At the Core of It: Penland Core Fellowship Then & Now with Brandon Lopez

It's been well over a year since this interview was recorded, and it's finally seeing the light of day. Life happens - projects come up, and this wonderful conversation and a handful of others were recorded in 2023/2024 and never released. This backlog of recordings is Season 8 of the podcast: Light Of Day.

This conversation focuses on the Penland School of Craft Core Fellowship. Since recording, the program has evolved, and certain aspects we discuss may no longer be accurate. Still, the heart of the fellowship—and its impact on artists—remains at the core of this episode.

2026 applications accepted Jul 15 – Oct 8, 2025. Please review the current program details here

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In the 82nd episode of Perceived Value, host Sarah Rachel Brown records from the Penland School of Craft during the 2024 Winter Residency. As the Andrew Glasgow Resident, Sarah was invited to use her time at Penland to interview artists from across the country. Her relationship with Penland goes back to 2011, when she first attended a workshop as a scholarship student, and deepened when she became a Core Fellow from 2013 to 2015.

Since launching the podcast, Sarah has often woven her Penland experiences into conversations, with many guests connected to the school or the Core Fellowship. It was only fitting that she finally welcomed a Core Fellow to the mic. In this episode, Sarah speaks with Brandon Lopez, who was in his second year of the fellowship at the time of recording.

The two artists sit down and compare their Core Fellowship experiences, discussing how it has shaped Sarah’s own life and career, why Brandon chose a craft school experience over academia, and how the fellowship has evolved to meet the needs of a new generation of artists.

OUR GUEST

Brandon Lopez is a Mexican American artist creating functional and sculptural work with glass. Originally from Pennsylvania, he first began working with glass in 2013. Lopez attended Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia from 2014-18, where he received his BFA in Glass. Since then, he has assisted classes at craft schools and worked as an assistant for a number of artists. His work combines traditional glass blowing techniques with the aesthetics of art and objects made by ancient civilizations to create sculpture and functional objects. Lopez recently completed the Core Fellowship at Penland School of Craft. He is currently living and working in Asheville, North Carolina.

Instagram: @_brandonlopez

YOUR HOST

Sarah Rachel Brown is an artist, journalist, and curator whose work bridges communities through storytelling, exhibition-making, and cross-cultural dialogue. She is co-curator of CONNECTOR, an international jewelry exhibition and podcast series fostering dialogue with Colombian artists. Since 2017, she has produced Perceived Value, a podcast acclaimed for its transparency on the financial realities of artists’ lives. In addition, she maintains a consulting business in marketing.

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The music you hear on Perceived Value is by the Seattle group Song Sparrow Research.

All You Need to Know off of their album Sympathetic Buzz.

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