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ARROWMONT: Classes are scheduled through Nov. 11, including work with paper, wood, ceramics, paints and so much more! One week and two week sessions available. Browse classes here. 

PENLAND: Penland is offering both 8-week and 1-week sessions in the fall. Check here for a list of programs as well as registration information. Penland is also accepting applications for Spring 2018. 

PILCHUCK: Fall session starts Sept. 11 and goes through Sept. 16th. Courses available here. Call or email the registrar if you have specific questions: [email protected] 360-445-3111 x29 

PETERS VALLEY: 2-5 day workshops for Adults and Youth are listed here. Their Fall Craft Fair will be Sept. 23 and 24 at the Sussex County Fair Grounds. 

HAYSTACK MOUNTAIN: Haystack Mountain Summer sessions run through Sept. 2. Check here for any availability in the remaining sessions. The "post season" at Haystack featuring events and exhibitions can be found here. 

Potter Sanam Emami was born in Iran and grew up in England and the US. She lives in Colorado and is an associate professor of art at Colorado State University. She came to pottery after studying American history—which led her to think about her own history-- and her work combines influences of Persian and Islamic art with a contemporary sensibility. For her, making pots, and understanding her voice within that work, is a continuing journey.
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Make/Time shares conversations about craft, inspiration, and the creative process. Listen to leading makers and thinkers talk about where they came from, what they're making, and where they're going next. Make/Time is hosted by Stuart Kestenbaum and is a project of craftschools.us. Major funding is provided by the Windgate Charitable Foundation. 

Cynthia Schira is a weaver and designer living in Westport, New York. She taught art for nearly 30 years, and has been a practicing artist since attending RISD on scholarship as a young woman. She happened into weaving because of a scholarship opportunity, but it fit her. In the course of her career, Cynthia has given special attention to working with computers and the Jacquard loom—an early precursor to the modern computer—to explore the digital qualities and possibilities of the art form. Today, Cynthia has retired from teaching, but not from making; she continues to make new projects, collaborate with other artists, and find new synchronicities between art and the world around her.

Make/Time shares conversations about craft, inspiration, and the creative process. Listen to leading makers and thinkers talk about where they came from, what they're making, and where they're going next. Make/Time is hosted by Stuart Kestenbaum and is a project of craftschools.us. Major funding is provided by the Windgate Charitable Foundation.

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Last Fall I had the opportunity to visit the site of the original Haystack campus, in Montville, Maine.  This was where the school began in 1950, and would exist for the next ten years before moving to our current location on Deer Isle.  Starting a school is both a radical idea and a profoundly generous act that seems to hinge on the belief that there is something so important and vital it must be shared with others.
 
Though there have been many changes to that site over the years, the original clay and weaving studios, as well as some cabins and the central building where evening lectures were held, still exist.  Walking around the property, I was struck by the simplicity of it all.  A local carpenter, named Ed Sewall, designed and built most of the structures, which were rustic but also thoughtful in design and sufficiently suited to the needs of that time and place.
 
The very idea of a school that awards no degrees and has no permanent faculty or student body remains as unconventional today as it was back then.  Standing in Montville and thinking about the campus Edward Larrabee Barnes would later design on Deer Isle, it struck me that the confidence and conviction necessary to imagine what Haystack could become was nothing short of remarkable.  It represented an almost incomprehensible leap, which had everything to do with establishing an environment that valued reflective thinking and a close examination of materials and processes within a creative and supportive community.  More than sixty five years later, this wonderful experiment has led to a place that models a way of living in the world with compassion, curiosity and wonder.  

David Chatt grew up in the Pacific Northwest, mostly in Washington State. Recently he has been an artist-in-residence at the Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina, and then he remained at the school as its baker for several years. David sees art and creative process in everything he does: from the small scale work of beading to casting glass, to the large scale enterprise of gutting and restoring a house. Whatever the medium or the finished work, at heart he’s a storyteller. In this episode of Make/Time, he tells Stuart Kestenbaum about how he came to make some of his inimitable art—and why a regular old bedside table encased in beads can move a stranger to tears.

Make/Time shares conversations about craft, inspiration, and the creative process. Listen to leading makers and thinkers talk about where they came from, what they're making, and where they're going next. Make/Time is hosted by Stuart Kestenbaum and is a project of craftschools.us. Major funding is provided by the Windgate Charitable Foundation.

For many years I was director of the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, where I got to witness firsthand the power of both craft and community. But before that, as a poet, what attracted me first to craft was metaphor. Seeing a potter forming a vessel, watching a weaver at the loom, or a smith hammering metal, spoke to me not only of the skilled hand and its tacit knowledge, but also as a metaphor for how humans have the ability to shape the world. It can speak to a harmony between maker and material. There is an implied ingenuity and sympathy in these acts of creating. In a way it’s saying the world is in our hands.

And if the world is in our hands, then what is our obligation as makers? It’s not just to make things, but to make things better. I’m not talking just about design, although elegant and thoughtful design can change the way we act in the world, but about what we can do as creative people and how craft—a language that moves easily beyond political borders—is a way of building community.

In our fragile world, perhaps we can make a metaphor for ourselves as menders, the ones who can repair those things that are torn and broken.

Holding the Light
for Kait Rhoads

Gather up whatever is 
glittering in the gutter,
whatever has tumbled 
in the waves or fallen 
in flames out of the sky,
for it’s not only our
hearts that are broken, 
but the heart
of the world as well.
Stitch it back together.
Make a place where
the day speaks to the night
and the earth speaks to the sky.
Whether we created God
or God created us
it all comes down to this:
In our imperfect world
we are meant to repair
and stitch together 
what beauty there is, stitch it
with compassion and wire. 
See how everything 
we have made gathers 
the light inside itself
and overflows? A blessing.
Stuart Kestenbaum
from Only Now (Deerbrook Editions)
Stuart Kestenbaum is a strategist for the Craft School Experience, host of Make/Time podcasts and Maine’s poet laureate.