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Katie McCracian, Sydney Adams, Cody Crisp and Ella Atwell (from left) show off the clay artwork they created at last week’s Arrowmont Program, held at the Stecoah Valley Cultural Arts Center. Photo by Art Miller/amiller@grahamstar.com
Stecoah – The Stecoah Valley Cultural Arts Center hosted a week-long Arrowmont ArtReach-on-the-Road program which gave more than 340 students from Graham and Swain counties the chance to spend a day studying traditional Appalachian arts and crafts in a studio setting.
Students chose between woodworking, quilting, weaving, basket-making and working with clay.
This week marked ArtReach-on-the-Road’s first visit to Graham County, but Youth Education Program Manager Kelly Hider said the program is “very likely to return, hopefully every other year at least.”
The grant-supported program serves six states in Central Appalachia, with Graham being one of hundreds of counties qualifying for the program.
John Polly is one of the teachers bringing traditional knowledge to the program. His woodworking class taught students to make a spatula from native wood.
“This has been a most wonderful experience,” Polly said. “This is such a great group of students, so eager to learn. I’m just beside myself.”
Students in Linda Thompson’s weaving class continued weaving lanyards on their Inkle looms while describing the Arrowmont experience.
“This is really fun but can also be frustrating, but they give us pep talks,” said Bailey Parker.
Emmy Everhardt said, “This is good for patience. I’m not a patient person, but weaving makes you patient.”
“And weaving shows you what it was like in the old times,” said Abbey Frost.
Mike Malone’s class worked in clay, fashioning 3-D portraits from pinch pots. Based in Murphy, Malone has taught at the John C. Campbell Folk School for 15 years. He found the ArtReach-on-the-Road experience to be “phenomenal. In a word: phenomenal.”
“These are such great kids,” Malone said. “In this class, they learn proportion and anatomy and creativity and caricature and they’re just eating it up.”
Other traditional arts and crafts included Julia Gartrell’s lessons in quilt block patterns and and paper quilt collages as well as Robbinsville resident Diane Kelly’s napkin basket class, which used dyed reed accents.
Beth Fields, director of the Stecoah Center, explained the importance of programs such as Arrowmont’s to Graham County. “ArtReach-on-the-Road reaches underserved youth in our community,” said Fields. “It helps them understand the importance of arts in our culture and it helps preserve Appalachian traditions that might otherwise be forgotten.”
The Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts is a rural arts outreach initiative based in Gatlinburg, Tenn. and the ArtReach-on-the-Road program is an extension of the school’s efforts to help students in Appalachia “learn about and appreciate their culture and the importance of craft in their daily lives.”
Arrowmont also seeks to preserve these traditional arts and crafts that are disappearing as the region becomes more modernized.
The School can be reached at arrowmont.org.