Courtney Long received her BFA from West Virginia University in 1999.   On two study-abroad trips to China in 1998 and 2000, she studied wheel-throwing and hand-building methods using porcelain and stoneware along with various decorative techniques.   She received a MFA from Syracuse University in 2004 and completed a curatorial internship at the Everson Museum of Art. She has continued educational experiences from Penland School of Crafts, Penland, North Carolina; Santa Fe Clay, Santa Fe, New Mexico; Anderson Ranch in Trelawney, Jamaica; Art School of the Aegean, Samos, Greece; and Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, Gatlinburg, Tennessee.

In 2005, Courtney was appointed Western Piedmont Community College’s Professional Crafts Coordinator in Morganton.  She established a formal crafts education degree program in the Unifour area combining business essentials with studio coursework in three genres: pottery, furniture, and sculpture.  In 2009, Courtney was named a GlaxoSmithKline fellow with NC State University’s Institute for Emerging Issues.  Courtney currently serves on the Burke Arts Council and Morganton Cultural Arts Commission.  She is committed to economic development through “creativity” and collaborates with several local businesses, community leaders and non-profits to revitalize and expand Burke County’s placed-based crafts economy.

Courtney lives and creates art on a farm located in the Chesterfield community with her husband Jeremy and daughter Saige along with horses, chickens, and two spoiled blue heelers.   Courtney is a potter, sculptor, and jeweler; she loves creating art, hiking, traveling, glamping, gardening, cooking and cloud watching.  To learn more, please visit www.courtneylongpottery.com  

Blake Madden specializes in location photography and has nearly 40 years of experience as an award-winning professional photographer. He displays great versatility photographing a wide variety of subjects including portraits, business, education, health, and medicine, architecture, real estate, 360 degree virtual panoramas, adventure/sports, scenics, the arts, famous personalities, still-lifes, events and his own personal visions.

Madden began his career as a photojournalist. He started as a freelancer for the State Times and Morning Advocate in Baton Rouge, LA; became a staff photographer at the Houma Daily Courier, a small daily owned by the New York Times in the deep south of Louisiana; and then moved on to The Augusta Chronicle in Georgia, where he also worked as photo editor.

Capturing the “decisive moment” was always the goal then, and he continues to rely on that skill today in his commercial photography work. He firmly believes that recording an expression or capturing a moment, beyond the necessary and critical technical requirements of the shoot, is what produces a great photograph.

Blake’s work has won over 40 professional awards and has been published in Time, The Wall Street Journal, US, Runner’s World, Trail Runner, Sports Illustrated Online, Links Letter, Luxury Golf & Travel, Dow Jones Investment Advisor, The Pfizer Journal, Civil War Times Illustrated, Out Here, NC Today, Our State, Zen, numerous foreign magazines including Men’s Health (Germany), and The Best of Photojournalism: 1995 and Exploring Black and White Photography, 2nd edition. A growing list of regional clients includes: Blue Ridge College, Haywood College, Montreat College, SouthWestern College, Warren Wilson College, UNC at Asheville, AB Tech, The Asheville School, Carolina Day School, NC Center for the Advancement of Teaching, Montreat Conference Center, The Billy Graham Training Center at the Cove, Cancer Centers of NC, Biltmore Winery, The City of Asheville, Mission-St. Joseph’s Hospital, Ocu-Med, The Asheville Board of Realtors, The Asheville Chamber of Commerce, H & M Constructors, Buncombe County Partnership for Children, Asheville Community Theater, Glazer Architecture, ACM Design & Architecture, Phoenix Design, Community Care Partners, Daniels Graphics, Leaf Fest, Southern Highland Craft Guild, The Center for Craft Creativity & Design, Arts Alliance, Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce, NC Arboretum… 

Madden received a Master of Arts in Teaching with a concentration in Art from Western Carolina University. In addition to his work as a commercial photographer, Blake Madden was a full-time photography instructor and ran the photography department at McDowell Technical Community College before retiring in August of 2023.