At the risk of sounding dramatic, going to Penland for the first time changed my life. Penland School of Craft is an immersive art and craft school based in the woods an hour outside of Asheville, North Carolina. Their main programming is a seasonal, rotating series of instructors and their workshops ranging from 1 week to 8 weeks long, in various studios (or areas of study) including Clay, Metals, Textiles, Glass, Papermaking, etc.
The workshop I took was called Experimental Darkroom Practices, a two-week workshop (from July 12-24) in the Photography studio, taught by Claire A. Warden. It was everything that I had hoped for and more. The people at Penland were amazingly welcoming, diverse, and open with their knowledge about their craft and opportunities. I felt no pretentiousness between those who’ve been doing this their whole life and those who were trying this for the first time. My classmates were equally wonderful, and they became my core community as we spent every day in the studio learning and creating. I produced an incredible amount of work while feeling like it happened naturally and effortlessly.
My time at Penland has brought about interesting breakthroughs in my art (for example, discovering that a core tenet of my practice is unpredictability and experimentation). But the biggest, most impactful change has been in the way I view myself as an artist. Penland gave me a new reverence for the pursuit of art and craft, in myself and in all people, as pursuit of life itself (more on this later).
A neurodivergent heaven
Penland provided three things that were a godsend for my ADHD brain: the daily structure, the immersive singular focus, and the IRL creative community.
There is a set schedule for life at Penland (meals bolded):
- Breakfast: 8-8:45am
- Class time (roughly, depending on instructor): 9am-12pm
- Lunch: 12-1pm
- Class time (roughly, depending on instructor): 1-5pm
- Dinner: 6-6:45pm
- Nightly artist talks (optional): 8-9pm
Specifically, meal times were strict. I knew that if I didn’t get my ass to the dining hall by 6:45pm, then I wasn’t getting food that night. This forced me to both eat at regular intervals, and to take regular breaks throughout the day. While it was annoying to have to stop whatever I was hyperfixated on, this ultimately helped me work sustainably and keep healthy habits. Ironically, Penland’s rigid schedule and removal of the freedom to decide things like when to eat, ultimately gave me the most freedom to work and create.
My own personal schedule ended up being something like this (work bolded):
- Wake up: 8am
- Breakfast: 8:30-9am
- Class/work: 9am-12pm
- Lunch and chill: 12-1pm
- Class/work: 1-6pm
- Dinner: 6-6:30pm
- Work: 6:30-8pm
- Artist talks: 8-9pm
- Work: 9-10:30pm
- Decompress/scroll/get ready for bed: 10:30pm-midnight
That’s roughly 11 hours a day working in the studio! Every waking minute was spent doing, thinking, or dreaming about alternative process photography. I obsessed over it, and I love being obsessed with things. It felt as though I had learned and created a year’s worth of work in 2 weeks! I worked so much that I barely checked my phone at all until the hour before bed. I brought my laptop with me but it stayed in my suitcase most days. I was so immersed in my work that I created my own digital detox by accident. If this isn’t the ultimate dream, then I don’t know what is.
I do want to note that this would be highly unsustainable in regular life. For these two weeks, I barely talked to anyone outside of Penland, I canceled my usual weekly commitments like therapy and workouts, I didn’t have any other hobbies, and I didn’t have chores or a dog to take care of. My brain also started to feel like mush by the end of the session. I could feel that I was becoming creatively drained and out of ideas (something I’m NEVER out of). But I was doing this intentionally, using up all of my physical/mental/emotional resources, knowing that I was only here for a short time and wanting to make the most of this environment.
“The church of STEM”
One of the greatest things about Penland is its diversity in age and in career/background. I got to meet artists at every stage of their practice and their life: artists who had their MFAs, artists who never went to art school, artists who were still in their undergrad, working artists, teaching artists, artists with a day job in industries unrelated to art, artists with a day job in creative industries adjacent to art, artists who’ve been running their own gallery for 50 years, artists who were retired doctors, artists who worked in fabrication for other artists, etc etc. The one thing that connected all of them was that they were artists who took their craft seriously. And by that, I mean that there is an unspoken reverence for craft and creation.
Let me back up for some context: I was raised in what I call “the church of STEM”. I grew up in a community of Asian immigrants who taught their children to pursue only STEM (science/tech/engineering/math) subjects for the promise of high pay. Then, I attended the best engineering school in Canada to study math and computer science for undergrad. Then, I worked in big tech at the heart of Silicon Valley for 6 years. My whole life has been surrounded by people who not only value STEM, but fundamentally value utility, problem-solving, and outcome. These values create not only a career path but an entire worldview and framework for approaching life, which is why I call it a “church”. When my engineer friends want to create something, they are motivated by the idea of helping someone or solving a problem or meeting a need. They ask: what does the world need? What problem can I solve for the world?
But unless you’re making an explicit statement with your art, it’s hard to justify art as a need. No one needs a lumen print of a flower, or a collage that reminds me of my favourite song, or an abstract painting of my internal feelings. And this right here has been the crux of my entire career as an artist: the existential guilt I feel for dedicating my life to doing something that no one needs, and thus something that doesn’t matter.
Now, I know this is not true. I know art saves lives, and I know it has saved mine. But knowing something in your mind and feeling something in your bones are two different things.
Seismic internal shifts
What shifted in me at Penland was the feeling in my bones. Being around so many artists who take their art and craft seriously, as if creating what only you can create was a god-given responsibility. There is no question of, “Am I making something someone needs?” Of course it’s needed. It’s needed in the way that all art is needed: because it is a transmission of human expression, because making it brings the artist joy/peace/fulfillment, because creating is a part of human nature. The engineer may think, “this thing I’m making is good for the world”, but the artist knows, “the process of me making this is good for the world.”
Art also felt normalized as a job, nothing more and nothing less. It is neither a frivolous hobby nor a fetishized talent (while in the STEM world, it’s both). What normalized it was hearing about different career trajectories of different artists, how they tried one thing and then moved onto a different thing, how they teach or don’t, how they made a thing by accident and then someone liked it so that took them in a whole new direction. It is just a job, as noble and rigorous as any other.
I quit my job in tech 4 years ago because I felt a creative calling, without knowing exactly what that calling was or how to navigate it. With no other career options and eager to replace my income as soon as possible, I chose the path of a commercial artist. I decided to make art to be consumed, as prints or stickers or anything else that could make a profit. This put me in a constant tug-of-war between creating the art that I wanted to make (weird, extravagant, sensual, and always in a different medium than the last) v.s creating art that I thought would sell (joyful, consistent, and reproducible).
Being at Penland surfaced an idea I had denied for years: that my art might fundamentally not be for the masses. I want to be weird and experimental, I want to make things with my hands that cannot be scaled, I want to jump between lots of different disciplines, I want to make shit that’s complex or abstract or NSFW. This all lends itself to a path closer to that of a fine artist showing work at museums and galleries, rather than that of a commercial artist selling prints to an audience on Instagram.
As an artist, I’ve decided to shift my focus from selling to exhibiting my work. I want to present my work to the world, while accepting that most people won’t “get it”. I want to talk about my work and my practice at a philosophical level, to spark feelings and questions about life and creativity, to explore personal concepts and perspectives. After all, that is why I write this public journal that you’re reading.
Integration and reflection
Upon returning home to New York, I experienced what I could only describe as reverse culture shock. I was a different person at Penland. Maybe it’s because I was actively creating every day; maybe it’s because I had a fierce community who was co-creating with me; maybe it’s because I had a healthy eating and sleeping schedule; maybe it’s because my ambient sights and sounds were of greenery and wildlife instead of concrete and traffic; maybe it’s because my focus was singular and focused instead of scattered between work, admin, and chores.
Whatever the reason, my nervous system was eased in a way that allowed me to see myself as a person of agency and power, an author of my own life. In New York, it sometimes feels like life is something that’s happening to me, rather than something I’m creating. I’m still trying to integrate the Penland version of me into my New York life, and the one thing that helps the most is remembering how it felt to be amongst Penland’s greater creative community.
Many years ago when I was living in San Francisco, one of my favourite dance teachers told me, “I don’t take myself too seriously, but I take my work seriously.” I was confused, how does that make sense? Isn’t your work a subset of you? How could a subset of you be taken seriously if the whole of you isn’t?
I now understand what that teacher meant. Like a mother and her child, my work comes through me but not from me. My work doesn’t exist as simply a part of me, but as a part of our greater world that I am in relationship with. If anything, I am a subset of my work. The work matters, because it is greater than me.