Visitor Center Gallery / Special Exhibition opens: Unusual Care

Katie Wigglesworth, a textile artist from California, and Leslie Smith, a book artist from North Carolina, met during a winter residency at Penland School of Crafts. Their two practices, though inherently different, have parallels and similarities, and during their time at the winter residency, they began to notice these linkages. It was clear that their disciplines were exploring in the same vein, during a subsequent winter residency at Penland, the two began research in the Penland archive with the idea of composing a collaborative body of work that would be intertwined with the history of the craft school. The archive was packed with yellowed correspondence on onion skin, notebooks of weaving notation, and weaving samples. This was the perfect nourishment for a printer and a weaver. The founder of Penland, Lucy Morgan, began the school to teach Appalachian women to weave at a time when the craft had almost died out. The goal was for women to learn to weave, make home goods, and sell them; it was a way for them to earn a supplemental income. Once the plan was in motion, Morgan often bought the woven pieces from the women before she knew how or where she would sell them. She was so sure of the importance and value of the work at Penland that she often leapt before she looked. Smith and Wigglesworth were very moved and inspired by Morgan’s faith in the idea of Penland and the way she plunged headlong into the work, again and again, without the luxury of certainty. This is the leap all artists have to make. Exhibition end date: December 19, 2026 (Community Event)