Penland School of Crafts 28th Annual Benefit Auction
August 9 - 10, 2013
Here's the next in our ongoing series of Penland Benefit Auction newsletters, featuring artists whose work will be a part of this year's auction. We have invited trustees, staff members, collectors, and friends to write about pieces that will be included in the summer 2013 benefit event, the artists who created them, and the experience of living with the work they have purchased in past auctions.
A few words from artist Dana Moore about auction artists Einar and Jamex de la Torre...
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Photo by Gary Friedman for the Los Angeles Times
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"The work of Einar and Jamex de la Torre is important.
"For most people, glass suggests beautiful vessels or decorative objects. The work of the de la Torres is an anomaly in the art-glass world, which is dominated by work inspired by European processes. Their pieces are not about sublime color and form. They take an irreverent approach to the material: they paint it, they combine it with found objects, and they treat their glass components as if they were also found objects. Their pieces frequently incorporate political or social commentary.
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Einar and Jamex de la Torre's contribution to this year's benefit auction:
Carolina, 2012, blown glass and mixed media, 26 x 11 x 11 inches
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"This piece is a cacophony of garish color and dissonant meaning-a frenetic event that is more passion play than narrative. Mexican iconography tangles with religious and pop-culture references resulting in a cocktail of politics, God, alienation, and history. The skulls are based on Day of the Dead candy skulls. The miniature struggle at the base of the piece refers to brutal battles that took place in the early 1700s between Native Americans and European settlers in the Carolinas and resulted in more than 1000 deaths.
"The de la Torre brothers work in a space where disparate cultures and ideas struggle for dominance-craft and art, wealth and poverty, beautiful and grotesque, popular taste and academic knowledge. They draw on icons in a diaspora, displaced from their moorings and thrust into a free fall.
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Photo courtesy of Einar and Jamex de la Torre
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"The brothers were born in Guadalajara, Mexico. After years of splitting their time between studios in Mexico and California, they are now based in California. When they first came to Penland in the mid-90s, their work was relatively unknown. Since then it has garnered the attention it deserves, including a 2006 Joan Mitchell Grant, a 2007 Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award, and the cover of Glass magazine. They were also featured in the 2007 documentary Craft in America.
"Penland was the first place Einar and Jamex taught glass. They have returned many times, teaching classes that mesh social issues, high and low art, and many disciplines and media. They teach ideas, engagement, and glass techniques, and we are grateful for their voices." ________________ And a few words from Susan and Fred Sanders, glass art collectors and friends of Penland...
"It was the summer of 2001. We were walking through the galleries during Glass Weekend at the Wheaton Arts and Cultural Center when were stopped in our tracks by Jamex and Einar de la Torre's Millenario. Here was a huge wall piece, a riot of vibrant colors and mixed media that combined references to the popular culture of both Mexico and the U.S. The work was the de la Torre's interpretation of the traditional Aztec Calendar for the millennium, a contemporary kitsch look at the sacred stone, combining tin pictures of automobiles - a comment on the overwhelming commercialization of our society - and unusual glass elements. We decided immediately to purchase the piece and it has been prominently displayed in our home until recently, when we lent it to the Museum of Arts and Design for their Playing with Fire exhibit.
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Milenario
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"We next purchased a glass mask that contains religious images, large glass beads and found objects. Again we were drawn to the use of vibrant colors and the mixture of pop culture and religion.
"After that we acquired a (perhaps) more traditional chalice-like object replete with Mexican images, including photos of Mexican military Cadetes.
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Cadetes
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"Most recently, we returned to Glass Weekend in 2011 and as soon as Visionario 5: Libre was unwrapped, the staff at Wheaton correctly guessed that we would purchase the piece at their auction. Here, too, we were drawn to the colors, the clever use of found objects, and the mixture of cultures.
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Visionario 5: Libre
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"The piece donated to the Penland auction is similar to Visionario 5: Libre, and while it is not for the faint of heart, it will make a wonderful addition to any collection that values content-driven art."
Want to know more? You can click here to visit the De la Torre brothers' website, where you can see more of their work.
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Join us!
Auction Weekend Tickets $375
Includes all Friday and Saturday activities
Friday, August 9
Friday-only tickets $200
Cocktail party, exhibition preview and silent auction, dinner, live auction, dessert party, live music, and dancing
Saturday, August 10
Saturday-only tickets $250 Coffee at the studios with Penland's resident artists, silent auction, lunch, live auction, and a reception at the Penland Gallery
Absentee bids are accepted with a $25 bidder fee.
Online reservations will be available beginning May 1st. Invitations will be mailed in June. For more information or early reservations, email
The Penland School of Crafts Annual Benefit Auction is a gala weekend in the North Carolina mountains featuring the sale of more than 240 works in books, clay, drawing, glass, iron, letterpress, metals, painting, photography, printmaking, textiles, and wood. The Penland auction is one of the most important craft collecting events in the Southeast and a perfect opportunity to support Penland's educational programs, which have helped thousands of people live creative lives.
All proceeds benefit Penland School of Crafts. Penland School is located 52 miles northeast of Asheville, NC.
_______________________________________________________ Quick Links Penland Website Penland Blog Classes Support for Penland Art for Penland Facebook YouTube Pinterest Penland School of Crafts is an international center for craft education dedicated to helping people live creative lives. Located in North Carolina's Blue Ridge Mountains, Penland offers workshops, artist residencies, a gallery, and community collaboration programs. Penland School is a nonprofit, tax-exempt institution that receives support for its programs from the North Carolina Arts Council, an agency funded by the State of North Carolina and the National Endowment for the Arts, which believes that a great nation deserves great art.
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