1980 - Penland School of Crafts Exhibition

Through September 5-30 of 1980, GreenHill presented the Penland School of Crafts Exhibition with artists from Western NC. The Penland School of Crafts is a large school for crafts located fiftey-three miles north of Asheville in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. The school attracts students from every state and from over sixty foreign countries and teaches classes in clay, weaving, glassblowing, vegetable dyeing, lapidary, plastics, jewelry, graphics, photography, wood-working, enameling, tapestry, stitchery, and sculpture. The artists in this exhibition worked at Penland and represented many of the finest contemporary interpretations of the wood, clay, metal, glass, fibers, and photography mediums.

Today, Penland still boasts a very excellent reputation with more than 1200 people attending each year for instruction and another 14,000 as visitors. The school has also become the focal point for a lively community of craft artists, thanks in part to the resident program which has encouraged many artists to settle in the area. Penland’s programs have and will continue to strive to engage the human spirit which is expressed throughout the world in craft.

To see other notable milestones from the past 40 years, check out our special 40th anniversary page: Click Here