Grace

May 19, 2023

Dear Friends of Peters Valley,

Spring is finally upon us, and as we welcome the warmer weather and energy of this season, we are reminded of the beauty and vitality that creativity brings to our lives. At Peters Valley School of Craft, we are committed to providing a space for artists to explore their craft, develop their skills, and share their knowledge with others.

With your support, we made significant operating improvements and capital investments over the last year: The Ceramics studio was upgraded with new Whisper Shimpo Pottery Wheels and stools. We invested in a back-up generator for the fibers, fine metals, wood, and special topics studios on Thunder Mountain so classes can continue through weather-related power outages. We also renovated and painted bathrooms in Valley Brook Dorm and on Thunder Mountain, and replaced the roof on the Special Topics studio. And, thanks to your donations to last year’s Spring Appeal, our failing Facilities Truck was replaced with a newer truck!

As we look forward to another season of workshops, exhibitions, and events, we are faced with the ongoing challenge of maintaining and improving our campus and facilities. From taking care of our buildings and grounds, to investing in new technologies and studio equipment, we are constantly working to ensure that Peters Valley remains a vibrant and welcoming community for all who seek to create and learn.

This is where we need your help. Peters Valley relies on the support of generous donors like you to continue our mission of enriching lives through craft. For this Spring Appeal, your donation will go directly toward our general operating fund, allowing us to continue to make critical investments in our studios, facilities, and staff.

Specifically, your donation will help us to:

• Award 10 full workshop scholarships to college students (undergraduate or graduate) who show financial need through the “Making their Mark” Scholarship Program ($12,000)
• Invest in new Wood studio tools and equipment to enhance the learning experience for our students, including replacing our tired planer($5,000) 
• Purchase a walk-in refrigerator/freezer for the dining hall to replace a failing unit ($12,000)
• Provide a reliable backup power source during weather-related power outages in our Ceramics Studio by purchasing a back-up generator ($14,000)

In addition, your gift will help us expand our outreach programs to underserved communities, providing access to the transformative power of craft. We will also continue to develop new opportunities for artists and artisans to showcase their work and connect with audiences around the world.

 Join us in reaching our goal of raising $50,000 to make crucial investments in Peters Valley’s campus and facilities. Together, we can make these much-needed improvements a reality. Your contribution today will go a long way towards supporting our mission of fostering creativity and craftsmanship. 

We are proud of the impact that Peters Valley has had on the lives of so many people, from students and artists to visitors and supporters. With your help, we can continue to inspire creativity and foster a love of craft for generations to come.

Thank you for your support, and we look forward to welcoming you to Peters Valley in the not too distant future.

With gratitude, 

 Kristin Muller 

Executive Director

Upon the closing of Traditional Basketry and Beyond: Steven R. Carty an exhibition on view at Peters Valley’s Sally D. Francisco Gallery from March 19-April 23 , 2023, we wanted to share this essay, written by artist and friend of Peters Valley, Daryl Lancaster. An excerpt from this essay was included in a take-away brochure at the gallery during the show. Here is the extended version. We hope you enjoy!

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Steven R. Carty learned basket weaving using traditional basketry materials from his mother, award winning basket maker Mary Carty, at a young age.  But it wasn’t until he discovered the celebrated herbalist, folklorist, naturalist, philosopher and basket maker Doug Elliott that he found beauty and the challenge of foraged materials.  

This exhibition features 13 of Carty’s containers or vessels, not all are considered baskets in the traditional sense, if one defines basketry as a weaving or twining technique.  The stark contrast of the naturally foraged materials against the whitewashed walls of the gallery gives definition to each piece, allowing undistracted study of the subtle pattern surfaces of the bark or other components.

Carty spends many days seasonally, foraging for native trees, and more importantly invasive species.  In fact, much of his foraging is turning towards harvesting invasive species like wisteria, though the invasive wild grape vine, a mainstay of basket makers for decades, is becoming threatened by the Spotted Lanternfly.

Carty uses simple tools, many of which are on display in cases in the gallery.  Foraging technically requires only a sharp knife, as indigenous/First Nation peoples used in their practices of gathering materials from nature.  In fact, according to Carty, the materials for each of the baskets/containers in the exhibition could have been foraged using only a knife; but Carty yields to more helpful tools, like cutters, hand saws and a draw knife to relieve some of the stress that foraging for a living can do to the body.

Carty explains that though he must kill a tree—typically hickory, brown ash, or tulip poplar— he takes land management and stewardship of the forests, specifically his native Pine Barrens in Southern New Jersey, ancient Lenape lands, very seriously.  He will only take a tulip poplar or hickory tree in a grove or tight cluster to help thin and allow other trees to grow stronger with the available light and nutrients.  He takes advantage of areas of growth that will be destroyed when land is sold to be cleared for development.  And of course, removing invasive species helps the natural world and protects native plants. He is keenly aware of climate change and sees its effects all around.  He is shifting more of his foraging focus on invasive species to help protect what is left of the native plants and species.

When looking at each piece in the exhibition, it is impossible to really understand that each basket or container represents only a small percentage of the effort of its creation.  A table in the exhibition shows some of the gathered materials: a length of tulip poplar, some wisteria vines, and other favorite materials.  Wisteria vines are an extremely invasive species with a short shelf life; once harvested, they must be used within the year, otherwise it becomes too brittle.  The wisteria can be stripped of its bark, which can be used for making cordage.  Carty makes his own cordage by twisting and plying the paper-thin stripped bark from vines as thin as ¼”.  His favorite plant for making cordage is dogbane, a perennial also known as Indian Hemp, which is poisonous if ingested and can only be harvested in the late fall.  Carty’s seasonal calendar is marked and controlled by what can be harvested safely and when.

His bark containers are especially intriguing, as careful overnight soaking is necessary for the bark sheets to lay flat.  An oval shaped scoring in the middle of the length of the bark allows the single sheet to fold creating a bottom and two sides.  The bark surface, along with all its imperfections shows nature as its truest self. Carty takes complete advantage of those imperfections. Knot holes and natural striations and cracks are used for lashing to hold the hickory bark container in place.  All the holes for lashing, if they aren’t there already from imperfections in the bark, are created with a knife, no drills or electric tools are used in either foraging or creating Carty’s vessels.

One of the most impressive pieces is a very tall vessel, from Tulip poplar bark, with hickory lashing, and a brown ash rim and internal supports.  His mother, Mary, made a connection with the Passamaquoddy Tribe, a First Nations People from Maine, who use Brown Ash for their renowned ash baskets.  Growth rings of the Brown Ash will split off from the round of the cut tree to create the perfect rim for some of Carty’s containers.

Each container in this exhibition represents a beautiful marriage of materials, including both native and invasive. Carty takes advantage of each material’s characteristics, including the hair-like rootlets left intact as the runners in baskets such as the one pictured below.  It is supported with shaved Tulip Poplar staves that also form the complex woven rim. The cordage is from shaved wisteria bark.  

Another vessel is created entirely of solid hickory including the lashing and rim.  It takes advantage of the reverse side of the bark, with a beautiful tiger stripe surface.  Listening to the materials and allowing them to guide shape and function is one of Carty’s strengths.  Carty and his materials work closely as a team.

There is a simplicity in Carty’s shapes and construction that contrasts sharply to the efforts involved in foraging, harvesting, drying, stripping, storing and rewetting natural materials.  Carty teaches foraging and basket making techniques to many different types of groups, at places like Peters Valley School of Craft, historical groups, naturalist groups, and reenactment organizations that want to go back and learn techniques that modern technology has all but wiped out.

Carty continues to explore and develop a symbiotic relationship to the natural world, as he ponders the idea that bark can be edible; could someone make a vessel or container from slippery elm or wild sarsaparilla that could ultimately be pounded down and eaten in an apocalyptic setting?  This exhibition is more than 13 baskets and a few tools.  This exhibition explores our roots, acknowledgement of Indigenous peoples’ skills which have mostly been lost, and the most basic need of mankind, to contain something. Carty has become a folklorist, naturalist, philosopher, herbalist and basket maker in his own right preserving traditions and teaching those traditions to others.

Adrienne Sloane was a resident at Peters Valley in the Fall of 2022, thanks to the generosity of the Maxwell/Hanrahan Foundation. Below, she writes about her work, her residency, and what she’s been up to since:

“As a mixed media artist with a focus in fiber techniques, my work frequently responds to the moral and political landscape of the day. By using iconic imagery to visually address these frayed and unraveled places, I look to promote thoughtful dialogue as we navigate the difficult times we live in.

My residency at Peter’s Valley in late fall gave me a wonderful chunk of time to focus on several of the pieces that I already had in process.  The large tables and ample space allowed me great luxury of spreading out so that I could cycle between various pieces as I chose, as they spoke to me… and each other.

Two of these pieces, only recently, finished address gun violence. I am pleased to note that this work will be shown in an upcoming exhibit titled, Through These Eyes, which will run from March through May at the PEG Center for Arts & Activism in Newburyport, MA.

A small section of a work in the exhibit at the Peters Valley gallery inspired yet another piece. Adopting a section of this quilting technique, I created Radiant Heartbreak, a companion piece to an earlier work, An Incalculable Loss, both of which which use the all obituary front page of the New York Times from May 24, 2020 as a backdrop for a conversation on the ravages of covid and beyond.

The New York Times just recently published ‘The Revolutionary Power of a Skein of Yarn’ by Peggy Orenstein. As the relationship, both historical and current, between fiber arts and politics continues to seep into the public eye, I am happy to consider myself a part of this movement.”

Margaux Thys was a resident at Peters Valley in the fall of 2022, thanks to the generosity of the Maxwell/Hanrahan Foundation. Below, she writes about her experience on campus:

“While at Peter’s Valley the past two weeks, I’ve been working on a series of projects related to both of my loves: Architecture and Weaving. By day I’m an architectural designer in the New York area, but by night and weekend I work with textiles, creating and learning the intricacies of the craft. I’ve often thought of these as two separate things, but the more I work in both the more I see them as cousins with common ancestors. Though both have commercialized evolutions through corporate developer driven projects, there is space to recognize that slow building and slow textiles are still worthwhile. Both connect to the human making the item for the humans that will be using them. The way a door detail is drawn makes all the difference in the way people move from room to room. You don’t notice it if it’s done well, but if a tile and a wood floor sit at different heights, something feels off when you step from one to the other. In the same way, if a textile’s pattern or texture is too scratchy or inharmonious, the person drying their hands notices the irregularity. When people design architecture and textiles, these elements have to be taken into account because of that functional element. The larger ideas of both crafts are their inherent details and intricacies. I often refer to weaving as “mental gymnastics”. The outputs of a loom are dependent on the inputs: the intersection of threading, tie-ups and treadling. In a particular warp, you can have multiple outputs depending on those factors and decide how you want to express it. The two progress shots below show how you can have two styles come out of the same threading, one more modern and sporadic and one more traditional and calculated.

In the same way as weaving, architecture is also about the intersections of pieces at larger scales. These ideas play with dimension, color and perspective through the details of their construction. With the time I’ve had at Peter’s Valley, I’ve been able to explore how those motifs can translate to handwoven pieces and express the same
architectural features. Though all of the pieces are woven, architectural movements like Bauhaus and De Stijl as well as modern textile artists such as Susie Taylor and my grandmother, Margriet Carrico, help to inform the ways in which I’ve approached textile design through architecture. Intersections of weft weight and color choices force certain perspectives and perceptions of the pieces, creating the dimension found often in architectural projects. These projects are still in progress and will hopefully be off the looms and into the washing stages very soon, but experimenting with these two ancient crafts has helped to prove that they are not separate art forms, but heavily related and harmonious when given the correct inputs and details.”

November 20, 2022

Dear Peters Valley Friends,

For 52 years, Peters Valley has been a community created through craft.   Every day we are inspired by the talented artists who gather together to learn, collaborate, share,develop skills and ideas, and build lifelong friendships on campus. Whether you were a student, instructor, craft fair attendee, gallery artist , donor, or visitor, you made 2022 a special year for Peters Valley!

Thank you for your support this year. It allowed us to hire more staff, strengthen our commitment to inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility, (IDEA), forge new partnerships, make improvements to studios, and reach new audiences across the state and country through virtual offerings and outreach programs. As we reflect on all that was made possible, the essence of Peters Valley can be summed up by our core values  to the right. Peters Valley is an essential part of what makes a “craft ecosystem” in our field, providing opportunities for artistic exchange, collaboration, community, skill building and advancement. 

Launching into 2023

Building on our progress, in 2023 we plan to sharpen our focus on engaging more people and creating new creative and professional opportunities for makers. Some examples of what your gift today will support: 

• Expanding our workshop schedule to meet increased demand
• Broadening access to the craft school experience for new groups of people through additional scholarships and new partnerships
• Completing facility upgrades, like the gas forges installations in the Blacksmithing studio,  new seating for Metalsmithing and Ceramics studios and replacing old equipment
• Expanding our footprint in order to reach new communities within New Jersey and across the country
• Continuing to invest in initiatives like our Artist Fellowship, Studio Assistantship and Artist-in-Residence program that offer artists opportunities for professional development

Your continued support is critical to the future of Peters Valley. We have a goal to raise $125,000 before the end of 2022. Will you consider a gift to support Peters Valley to end the year? 

As we face the current effects of inflation on our operating costs, we ask that you please consider increasing your generosity this year if you are able. Tuition and fees cover just 41% of our annual budget. The remainder must come from generous donations from individuals in our community, like you. Everything that happens at Peters Valley is made possible by the generosity of donors like you. Donations can be made clicking this link, which will take you to our campaign’s GiveLively fundraising page. 

Thank you in advance for supporting Peters Valley!

With gratitude,

Kristin Muller

Executive Director

P.S. Visit our Give Lively donation page now to make your donation!

We were delighted to welcome another cohort of Fellows through the GlassRoots/Peters Valley Fellowship Program again this year. Since 2021, GlassRoots, a Newark-based, non-profit arts-education organization, and Peters Valley have  joined together to offer this unique full-scholarship, arts-education Fellowship where students can explore the arts in depth.

Today, we hear from Jose Angel Ruano on his experience as a Fellow this past summer.

“I want to start by first thanking all the incredibly helpful and inspiring staff and students of GlassRoots and Peters Valley, for everything. My name is Jose Angel Ruano, but I go by Angel. I don’t consider myself to have a solid title or profession at the moment, but I know I have a strong admiration for all forms of Art, and this fellowship allowed me to work with insanely gifted artists, as well as the opportunity to work with and greatly understand myself, which I think is vital for individuals who want to become a prolific artist of any kind.

Practicing so many different mediums of art over the past 5 weeks has really given me huge amounts of inspiration and insight, mainly due to how different each class is from each other, in requirement of tools and certain skills. I specifically enjoyed learning how much work goes into sculptures made with metal, wood, and/or ceramics; it gives you such a newfound perspective on how art is made. Intro classes to blacksmithing, fine jewelry, papier-mache, photography, and printmaking have all had such differences from one another, but I enjoyed that very much, for it gives me a diverse and versatile skill and mindset, aiding me in becoming the artist I want to be.”

May 2, 2022

Dear Peters Valley Friends,

Happy Springtime! We hope that this season is as exciting for you as it is at Peters Valley. We’re busy opening up and preparing our campus once again to greet you. Studios are getting their annual deep cleaning after the quiet winter months. The phones are ringing with students ready and eager to sign up for classes.

Thanks to generous support of our donors, in just the last several months, we’ve upgraded gas forges in blacksmithing, purchased new computers for the offices, hired for several artistic and administrative positions, welcomed artists to campus for fully funded residencies, and have been finalizing – a new strategic plan for the organization.

The year ahead will be full of more exciting initiatives and developments. Your continued support will help us reach our goals. You can now help build the future of Peters Valley today with Springtime support.

This summer we’re happy to continue our partnership with GlassRoots in Newark, NJ and will welcome a new cohort of students to campus. We will be awarding stipends to NJ-based artists negatively affected by the pandemic funded by the NJ Arts and Culture Renewal Fund. Our Artist Lecture series and our Friday Night Instructor Presentations will continue to be offered virtually– continuing to give greater access to Peters Valley’s programs and artists. And as always, so many students will come to learn new skills, meet new people, and create amazing memories on campus this year.

While we pursue these exciting initiatives, we always seek to continue to improve our campus and the visitor experience at Peters Valley. We plan to make several important and urgent investments in the coming months; today we ask for your support of Peters Valley and our operations in order to make these investments.

We still need funding for:

• A new Facilities truck to replace our failing truck that also operates as our plow in the winter
• Stand-by generators for the Thunder Mountain Studios & Ceramics Studio to ensure we can continue to run workshops in the event of a power outage
• A walk-in refrigerator/freezer for the dining hall to replace our failing unit
• New flooring for the soldering room of the Fine Metals Studio
• New equipment for the Wood Studio, including an edge sander and planer
• College student scholarship opportunities

Let’s pull together to realize our goal of making these investments. Can you support Peters Valley with a gift today? By making a tax-deductible donation you are helping us grow, improve and expand the impact of Peters Valley’s mission. Because of you, we can continue to teach, support, and inspire artists through craft every day.

We thank you– our members, donors, artists, students, instructors, volunteers, and friends– for your commitment and support of Peters Valley.

With gratitude,

Kristin Muller

Executive Director

We are excited to share that the New Jersey Arts and Culture Renewal Fund has awarded a $43,125 grant to Peters Valley School of Craft to help New Jersey artists recover from the financial devastation of the pandemic. Applications are now open and will be received through June 1. New Jersey artists can learn more about eligibility and apply here.

Peters Valley will act as an intermediary grantor, awarding individual grants of $1,000 to $2,000 to artists who have been impacted by the current industry-wide slowdown due to COVID-19 and other sector disruptions as well as those affected by weather-related disasters. 

We are grateful for the opportunity to partner with the New Jersey Arts & Culture Renewal Fund to help support our state’s individual craft artists during this most challenging time.

The stipends we will award through this grant will provide critical support to allow artists to get back on track, whether the funds are used to pay bills, put food on the table, purchase materials needed to create work, apply to shows, ship work, cover booth fees, lodging and travel expenses at shows, or to promote their businesses. 

We will collaborate with arts organizations such as the Furniture Society, GlassRoots, and the Sussex County Arts & Heritage Council to help spread the word and reach as many eligible artists as possible.

The New Jersey Arts and Culture Renewal Fund (NJACRF) was established to ensure the survival and strength of the state’s arts and culture nonprofit sector during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. The school’s grant is part of the $592,501 awarded to fifteen nonprofits that will act as intermediaries, regranting funds to artists, teaching artists, and history professionals around the state. The Fund is hosted by the Princeton Area Community Foundation. 

For our final GlassRoots Fellow guest blog post, Serenity Sewell writes about her time at Peters Valley, and how she’s grown since being here. Serenity will be a business major in college and she says that her artwork, “expresses my constantly evolving feelings, emotions, and outlook on life as I take steps to become the person I want to be.” In this post, she talks about the way she’s seen skills translating from one class to another and what classes have sparked her excitement the most. 

“Hi, I’m Serenity, and this experience has been quite a journey. A beautiful, raw, natural journey but a journey nonetheless. After this week, we have one more week left and then I’m going back home, no longer as a GlassRoots fellow at Peters Valley. After being here these past weeks, it’s so strange thinking about not being here but I also really want to go back home. I really miss my dog and, being the youngest fellow here, I’m excited to start college.
 

Honestly, I was completely overwhelmed the entire first week. After the first day of my bookbinding course, I went back to the house where we’re staying, and I cried. Trust me, bookbinding is definitely not horrible. I really enjoyed it, and Scott McCarney was an amazing instructor. I tried to call my mom, but she didn’t pick up, and that’s when I realized that I was frantically looking for a sense of normalcy. A feeling that told me that I was still home, that the people I knew and loved would wait for me. But I wasn’t home because life doesn’t stop. No matter where we are in the world, life doesn’t stop, and you can’t conquer time and growth. Time is something that everyone has but the way we utilize it is what makes us different. 
 

I guess if I wasn’t here, I would’ve utilized my time in a way that wouldn’t have resulted in any growth at all. But being here really put my understanding of “growth” to the test. Each week, I had to utilize little bits and pieces from previous weeks’ courses. Right now, I’m taking a woodworking course with Jay Kreimer and saw cutting rules from the fine metals course I took with Luci Jockel from a few weeks prior still apply. In Jay’s class, I’m doing a lot of sanding as I did with my pieces in the blacksmithing course I took with Jon Hadden during my second week here. My brain literally didn’t have a chance to stop growing. If I would’ve zoned out completely, for even a moment, I probably would’ve accidentally sawed off my hand or something. But in other classes, it was easy for me to focus completely because I felt so determined. In Kulvinder Kaur Dhew’s painting basics course and Dominique Ellis’ woodcut reductions course, I just lost myself in my own excitement of creating and my drive to complete pieces that I would love.

But I guess I can’t completely say that my growth is completely due to my efforts because I’ve met some wonderful people here that have taught me so much. Even though they probably didn’t realize when they were teaching me something, I’ve learned lessons from people that have helped me realize things I struggle with in my personal life. I’ve learned so many lessons that I’ve started a personal book. It’s almost like a little diary, but it consists of the lessons I’ve learned and the things I’ve had to unlearn. This has truly been more of a mental health journey for me, an experience that I needed to help me better understand my spot in the universe and how to find a sense of happiness in this chaos that we call life. The lives we live and the things we see consist of atoms. Atoms, and electrons more specifically, have entropy. Entropy, randomness; life just throws random situations at us and how we react determines the results. You can either learn to live with the random stuff life throws at you or you can drive yourself insane trying to organize it all. I guess this is one of those random situations that I wouldn’t have imagined myself in. If there’s one thing that a lot of my courses have taught me, it’s to not think too hard; just do, create! There’s beauty in entropy! Some things don’t need to be organized, dissected, and understood to be beautiful and appreciated for the “mess” that it is.”