 After years of making and selling crafts, I recently did my first "real" craft show! It wasn't what I would consider a successful weekend, but it was very educational. Here are some of the most valuable lessons I learned from my own experience and from generous fellow vendors...
Bed risers: these simple tools can make a huge difference! Stacked under the legs of a standard table, bed risers bring your work up to a more comfortable height for viewers. Booth sitters: find out ahead of time if your venue provides volunteers to come by and give you a food or bathroom break. If not, and if you anticipate a busy show, you may want to bring a helper, or coordinate breaks with your booth neighbors. Load-in: Will you load on the day the show starts? Or the day before? If you’re scheduled to load in a day ahead, be sure to factor an extra night of meals and hotel into your show budget. Sales tax: Adjust your card reader for the local sales tax rate and make yourself a calendar reminder to remit any sales tax you collect. Verticality: Long flat tables are a snooze; what can you do to break up that horizon line? Walls, racks, stands... Lighting: If they can't see it, they won't buy it. Try to find out about ambient lighting and electricity access ahead of time. Rechargeable LED clamp lights might be a good addition to your kit. Mailing list: Put it in a prominent place and keep business cards tucked out of sight unless/until someone specifically asks for one. If you want to capitalize on the connections you make during the show, capturing email addresses is key! Craft show math: Since craft shows can be more financially complex than selling through a gallery, I made this fillable spreadsheet for capturing sales and a wide range of expenses. I used it after the show to see if my feelings about how it went matched up with reality. If I'm ever considering another show in the future, I'll also use the spreadsheet preemptively, to help me make a more informed decision ahead of time about whether or not to participate. Profitable and worthwhile are different calculations, and "worthwhile" is tough to see on a spreadsheet. If I wanted to do a particular show but it felt like a gamble, I'd look for other levels to pull: could I carpool, share a booth, stay with a friend? Consider raising prices? Or add on a revenue source like teaching a workshop on the way home from the show? My first craft show experience might not have been profitable, but it was certainly worthwhile. I can't think of any other way in which I would have had so many inspiring, insightful, and encouraging interactions with both show visitors and other vendors--all total strangers brought together by a love of craft and creativity.
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 (Note: all of the people pictured here behaved impeccably while in my studio!) Studio visits are a wonderful opportunity for artists to share their work and their enthusiasm with visitors, and to receive thought-provoking reactions and feedback in return…but they can also be uncomfortable if hosts and visitors aren’t on the same page. Artist’s studios are often a weird hodgepodge of office / showroom / storage shed / factory, a space that can be both open to the public and more personal than a bedroom. No wonder it can be hard to know how to act!
While there’s certainly some artist somewhere who would adore having visitors jog around their studio while shouting into a cellphone, slopping red wine onto the walls, and draping wet raincoats on the pedestals, I suspect that they’re the exception. For the most part, observing the guidelines below would be a good start for having a win-win visit to an artist’s studio. Basics for all visitors
Extra considerations for leading group visits
Bonus Moves
Hey fellow artists! Anything I missed or was too much of a stickler about? What was your best-ever studio visit experience and are there any guidelines that could make a similar experience more likely to happen again? The Winterthur Museum and Gardens in Wilmington, Delaware, was originally the estate and collection of decorative arts enthusiast Henry Francis du Pont (yes, one of those du Ponts). Today the 175-room museum features a collection of almost a million objects ranging from staircases and building facades to jewelry and soup tureens, as well as a library, archives, and a 60-acre garden nestled in 1000 acres of fields and gentle hills. Winterthur has long welcomed academics pursuing research in art history and conservation, but more recently began to support creatives interested in using the collections as fuel for projects in writing, performance, craft, or visual art through the Maker-Creator Fellowship. For any maker with research inclinations and an eye on American decorative arts or gardens, this fellowship is well worth checking out.  I was a Maker-Creator Fellow in September and October of 2024, continuing my ongoing research on carved wooden confectionery molds. I knew a number of people who had done the fellowship already but there were still a number of details that I didn’t fully grasp until I got there. Keeping in mind that the experience differs from person to person and will change as the fellowship program progresses, this post is intended to give you a clear enough picture to decide if this is an opportunity you may want to pursue. Fellows have the option of commuting to campus, and for those living nearby or undertaking shorter stays that might be a good idea, but I opted to rent a room ($600/month in 2024) on the estate. Foulsham House is a stone farmhouse with four private rooms, two-and-a-half shared bathrooms, a shared kitchen, and laundry facilities. One of the bedrooms would be large enough for a couple to share; all of the rooms have a writing desk, and there are more places to work in the den or living room. The house is basic but comfortable, although I was glad I brought my own pillow and some favorite kitchen gadgets for my relatively long stay.
From the house to the museum and library takes under 20 minutes on foot, or a few minutes by car and then a 5 minute walk from the staff parking lot. I walked in as often as possible (downhill to work, uphill heading home) and habitually took another stroll in the afternoon, easily clocking in 5 miles most days. It's possible to do the fellowship without having a car (taxi or Uber to campus and take advantage of the weekly grocery store shuttle) but I was glad to have mine. The campus café is nice but has limited hours and isn’t somewhere to eat everyday, and the surrounding area has plenty of stores and inviting dining options. The car also came in handy for visiting many of the other museums, gardens, and historic homes in the area, most of which let fellows in for free when they flash the Winterthur badge!
The museum itself splits roughly into two sections. There are the Galleries, a modern wing that holds exhibitions, and there is the House, a dizzying rabbit warren of furnished rooms. Fellows can conduct research in either, but access to the House is only possible on a guided tour, or one-on-one with a staff member. Each room has a book in which the objects in that room are listed and described; additional information is sometimes available through the online records. To see objects more closely or in better light, you can request that they be taken off display (not always possible) or out of storage; in my case the molds I wanted to examine were brought to a study room where I was able to handle them (with gloves) and photograph them with a staff member’s assistance.
Researchers have a dedicated desk in the shared Fellows’ Office, which is open until 10pm, and 24-hour(!) access to the library. The open stacks are full of books on history, art history, craft, and decorative arts that you can browse at will. The special collections hold rarer volumes, artists' books, and ephemera like printed games, paper theatres, and antique valentines, which can be seen by request with an advance appointment during normal library hours. The library also holds the archive of Henry Francis du Pont’s correspondence with the antiques dealers who helped him amass his collection. And for the greediest researchers, the library can even request books from other collections via interlibrary loan. I ended up with almost 500 pages of notes culled from nearly a hundred sources! (Adorably, the other side of the library wall is a reflecting pool and garden that's one of the estate's most popular wedding spots; on most Friday and Saturday nights that I chose to work late, I was a uninvited but unobtrusive guest, taking notes to a soundtrack of live chamber music and pausing to cheer along when the vows were completed. And yes, yearning for cake.)
A few points to note: Although meant for makers, this fellowship isn’t really set up for making. When I wanted to do some test carvings based on what I was seeing in the collection, I sat on the front steps at Foulsham House and used my lap as a workbench, occasionally pausing to wave at visitors as their tour buses sidled by. This of this as an opportunity to think, plan, and sketch as a prelude to studio time elsewhere. Winterthur staffers are enthusiastic about supporting the Maker-Creator Fellows and will bend over backwards to make connections and facilitate access—but they can’t work magic. If you go, be prepared with a clear list of goals, be ready to prioritize or pivot, and be patient: you may not get access to all 78 objects you want to see on the first day and for 8 hours a day thereafter. If your objects or staff helper aren’t available, maybe check out the library instead. If your library requests aren’t ready, it's your cue to take a walk in one of the most beautiful gardens you’ll ever have on your doorstep. Maker-Creators are just one part of the Winterthur ecosystem; it’s thrilling, inspiring, and instructive to work alongside not just other makers, but also doctoral candidates, professors, curators, and conservators. Go to the weekly Brown Bag talks where people present their research. Sneak peeks at whatever awesome special collections your fellow fellows are poring over in the library. Sponge up all the diverse expertise in the Office and offer your own in return. The people—staff, fellow residents, and even some of the visitors—are the secret sauce of this experience. Of course you can’t know ahead of time who they’ll all be or how you’ll get along, but you can bank on having some engrossing conversations. For several years, the Maker-Creator Fellowship was kind of a hidden gem, but the applicant pool continues to grow. This is a phenomenal chance for makers from around the world to get their hands on incredible research resources AND a monthly stipend, so if you want to be one of them, here's the good/bad news: the most recent deadline passed in January 2025. You're too late to whip up a last-minute application but you're just in time to start on a compelling, thoroughly-researched, and carefully-prepared application for the next round. For more information: https://www.winterthur.org/fellowships-available/   As I’ve shared before, one of the most valuable bits of professional advice EVER came me from the marvelous Janice Hosegood, then manager of the much-missed Electrum Gallery. Reviewing my portfolio, Janice’s only criticism was that my prices were too low. Since that was the opposite of what I’d heard from every gallerist ever I was a little startled. Janice patiently explained that my work would never appeal to everyone, that I needed to price it so that I could afford for it to await the right person, and—unlike a pear in a fruit bowl—good work wouldn’t go bad from simply biding its time. So Janice: this little press clipping is for you! Kamakura is a pair of wooden brooches based on statues from Japan’s Kamakura period; they’re stained dark, like wood exposed to smoke over centuries, and have eyes made from watch crystals, reverse-painted and gilded and inset into the wood from behind. I carved these pieces in 2005. Over the next decade, they alternated appearing in 5 different gallery shows with hibernating in a shoebox under my bed. Sometime after I moved to Penland in 2020, I put them up on the wall of my gallery space. I dithered about displaying older work, but I liked looking at them; they still felt like my work, and I was still satisfied with them, even if no one else appeared to be. Then during the weekend of Penland’s 2022 auction, the brooches were purchased by Andrea Specht, executive director of the American Craft Council. This month (May 2024) she nominated them as her pick in American Craft magazine’s “Finds” section, writing, “From the moment I saw this pair of Kamakura brooches, I couldn’t think about much else until I returned the following day to buy them…I wear only one at a time, and every time I do, I feel like I have an unspecified superpower.” Made in 2005, sold in 2022, superpowered in 2024. We live in a time that emphasizes dopamine loops, just-add-water success, and lists of “Ten People Who’ve Changed the World Before Turning Ten,” but without taking anything away from those ingenues, I’d like to suggest that slow success can be satisfying too.  After three years, it’s my last week as a Resident Artist at the Penland School of Craft.
For much of my life, I’ve had to be strong-armed through change—flailing, bawling, and dragging baggage like a newborn with colic and hoarding issues. While this drama has kept my parents and friends well stocked with blackmail stories, it has taken a toll on me, at worst trapping me in paralysis and at best bookending positive experiences with corrosive misery. How, then, does the imminent end of my appointed time at a magical place find me relatively calm and cheerful? I think it’s down to the fact that I’ve spent so much of the last three years carving, which is to say: I’ve been practicing how to transition from one plane to another. When I start a carving, particularly if I’m working with a piece of material that’s already a square-ish block, I often draw the front view on one face and the side view on another. Then I saw around the first outline, carefully keeping all the sawed-off bits, tape the bits back together, and saw around the other outline. The unwanted material falls away like the segments of a weird orange, leaving only a rough, Lego-like version of my design. This is the fastest route I know of to jump from a block of wood to a blocky but recognizable version of the shape I have in mind. The speed of this transformation is gratifying, but with their sharp corners, flat sides, and starkly differentiated FRONT and SIDE views, there’s something aggressive and unsettling about a piece at this stage, like the sculptural equivalent of a mugshot. But then comes the part of the process I love best! I get to coax those standoffish planes into conversation with each other. It’s so much more than simply rounding the corners; the way that one plane slides or stutters or leans into its neighbor is more like the dynamic between two dancers or the movement from one musical note to the next. The transition is everything, not something to rush through or endure. For most of my life, change has felt like one of those blocky roughed-out forms: like Front and Side, Before and After seemed completely separate, the line between them painfully abrupt. Carving has taught me that change doesn’t have to have such hard edges, that a beautiful transition carries Now into Next, making them an integral part of each other. My favorite way to look at a sculpture is to walk all the way around it, appreciating how its contours and features interact. It’s impossible to create those interactions without appreciating the power of transition, and it’s impossible to appreciate them without moving. Like one plane flowing into another, my experience of Penland won’t so much end as alter. I’ll never enjoy moving but now I can embrace transition as a chance to shape the relationship between what came before and what comes next.  They say that public speaking ranks alongside death on the list of things people fear most, but unlike death, public speaking is something that gets easier with practice. These are a few thoughts that have helped me learn to love giving artist talks…
Love Them Actress Sarah Cannon played the Grand Ole Opry character Minnie Pearl, sporting a gingham dress, a straw hat with the price tags attached, and an ear-to-ear grin. She was an optimistic and outgoing bumpkin who could talk to anyone. Asked about the secret of her/Minnie’s stage presence, Cannon boiled it down to this: Love your audience, and they’ll love you right back. Ever since I learned this, I’ve taken a moment before any presentation to wrap my audience in an imaginary hug; it’s way more effective than imagining them naked. Make it Matter If you have the opportunity to get up in front of people who are willing to listen to you, for heaven’s sake don’t squander it: talk about something that matters! It’s almost always possible to give the talk you want to give in the guise of the talk you’re supposed to give. Say you’re supposed to talk about yourself and your career: do you really want to recite a list of accomplishments? Or would you be more comfortable and excited to share something you’ve learned the hard way? Something that might help your audience to face their own challenges? Repay their attention by giving them value. The Nerve! A long time ago when I gave my first talk at a national conference, I was so wretched with nerves I considered pulling a fire alarm. Instead, I stepped up to the lectern, took a deep breath and involuntarily gave the tiniest little wet-dog shake to vent my nerves. Afterwards several people mentioned that shake; it was something they identified with, an unrehearsed moment that got them on my side from the start. So while I don’t enjoy feeling nervous, I know it’s just part of the routine, and I don’t waste my energy trying to fight it or hide it. Me TV Even if you are miked up and standing in a spotlight, I guarantee that no one is paying as much attention to you as you are. People remember gists and impressions. You can flub a sentence or mispronounce your own name or have spinach in your teeth and barely anyone will notice, much less record it in their diary later that night. Bonus tip: this is also true at parties! Blurb Not Bio In the course of three years at a craft school, I’ve seen a looooot of artist talks and in general, the talks that leave the audience wanting more are the talks that leave something out. When the presenter shows every work they’ve ever made, there’s not much left to say. And when they show everything they’ve ever made and take double or triple their allotted time to do it, the audience will talk…but not kindly.  When I was maybe nine or ten years old, I learned to weave a specific type of friendship bracelet at summer camp: odd numbers of threads folded into loops, lassoed over one’s fingers, then walked over, under, and around each other like dancers at an Elizabethan party. I made absolutely yards of it while eating, watching TV, riding in cars, and possibly while sleeping. I memorized the process in both my spongy young brain and my springy young muscles. Yet some twenty years later when this cord would have been perfect for a project, I could remember everything except how to make it.
I utterly love figuring out new tools, techniques, and materials, but trying to resurrect something that I previously learned and subsequently forgot is infuriating. For another twenty years*, that dastardly friendship bracelet taunted me, resisting my periodic attempts to find instructions online, or reverse engineer the process with diagrams and bits of string. Thank heavens that I’ve since learned a thing or two about learning! Primarily that my memory is not to be trusted. In our costume cutting class at the University of Washington, Laurie Kurutz exhorted us to annotate each pattern piece as if we might get hit by a bus later that day: what labels, marks, and notes would enable another person to literally pick up the pieces and finish our project? In a jewelry workshop, Sarah Loertscher shared her process writing the “recipes” that were the basis of her successful production line; her practice of making a detailed record of each design including materials and amounts, manufacturing steps and setups, and even the time involved allowed Sarah or an assistant to remake any item at any time, and to price appropriately. Now If I think there’s even a remote chance I might want to revisit a project, I leave myself the most pedantic trail of crumbs. It might be a sketch, or a snapshot, or a quick video, but most often it’s a list of specific materials, measurements, and steps in a sprawling “how-to” Google Doc that has the benefit of being easily searchable. Besides keeping me from being in a constant state of rage, these reference materials support my natural inclination is to work in batches (a.k.a “binges”). I refer back to these almost daily; thanks to my “how-to” doc, I was just able to make a batch of concrete bricks for the first time in three years, candlesticks for the first time this year, and a fresh batch of the bunnies I sew every couple of years as baby gifts—all without having to reinvent any wheels! *There’s a happy ending to this story: last year my friend Kit Paulson got into making friendship bracelets and found instructions for weaving my white whale!  Until you reach a level of achievement and notoriety at which opportunities are flung at your feet, chasing after grants, residencies, fellowships, scholarships, and shows is part of the job of being an artist (writer, creative person, etc). The sooner you establish a system for spotting, capturing, and cataloging those opportunities, the better your chances of making them your own.
I’ve been using a spreadsheet and the strategies below for more than 20 years. My sheet now includes hundreds of items; I won’t apply for allof them, and I for darn sure won’t win most of them, but I can tell you in seconds which ones I should focus on next, what the application entails, and when I should send it out. It’s not a magic wand, but it is really helpful. Get to know your quarry Schedule time specifically for researching possible opportunities (in addition to the time you set aside for working on applications). There are so many print and online databases for this type of information! Use the “sources” tab of your spreadsheet to list useful websites, newsletters, magazines, or books. In the beginning, investing a few hours every week or month might make sense; as your list grows, you can dial down the time you spend on active research. If you are new to this work, I would suggest going to the research section of a local or university library and getting a librarian’s help zeroing in on sources that are relevant to your goals. Many of the most established opportunities are printed in massive books; these grants and residencies don’t tend to change much, so if you take careful notes you never really have to look at these books again (note the name of the book on the “sources” tab of your spreadsheet, and that you’ve gotten all you can out of it). Return to this list regularly and figure out a schedule for revisiting the most valuable sources. If a source dries up and stops giving you anything new, keep it on the list, but make a note that it is no longer useful. Ask instructors or others in your field where they find out about opportunities. While many sources are free, there are a few digests that charge for whittling an overwhelming list down into a few suggestions that fit your criteria; some offer a free trial period. Some subscriptions may also be available through your school or library. For sources that are updated more frequently, make a plan for when to check them. It will take you a little while to work out how often it is worthwhile to visit a particular source, but when you figure that out, make a note on your sources sheet. Keep your ears on Even when you aren’t actively doing research, you will come across possibilities. You’ll hear about a classmate getting a grant to travel, or you’ll see a call for entries on Instagram. Get this information down however you can—a note, a screenshot—but transfer it into your spreadsheet as quickly as possible. Cast a wide net Use separate tabs for each different area of your interest—even if you’re just dipping a toe in a particular area. Let’s say I’m a visual artist who wants to get more serious about her business and dreams of writing a novel someday (hmmm…); I definitely want to capture information about opportunities for art exhibitions and grants on one sheet, and opportunities for business-development courses and funding on another, but as long as I’m at it I might as well also start a sheet for any writing-related opportunities I happen to stumble across. If and when I finish a novel, I’ll have a ready list of competitions and publication grants to try for! The same goes for application criteria. For example, if you find an ongoing opportunity that requires you to be fully fluent in a language that you’ve only just started to study, record the details and note “fluency” in the “criteria” column. It might even help motivate you to continue studying. Keep your ducks in a row Create or modify headings as needed to keep track of relevant information—the name and type of the opportunity, the location, the selection criteria, etc. You may also want to note anything that would affect the time an application might take—say, if you need to provide 10 references, or transcripts, or a live performance video. Keep an eye on the clock You’ll definitely want to note down any deadlines, but when your lists get really long, you may want to shift your strategy for tracking them so you don’t miss out. You could sort a sheet by deadline rather than keeping things in alphabetical order, or you could regularly copy upcoming applications into a separate “current” tab. And remember that some recurring opportunities can have different deadlines each year; sometimes I note a deadline as “approximate” until I can confirm it. Prioritize If you have limited time for applications, track any information that will help you decide where to concentrate your efforts. Note if an opportunity is one-time or recurring; a one-time opportunity might have fewer applications, while a recurring one might give you the chance to revise and resubmit the same application more than once. If possible, look up how many applications are typically received and how many are accepted. If there are selection criteria, be very honest with yourself about how well you meet them. Hang onto the duds This might seem a bit mopey, but don’t delete any items from your lists of ongoing opportunities. If you delete something that caught your eye once, it’ll probably catch your eye again and then you’ll waste time re-researching and remembering why you weren’t eligible to apply for it in the first place. Instead, strike through the name of the opportunity and under “notes” explain why: perhaps the grant is on hiatus, or perhaps it only funds Canadians, or functional potters, or Canadian functional potters under the age of 27. There you have it! Happy hunting and please let me know if you come across any massive grants for sweets-obsessed Appalachian woodcarvers over the age of 50.  ***Hello! I am not an accounting or tax professional. The post below is based on my personal experience, is shared for informational purposes only, and does not constitute legal or financial advice. This is how I operate based on advice from my trusted sources; if you have better or more up-to-date advice, please let me know!***
One of my least favorite parts of tax preparation is checking my 1099s and getting them corrected as necessary. The most common error? Reimbursements being included in compensation totals; the best way to address that error is to stop it from happening in the first place. What is a reimbursement? When you’re paid back for a purchase of materials required to do a job. As an example for this post, let’s say I’m teaching a kids’ drawing workshop and the school expects me to buy crayons up front, on the understanding that I’ll be repaid after I submit a receipt and a check request. I’m not profiting from this transaction; the amount I spent and the amount I’ll be paid are exactly the same. The reimbursement amount is not income, and I should not have to pay income tax on it. Sounds simple enough; what’s the problem? First of all, I have a fundamental issue with the reimbursement system. I am essentially giving the school a zero-interest loan, which they may take months to repay. Reimbursement is limited to the purchase price of the materials; generally I am not compensated for the gas I used getting to the store, or the time I spent shopping, divvying up the supplies into packets, or filling out the reimbursement paperwork. So it’s already a raw deal, but the infuriating icing on the disadvantageous cake comes if I get a 1099-NEC the next year and see that the amount I was reimbursed for the crayons has been added to the amount I was compensated for teaching the class. This means that I will have to request (and possibly argue for) a corrected 1099 and wait to file my taxes until it comes…or suck it up and pay federal income tax on the cost of the crayons. Yikes! What do you do to avoid these hassles?
Again, this is just my personal strategy, and I’m always open to adjusting it. If you are a teaching artist, please take the time to formulate your own plan and have the courage to stick to it. If you are a studio or payroll administrator, please consider the impact that your supply prep and reimbursement policies have on your teaching artists, and on your efforts to attract and retain the best teachers. Naturally, there are as many resident artist living arrangements as there are artist residencies. I’ve spent from one week to several months living and creating in: a swank bungalow on an island, an otherwise vacant conference hotel, a couple of cabins in the woods, and a sweltering inner city dormitory with four bunk beds, vinyl mattresses, and sealed shut windows, that could have doubled as a pizza oven. Luckily, my longest residency has been matched with my best living situation. My apartment at the Penland School of Craft is tiny and spare and light-filled and I absolutely love it. It’s perfect for one person but couples and even families have managed to live in them. I arrived with minimal furniture and over the last 2.5 years I’ve curated a collection of furnishings that are low, reflective, or see-through, which keeps them from eating up too much floorspace or view.  Half of the residents live by the studios, and half (including me) live about an eight-minute walk down a windy dirt road. Our little complex is made up of two duplexes, and I live in half of one. The approach to my unit takes you past all the other units on one side, and on the other there’s a steep hillside covered in invasive but pleasantly swishy miscanthus grass. In these woods right outside my door I have seen and/or heard deer, raccoons, skunks, opossums, and one bear (!). I once saw 24 coyotes in the field behind the house. Because we’re so deep in a hollow, my porch only gets early sun, but that makes it a great place to have breakfast or coffee in warmer months. All my vintage aluminum outdoor furniture folds for storage; the chair came from a thrift store and I pulled two rockers out of a dump and replaced their rotten wooden slats. In cold weather I hang a suet block for the birds, but soon I’ll switch it out for a hummingbird feeder and bring some of my larger plants outside.  Just inside the front door there’s a tiny entryway bursting with coats, bags, shoes, and other things intended for the outside world. There’s also a door to the laundry/water heater room, which is part hellhole (where I stash everything I don’t want to deal with) and part paradise (where I can do laundry without waiting in silent fury for neighbors to get their clothes out of the machine!). The bathroom is the next door down the little hall and you’re not seeing it because it is fiendishly difficult to keep clean. It has the same challenges as the rest of the house (grit blown and tracked in from the dirt road outside, cobweb jungles that spring up overnight) plus a tenacious turquoise tinge from the copper in the water that makes everything look like it’s had a blue rinse, scrub as I might. I put a filter on the shower, which has helped some. During the great toilet paper scare of 2020, I bought a stainless steel shattaf (a Middle Eastern type of bidet that is easier to keep clean and perhaps healthier for women) and it is also handy for spraying down the shower during cleaning. There is a tub! The bedroom is at the back of the house. For reference, my bed is a full and there’s plenty of room to maneuver around it. There a couple of built-in cabinets, a long closet with sliding doors, and a small open closet (perfect kayak storage) made from closing off a superfluous doorway to the kitchen. I like to look out the window behind the bed first and last thing each day. At night I peep at the moon, stars, or lightning bugs, in the morning I greet my favorite tree; if I’m up early enough I can turn my head uphill towards main campus and watch the top of the mountain blush pink as the sun touches it. Oddly, this is the only room in the house that doesn’t have a heated floor, so I pile on blankets in winter. In summer, the ceiling fan runs non-stop and the windows are usually cracked. My collection of lacquer dishes and a self-portrait by my favorite college professor hang on the wall, and on the bed I keep a blue-and-white antique coverlet similar to those that were woven here at Penland when it was first started. That reminder of the history and creative continuity of this place helps me to keep my own experiences in perspective.  With the exception of the bathroom and the laundry, the house is just one big room with a high ceiling. The kitchen is essentially a room divider that stretches partway up to the ceiling, allowing for the free circulation of cooking smells and cool breezes. Storage is minimal and counter space is miniscule. Thank heavens for a previous resident who built the shelves on the left in what used to be a doorway to the bedroom: I don’t know what I would do without these!! Our hot water, appliances, and radiant floors run on propane—which yes, I realize is an environmental disaster so I will avoid it when I am able to make such decisions for myself—so when the power goes out we are still able to make tea.  I have spent hours, perhaps days, looking out this window. That’s the tree that I think of as a neighbor, and yes, I do periodically go out and hack bits of ivy off of it. Most of my plants were tiny when I bought them for a dollar at the grocery store and a few are now getting too big for the sill. I made the willow chair at a workshop here sometime around 1999 with the magical furniture maker Clifton Monteith; I made the paper lamp in a workshop with Mario Messina. If your eyes are sharp, you may spot a number of black dots on the wall. These are false ladybugs that were introduced to the area to control pests but turned out to prefer lounging around in nice warm houses. My place is crawling with them, as well as with stinkbugs, glass spiders, and silverfish. Or “roommates”, as I’ve come to call them.  On the opposite site of the room from the big window are these three windows (which will be open all summer), looking out to the porch and the bird feeder shenanigans.
The vintage rattan sofa came all the way from Seattle and it’s one of my favorite pieces of furniture; it splits into three sections so I can easily move it all by myself. I pieced the slipcover together from old jeans. Four plywood crates provide storage for books and canned goods underneath, and additional seating options on top. One is cushioned with a woven denim mat. The light has a woven aluminum shade. The side tables are a vintage Thonet and a thing that I cobbled together from plywood that doubles as a writing lap desk. The coffee table is a vintage Japanese steamer trunk covered in aluminum that I bought when I was working at Hosekibako, a Japanese thrift shop that is one of Seattle’s hidden treasures; on the move here it held all my most fragile artwork. I’m not naturally very tidy or very hospitable, but I’ve been working on it. So far this year, I’ve had at least one person over for coffee or a meal each week. This virtual “tour” aligns with that habit, but my goals in sharing go even further. When I was considering this residency, a couple of previous residents showed me their living spaces and the effect was to make the possibility of the residency more concrete. I figure there’s a good chance that someone reading this post is debating whether or not to apply for the Penland residency; perhaps seeing my living arrangements can help to settle the debate, help to make this leap of faith seem more doable. And perhaps one of my readers will even be the next person to live in—and love—my apartment! |
