Holding Space for Community
Reflections on the Writers Studio at Pentaculum, 2025 By Kelli Fitzpatrick There are few places as magical as Arrowmont. It is, in every sense, the ideal writing environment—a beautiful setting, a supportive vibe, and absolutely wonderful people to work alongside. It is permission and space to create in the purest sense, with openness and lightness…
Creative Superpowers at Arrowmont’s 2023 Spring Pentaculum
Creative Superpowers at Arrowmont’s 2023 Spring Pentaculum By Anne Martens A community of likeminded artists is none other than a gathering of creative powers. A residency or retreat, an idiosyncratic version of that. Each of us travels to escape the distractions of home to focus on honing our craft. But it can also be about…
Gratification at Arrowmont’s 2022 Spring Pentaculum – by Carolyn Servid
Gratification at Arrowmont’s 2022 Spring Pentaculum by Carolyn Servid Eight eager and excited women writers attended Arrowmont’s May 2022 Spring Pentaculum. Seven of us had worked together online for three years, under the guidance of the eighth writer, Katey Schultz, who brought us to Arrowmont. We would sorely miss two others who couldn’t attend. We’d…
Winter Pentaculum 2022: Reflections by writer, Kyle Lang
“I shouldn’t be here.” This sentence haunted me in multiple ways as I arrived at the Portland Airport first thing in the morning on January 3rd. I was embarking on a cross-country trip to visit Pentaculum, a short-term invitational artists retreat in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. It was my second trip to this residency, the first being…
Pentaculum Winter 2022: A beacon for the new year, by Suzi Banks Baum
“The function of art is to do more than tell it like it is– it’s to imagine what is possible.” -bell hooksIn an approach much like a crazy quilt, the Winter Pentaculum at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts brings together six studios of artists for five days of collective making at the beginning of…
A Generous Legacy: Five Studio Coordinators for the Winter Pentaculum
By Suzi Banks Baum Winter Pentaculum 2020 marks the end of the term of service for five Studio coordinators. Each are familiar names in their worlds of art and writing, in the craft school network or in university art departments, on social media. They have won awards, done intriguing work, and each continues to…
The Language of Makers: Sounds Made in Solitude and in Community
By Suzi Banks Baum Artists work in solitude. We work alone at studio tables, punching away at laptops or penciling lines across yellow paper pads, making what we make from air. We concoct from random influences borne on the breeze, and all the life lived up to the moment just before the cup is shaped…
The Pentaculum Experience – Reflections by Sasha Baskin
Next week, Arrowmont will host its first Spring Pentaculum – a weeklong event that is specifically designed to provide artists with unfettered time and space to work alongside peers, friends and colleagues. Pentaculum grew from a 20-person ceramics retreat led by Jason Burnett in 2012 to an annual invitational experience for over 100 participants across…
Pentaculum: Where Artists Overlap
By Suzi Banks Baum As working artists, we see each other at craft shows or in exhibitions or in classes. We read about each other in the course descriptions of the schools we attend or where we teach. We intermingle on social media or write blurbs for each other’s books or endorse another’s class or…
(Some of) What We Do at Pentaculum
By Suzi Banks Baum (mend, meld, embellish) (throw, sculpt, print) (cut, sand, etch) (revise, refresh, reorder) (fire, felt, needle) (immerse, stir, wring) (frame, obscure, erase) (rap, clap, dance) (ping, pong, sing) (read, immerse, converse) (toast, sip, dine) (exhibit, hide out, hang out) (serve, sweeten, sob) (call home, tattoo, retell) This is the fourth year…
