slowly she turned

Well, gosh, I nearly forgot about posting this third part of my trip to the Folk School August 4-10. I have almost always stayed in Keith House, which is the oldest building in use for housing on campus, and I love the vibe there. This time I shared a room with two women from Tennessee and California in one of the newer places, the Little House. It was between the Farmhouse and the Festival Barn. I enjoyed the stable air conditioning and a bathroom off our room! Everybody was happy.

There were chestnut trees between our building and the Festival Barn. They were infested with what looked like web caterpillars, which is sad but they seemed pretty healthy and the caterpillars made some lacy leaves to pick up.

Also, my class was in the new Book and Paper Arts Studio, which was a fabulous space. It was only in the planning stages the last time I took a book arts class.

Here are photos of some of the paper sheets drying on the doors and tables in the studio. I’m sorry that I don’t remember who made what. That’s mine at the top right, and maybe the kozo paper on the left. I know that Nicole made the green paper out of onion stalks from the JCCFS garden.

I never played with the cooked gingko leaves. I needed to make some choices, and they were hard decisions!

Nicole’s green onion and iris leaf paper:

When we started working with the dyes, I made certain to wear this tank top which I drip and slap dye and clean my hands on every time I dye. The lace made some nice prints. Unfortunately I didn’t do an afterbath to set the dye so much of it washed out later.

The sunset clouds one evening replicated the lacy kozo of our paper sculptures.

A fledgling robin (I think) visited the deck at the studio and let me walk up close to him before flying away.

Here’s a sunset photo from in front of the Little House:

Of course I had to pick up this huge beetle because I wanted to see his underside. He flipped around and grabbed onto my fingers and I freaked out and shook him off in the grass. He was about as big as a fifty cent coin. Aren’t his legs interesting?

I was really pleased and honored that Bryant asked me to read this poem, which is one of my favorites, to the class during our last day, which was Friday.

On Friday night, I went over to the Crown, the restaurant/bar over on the main drag of Brasstown, and bought a wonderful loaf of whole grain sourdough bread and visited my classmate Susi’s art table at the little market outside. I drank a Highland Gaelic Ale at the bar and wondered why I hadn’t come over here before. Oh wait, because I always spend any time I’m able to stand or sit upright in the studio, and the studios were closed on Friday night!

Afterwards, I went down to Brasstown Creek and waded around a bit, picked up a few rocks.

We were incredibly lucky with the weather. Although some days were hot and humid, the rest of the state was getting flooded by a tropical storm. This time I didn’t have to drive home in a driving rain! We were sent home after breakfast on Saturday and I did my usual stop at this overlook

and again in Dillsboro for a pit stop. I found a very cute shop called the The Fox Burrow and bought a couple of gifts, since the craft shop at the Folk School wasn’t open on Saturday morning until 11 a.m. I had planned to make another stop at the Folk Art Center in east Asheville on the Blue Ridge Parkway, but traffic got incredibly snarled with a detour off I-40 and then a crash on the detour. I gave up my plan to eat lunch in Asheville and I made my way through the River Arts District and out through Biltmore to the highway home.

Where I have an incredible amount of artistic energy and ideas still brewing two weeks later!