I had an absolutely awesome summer of art workshops. Just after the end of the spring semester I was fortunate to be accepted to the Penland School of Craft in North Carolina where I enrolled into a two week Blacksmithing class taught by Philip Baldwin of Seattle, WA. Penland is situated in the eastern part of the state up in the Appalachian Mountains, and is a quite beautiful area. It follows the traditional blueprint for craft schools of isolating the art students in a beautiful area for inspiration, outside of urban distractions, and providing for all your needs (room and board) so all you have to worry about is art making. There were many mediums being taught, but my recent interest in blacksmithing lead me to that studio. It is an incredibly well equipped studio, and a real pleasure to be in. The story behind this picture is our instructor Philip Baldwin (second from left in the light blue shirt - that's me way on the left) boasted that we could replicate a form that the wood working shop turned out. Well, we did pretty well, and I think I can safely say the wood workers put no where near as much physical energy into it as we did!