studio improvements summer 2026

This summer I've been working on a few projects in the Metals studio on campus. I have a technical assistant, Sandy, who has been painting all of the ventilation hoods in the studio. When the building was remodeled, we moved back in about this time last year and the hoods were still the old brown that they had been years ago. We gained a few new hoods with the expansion of the studio, but for some reason some of the hoods were painted and some were not. It had been bothering me, but there just wasn't time to fix it during the school year. Well, with Sandy's work, we were finally able to rectify this. The large soldering hood, the chemical room hood, the enameling room hood, and the casting room hoods are all freshly painted. She also painted our forming table metal legs, and some shelving for me. What an improvement!

I also worked on the wall of hammers at the start of the summer by hanging metal pegboard and getting out hammers all hung. I still need to make some vinyl silhouettes but at least it's up and the hammers all have a home. I was able to purchase a new Bonny Doon press with electric pump. I am super stoked about this. And we were able to get a really nice Neutec JR-2 casting machine. I still have some work to get the proper wiring on this, but we are really starting to expand the tools that we have. We'll have a new Vcella kiln for our enameling area coming soon as well. I received a grant from the Enamelist Society for this new addition. 

We only have a few weeks before the new semester starts, but I've been working on getting everything ready. This sure beats last summer at the same time. We still weren't sure if we'd be moved in before classes started and we received occupancy the weekend before classes started. It was kind of a mess, so I feel like I'm finally getting things where they should be. I also rewrote all of the curriculum last year and the new Metals concentration starts this year. I'm thankful that our new leadership has a vision for what we might become and that things are improving for our students through the new programming and facility improvements that are happening. I can't wait to see what the new year brings.