning with mosaics, I have been breaking and making ceramics as a full time studio artist. Discovering clay as a medium to sculpt the forms on which to apply the mosaic, I became enamored with the material and its processes.

Daniel Essig creates wood-covered art books and book-based sculptures. Using a fourth-century binding known as Ethiopian-style Coptic, he creates mixed-media book structures that incorporate unusual woods, handmade paper, found objects, fossils, and mica.

Vicki’s professional career began over two decades ago, when she studied hand weaving, textiles and design. She later became proficient at working with exceptionally fine yarns and slowly developed a body of work that incorporated intricate patterns with remnants of nature and fragments of old books. She recently built a new studio where she continues her exploration of textiles along with paper, and book arts.

Nathan Favors is a woodturner that works out of his home studio located in Bakersville, NC and at his home in Bucks County, PA. Nathan’s preferred medium of woods are maple, walnut, ash, cherry, oak, Manzanita and buckeye—but he has worked with exotic woods from all over the world.

Nita Ford is a former Penland Core Fellow and current full time textile artist with a great sense of pattern and design.

JJ Brown and Simona Rosasco own and operate Fyreglas Studio, just 3 miles from downtown Bakersville. Working together they create both decorative and functional kiln formed glass art.

Lisa has been a studio artist since 1996 , the past 18 years living and working in Western North Carolina.

Her work consists of human and animal comic sculptural pieces. Her jewelry is simple playful pieces in sterling , stone, clay and tin.

She enjoys having her hands in two different materials and producing two distinct bodies of work . Her jewelry is in sterling ,semi precious stone, clay and occasionally tin. Lisa’s clay work often has a narrative , usually a humorous theme. You cannot beat a good punchline as direction for her animal and figurative sculpture. Amusing her viewer is her joy in her daily work .

While abstract in nature, my paintings reflect an underlying visual order and harmony. My process often includes setting an intention for the painting with journaling, listening to music, activating the canvas with marks and scribbles, and playing with various brushes and mark-making tools.

Recently retired after 45 years in nonprofit arts management, I returned to my own art-making practice in 2018. My work focuses on printmaking (monoprints, woodcuts and lithography) and is rooted in drawing and photography.

In much of my jewelry, I use the remarkable lost-wax casting process. It enables me to transform soft, pliable wax into intricate metal objects. I leave marks on my pieces that emphasize that they are made by hands. The cast pieces are inspired by sources ranging from historical jewelry, to Dutch still-life painting, to Beatrix Potter.

Finding inspiration and meaning from trees and plants, Teresa’s pots reflect ideas that are centered in life, growth, and experience.

Teresa’s work connects both the functional and the decorative, seeking to make pots that people want to touch, hold, and use.

I create high fired stoneware and porcelain platters that are decorative and functional. My images depict sights and scenes from my time spent in nature throughout my life. My images are of deer, turtles, and horses in their natural settings. I find that people relate to these images that remind them of happy memories.

As a material, hot glass focuses and sustains my interest in the immediate task of doing, making, while hinting and sometimes pointing in a direction away from the particular task. It suggests a melding of hand and mind into a symbiotic process of doing and becoming blown glass art, in which each sustains or rejuvenates the other to continue the process.

Through my early exposure to steel manufacturing I developed high level of craftsmanship and an attention to detail that is apparent in my work today. In my functional work I apply a modern design aesthetic to traditional forms in steel and bronze with a heavy emphasis on the forging process.

Kit received her MFA from Southern Illinois University and her BFA from Alfred University. She is currently a studio artist in Penland, North Carolina.

Jim is a metalsmith’s metalsmith. With over 50 years of experience, “Coop” has worked as a jeweler, silversmith, foundryman, conservator, sculptor, and blacksmith.

Bridget Fox creates decorative and functional ceramics called Mudventions. Inspired by exotic organisms and the textures and patterns found in nature she invents a rare undersea garden of unique cerebral concoctions. Exploring the endless creative possibilities of the ceramic process is seductive therapy for her soul.

Living in Spruce Pine, NC. Colleen has enjoyed immersing herself in the myriad forms of fiber art, including eco printing, basketry, paper, and cloth, as a way to bring the outdoors in and perfect her craft.

Susan earned a BFA in ceramics from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and started taking clay classes at the Penland School of Craft in 1994 and was a Core Fellow there from 1998-2000. Susan finished an MFA in ceramics from the University of Florida and has been a clay studio coordinator at Penland School since 2007 and maintains a small home clay studio in Spruce Pine, North Carolina.

Kurt makes his home in the mountains of Western North Carolina and holds a degree in Education from the University of Wyoming and an MFA from Louisiana State University. He has participated in Residencies at Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts in Maine, Penland School of Crafts, and The Archie Bray Foundation in Montana. In 2009-2010 Kurt was the Fergus Post-MFA Fellow at The Ohio State University.

Julie Wiggins received a BFA in Ceramics from East Carolina University in 2001. In 2005, she received an honorary degree from the Jingdezhen Ceramic Institute in China, where she focused her studies on traditional Eastern techniques. After graduating college, she began her ceramic career in Charlotte where she developed a body of work.

"Nature's own shapes and patterns, inspires me to explore my vision and creativity with wood." Gary Jobe.

Graeme Priddle and Melissa Engler of Half-Feral Studio are both acclaimed woodworkers and sculptors currently based out of Asheville, NC.

“With my work, I try to have each form serve as a canvas to display the inherent beauty and simple elegance of the glass.”

“I have always felt that beautiful handcrafted glass deserved a equally beautiful handcrafted finish. So, I found my way to metalworking.

While living in the southwest, I studied silver-smithing in Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico. I wanted to learn how to bezel set glass with sterling silver.

After moving to North Carolina and enrolling in the College of the Albemarle (COA) I learned other ways to bring glass and metal together.

Copper, brass and silver are the metals I use to create jewelry, often in service of handcrafted glass.

“From concept to design to final firing, my process for making functional pottery requires an intimate relationship with both preparation and chance. I embrace the challenge of creating a smooth surface free of unintentional marks. This element of control is balanced by the unknowns of firing in a wood and soda kiln.”

Kimberly is a talented printmaker and book maker. The work she creates comes from her sketchbook and her passion for plein air drawing. She draws her inspiration from nature and her love of botanicals.

Colin specializes in functional hand-blown glass and is drawn to meticulous and skillful simplicity that reflects the region's beauty and deeply rooted history of handmade craftsmanship. His products are sophisticated but designed to be functional and ergonomic.

Evely’s jewelry is inspired by the silliness of everyday life and she hopes this will bring joy, comfort, and nostalgia to the wearer.

Studying at Penland, Cathy learned that materials as simple as straw and twine could become an object of beauty and functionality.

I do pottery and gardens—both being a quiet collaboration between the hands and the earth, both creating a world that's more vibrant to the senses.

Liz creates pottery to enhance and activate the energy of interior spaces by communicating ideas of life, cycles, and patterns.

Tom uses an iPad and drawing applications to create works from travels, family reflections, the flowers in his surroundings and his imagination. The images are printed onto aluminum to give them a physical form and in keeping with the contemporary digital environment.