I am about to head off to North Carolina to teach for the third time at Penland School of Crafts (here). I am driving  from Boston, which is a trip I partly look forward to and enjoy and partly dread. Certainly the first leg or day of driving is more pain than pleasure: from Boston down through CT and through or around NYC, then on the infamous NJ Turnpike, down to DC and past that. Will spend the first night in Hagerstown, MD and then the second night close to Spruce Pine, the closest town to Penland.

Don't know about Penland? Just about the best at pretty much all of it. Pottery, glass, book making, jewelry and silversmithing, printmaking, painting, welding and on and on over a full summer of two week classes taught by some of the very best. 

Three excellent meals a day, a community of artists and crafts people of the highest order, a location up on a hill in the mountains. Penland is a place to create. What's not to like?

This time I am teaching a class in combining images with words. The class is called "Word/Image" and I am co-teaching it with Christopher Benfey, a wonderful writer.

This means that my work on the blog will be sporadic over the next couple of weeks. I don't know if the blog is going on vacation but you may see it popping up less often in your in box.