Mark Peiser discusses becoming Penland’s first artist-in-residence. Oral history interview with Mark Peiser by Catherine Whalen, February 25, 2020, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:36.

Mark Peiser: The first day there, I discovered the sixties. I had basically been studying classical piano, I was in a different—I kind of lost track of popular culture, like, after high school. On the second day, which was like the first day of class, late at night the instructor named Roger Lang came back to the studio where I was, and said, ‘Wow, this is—’ he had never been there before, he was one of Harvey’s students, early students. He said, ‘Wow, this is quite a place. The director has just started a resident program where, in exchange for fixing anything on the campus’—Penland [Penland School of Craft, Penland, North Carolina] was a very humble, small budget place at that point—’in exchange for that, you could use the studio. Have access to the studio all through the winter.’ There were no winter classes. So I heard that the second day. The third day, I found the director, and said, ‘I want to apply.’ And he said, ‘Okay.’ And that was it, you know. I said, ‘Oh, okay.’ And it was supposedly a three-year residency. And that’s kind of how I got to it. I had no big dreams at all. Basically, I wanted to learn a trade and live in the woods. That was my goal at that point.