Upper Cumberland Camera; 116; Appalachian Center for Crafts: Carrying on the Tradition

Ding! The Appalachian Center for Crafts located near Smithville, Tennessee is a valuable resource not only to the people of the Upper Cumberland region, but to the entire state of Tennessee. The Crafts Center opened in 1980 as the result of one of the largest federal grants ever given for a project of this kind. The Center with five work areas and wood, clay, metals, glass and fibers is both an academic institution and a place where those who simply want to learn a craft can attend either classes or workshops.

There is no age limit on the workshops held each summer at the center. Young and old alike may choose from a variety of classes ranging from traditional basket weaving and making functional ceramic pots to creating metal fiber designs and other items used only for purely aesthetic reasons. During the other nine months of the year, however, the Crafts Center is an academic institution. Crafts Center director Sally Crane explains. The Joel Evans Appalachian Center for Crafts is an educational institution. It has a number of different purposes. During the academic year, courses are offered in both degree and non-degree programs. In the degree programs, a bachelor in fine arts and a bachelor in science in crafts are offered. And these degrees, when a student completes them, are actually granted by Tennessee Tech University through the Appalachian Center for Crafts. In addition to the degree programs, students who do not

really desire to obtain a degree can come here and study in certificate programs and in intern studies. This accounts for nine months, the academic year, and we operate on the same quarterly system as Tennessee Tech University. During the summer months, however, the Crafts Center is transformed into a summer workshop location. And workshops take place in each of the five Crafts Center studios for one, two, and some of them three weeks. There is no agent in the whatsoever in the workshops in the summertime. The only restriction that there might be is if a student wants to take a workshop for university credit and many of them, the majority of them really are offered for university credit. In order to register for university credit, of course, you have to have graduated from high school and be admitted

to the university and be accepted to receive that credit. But in the summer workshops, we have young people, we have senior citizens, literally all ages, beginning, intermediate, and advanced. Some of the people who come to the workshops have never done that work before. While others are established artists and craftsmen in their own ride, we simply want to come and learn more about their area and use this incredible facility at the same time. One of the traditional crafts that both young and old alike enjoy learning at the craft center is the art of weaving white oak baskets. Estelle Youngblood is the course instructor and he started weaving baskets as a young child. If we used to do this for a living, now we're doing it for a craft. You take them to the store and you trade them for groceries. You never went to the store, you didn't know what you was going to

see, because today he might pay so much for them. The bar they need to have some money of that kind that he just, you know, would pay that much for it. And you'd have to change your grocery list. Well, poor generations just keep learning. Just pass it, never you were a kid. Instead of going out and play, you played with one of these. The first thing you have to do is go out in the woods and get the timber. You bust it open, you start with a hole about eight inches and diameter and bust it in half. Just keep bustin' it down in half with the chopping action wedges and then it gets down so small that you use it and cut it nice.

That's one of these. So you bust this all down with an axe until it gets down this small, then you take a knife and see, it always stays about half way with it in the middle of it. See, that's going down the growth rings of the tree. And then you just take one of your old pant legs that you wore out and you smoothed it off a little bit. This is for the muscles, come from it.

Go back, suck. See, and this is wide open. It's a little bit easy. It looks easy, but what about this? The members of the basketry class help one another as they try to complete a basket during the week's workshop.

And then you just put it on up and then you go right back to the top of the basket. Working on projects and working out problems together is part of taking a class at the craft center. In the Greenwood Chairmaking class, teams worked together to learn the age-old techniques for making chairs. Yeah, but I would agree from here, too, that you can move right here. It's pretty close.

You know what you could do is, also, if you have one blackboard and one whiteboard, you'd look sighted over at the top. You have winding sticks, that's a good trick. It'd be easier to see it. Have you gone to one of his classes, too? Yeah. Well, you're just making around, aren't you? Why? You can have vacation somewhere. How about this? Nothing like this. Is that too high-tech? It doesn't matter. I mean, that'll start throwing you off too much because you really want to be sure to hit the center. If you hit the center, a mask of the poster could be bowed. What are we going to need there? The body move, too. You got shorter in the last two, three minutes. Does the track is cherry?

You can. You can see if there's two pressure coming in there. And there's one coming in there. Up and low. Now, why don't you just hold it from where you want it to go? You know, the orientation, you'll just hold it by the pinch cheeks in line with the pulp. You want that orientation that way because remember, it's going to shrink this way around this flat. So, just hold it like that. Flats this way. Like this one, you had the flats a little bit crooked, but just go with the way you had it. And if the post is a little bit wiggly, you want to have good support right underneath there. If you're out of sound change,

or you hit bottom, it would change from a more of a ring to a fucker. It's starting to look like a chair. Where are we? Wait a minute, you're away. Wait a minute, wait a minute. It's been looking like him doing it. You can see this little curvy thing here. That's not going to make any difference at all. Don't put it on the chair. That's why we're working in teams, because that is easy to do. Because it's just like with kids, everybody knows how your chair looks like. We have some Gary's on up side, man. He was holding it. He a little awkward sitting in the house. He had all the problems. It's the first chair I ever made. Did you? You mean you had problems with your first chair? No. Not until I had the guy helping me do that. You're doing this by the way? No kidding. Well, you're on your own.

You're doing great. No, he was nervous. He's thinking about his chair. You're upset now. Yeah. Yeah. One of them sticks up, and I have to start it first. You mean they were on the same night, too? Well, because of all your curves and business. I hope it might not have been the same thing. Well, no shoulder on the tenons, too. That counts, because it won't. No shoulder. No shoulder. This is always fun to do that, itself. As soon as you get a starter, just like that, they're all on all the way on the bottom, and you just got them well seated. There's a good time to check it out and see if it's crooked. No, it is.

You can just twist it right then. This would be just a matter of a little twist. In the way I... If it's this one, pretty darn straight, you know? No, it's all got to be on one side. One more play. Students in the summer workshops come from all over the United States. Why are you interested in the class? I'm learning more about construction techniques and learning more about trying to build things as opposed to restoring old furniture. And that's why I came to the class. Do you feel like you're learning a great deal? Oh, a lot. I'm learning a lot about ways wood moves and works. And when you start out with green wood, you learn a lot more about those sorts of things. Are you staying here at the craft center? Yes, I'm staying there, don't. How do you like middle Tennessee? It's beautiful country. It seems real quiet as compared to New Orleans. It's quite a culture shock coming from New Orleans to here. I'll bring the furniture.

Boulder, Colorado. And why did you come to the workshop this summer? I had, because him, his class was here and I've been wanting to take a green chair and make these clothes. And it was here and I've been on their mailing list for a year so I got the schedule. I'm originally from middle Tennessee. I live now about 40 miles in Van Buren County. That's 40 miles from here. So do you drive to the craft center every day to attend this? My bath the only one it does drive back and forth. And are you learning a lot in this workshop? A tremendous amount, I've really enjoyed it. I work with green wood off and on, but this has taught me a lot about how it works. And I'll probably be making these chairs from here on. I'm into woodworking. I teach industrial arts. So expands my knowledge a little more about green woodworking and they've had done any green woodworking before. I teach high school 9 through 12, powerful Kentucky. Do you think that you might try to pass this on to some of your students?

I'm thinking about it. I'm going to try to work up a simpler design with maybe a footstool or something where this would be kind of hard to build in a classroom in a high school situation where you only have one hour a day. But I think I will be using it. The summer workshop programs are really designed with the permanent faculty that are here during the academic year. There's an effort made in each of the studios to provide instruction in functional materials, functional objects being produced as well as non-functional or objects that are purely for aesthetic purposes, for instance, in the clay studio. Not only will there be workshops this summer in which actual functional items, such as pots, will be made, but we also have sculptors and artists who have a particular skill. Our instructor in the wood studio is Wendy Marriama, who is a furniture designer.

And in the wood studio, consequently, we all see during the course of the academic year, some emphasis on furniture design. But along with that, in the process of learning the skills of working with wood, students produce work that is simply aesthetic wood sculptural forms, as well as wooden bowls and other pieces of furniture then. During the summer in the wood studio, there are a number of different workshops. The one that is taking place currently is canoe building by Tommy Hill. And although these are canoes, and they are intended to be used as canoes, they also work with art. And in the creation of these, every effort is made to make them as beautiful to look at as they are actually functional. I started making canoes when I was 17 years old. I took an apprenticeship with a man named Carl Bausch. And my particular interest in boat building

is using plywood, marine plywood, and gluing the lats. I don't use very many mechanical fasteners. The only mechanical fasteners are in the stems. The rest of the boat is put together with epoxy. And my interest is in building ultra light boats. I like boats that I can handle real easily. And from where I come from in Vermont, there's a lot of little creeks and rivers. And these little boats are a lot of fun in the spring. You know how the fields flood? And they'll only be flooded for a few weeks. They aren't really waterways at all. But if you have a little tiny boat like this, you can go snaking around these little flooded creeks in the spring. And this design can be traced back to around the turn of the century.

A man named J.H. Rushden did a lot of designing of small lightweight boats from the Adirondacks, which is just across the lake. And as you can see, these boats are very light. You know, you can just kind of one hand them like this. It's not a real great market because these boats are all, well, as all wooden boats are pretty labor intensive and also expensive materials. So the price is pretty, you know, in order to make the living at it, you have to price it accordingly. And their wooden boats tend to be probably about twice as expensive as fiberglass or any of those other materials. I was wondering how you made the boats so smooth. I noticed the one that's finished and being ready to be launched is just perfect. You can't feel it's ruined in it.

How do you do that? Well, we use power sanders whenever we can. An orbital sander. First, we use a belt sander to fair up this area here. This piece has to be put on a little bit higher than it would be flush. And then it's trimmed down very rapidly with a belt sander. A belt sander is a fairly crude instrument. So then we use an orbital sander to bring it down further. And these chamfers along here will be done with the orbital sander and then finally by hand to just to get a very clear and straight line. How's this going to be launched Friday afternoon? Friday afternoon, down at the lake. First, we're going to take all the boats that we've made and all the jigs. That's the jig for the skiff. When we built the skiff, we started with a drawing.

And the drawing is a scale drawing, inch and a half to the foot. And we lofted it, which means you have to draw it out full scale. And then from that full scale lofting, you can get the cross sections, which are those plywood. And then we built that jig, took last year's jig apart, built that jig, and then built the boat on the jig. It's amazing. So tomorrow we're going to take all our jigs and all our boats out in front of the sign. And we're going to have group pictures. And then I'm going to send it to Winboat Magazine. Oh, great. You have Peter, because he loves that stuff, you know. Oh, yeah, that's great. Don't be wonderful. Yeah. That's why we get the sign. You know the skiff is going to have eyes in the bottom of the boat. We've got a lot of students, you know, from different mediums in the school. And Hank here is a glass student. So in order for Hank to take this workshop, I had to agree to let him put some glass in the boat. There's a lot of ourselves.

There's a little more here. Great job. Yeah. So we're going to start working today. Okay. We're going to go over. Last, but we're not going to go over. How last? We're going to work late at night because it's hot. So they have to work at night and learn school. The other night we cast these windows. These little windows. No. And we're going to put them in the boat. Hank, could you show them that where your glass windows are going to go in the boat? For the TV people? Surely. I think we're thinking of putting them in the boat here. What do you think? I don't know what he thinks I'm worried about by here. That way we can see the bass swimming by. We'll know which way to pass. Although there are traditional craft skills to be learned during the summer workshops and throughout the year at the Joel Evans Appalachian Center for Crafts, there are also new crafts to be discovered. One of the workshops this summer was metal fiber design. The superior equipment available at the craft center made this work easy for both the instructor and student.

This one is loosely wrapped. Sometimes we try to do something like this, which is a little tighter wrapped like so. Now, if you had the variation in color and pattern comes from, first of all, the color of wire that you're using, whether it be copper or sterling or nickel or whatever, to get different colors in these wraps. And then the other variation and pattern comes from how you put them together. So, like, I could wrap this in one way, going in one direction, and then do another one, going in the other direction, and lay them side by side that would get a hearing bone type of pattern, for example. So, but this is how it all begins. This is done. And then the whole thing is flushed with solder, and then it is milled out from that point. Isn't that nice?

It squares off, and squares. I think the sharp edges. It's magic machine. This is one of the things about this particular studio that is so special. This is a very, this is a very expensive piece of equipment, and that's not often. I mean, I've really enjoyed this week, just from the standpoint of being able to use these wonderful pieces of equipment, and not often found a rolling mill, this capacity. I think we're losing it here, and it's getting so long that we're having trouble keeping it. Let's go back to the other way. Yeah, that's good. You don't cut now. You don't cut it. I've eventually cut it up in sections on the left side,

right side just like I did the other ones, but it's going to be, you see what I'm hoping is going to happen. It's starting to happen, at least, twist the pieces of wire starting to run together, so that, you know, that copper core is not going to show anymore. Let's try it one more time before the milled again. What I've been doing with this metal has put a lot of pressure on it, obviously, because I've been stretching it, and compressing it, and what happens to, this is silver and nickel, and what happens to that kind of metal in that situation is that it gets reworked, and so the way that we handle that is after it sucks. When we reach the point where it really is too brittle to continue to put through the rolling mill, we have to heat it up. And bring it to what we call a milling temperature, which is when it gets red hot, and I don't know if this is going to get picked up by the television cameras,

but I literally bring this to a red hot temperature in it. It looks like it might be close to melting. It is not really going to melt at that temperature, but it is a cherry red. And this is real different from working with steel. You work with steel. Sometimes a process of heat tempering, you actually harden the metal by heating it, but when you're working with silver and non-ferrous metals, the reverse is true. By heating it, you actually soften it. The craft center is located, approximately 24 miles from cookfell, off of I-40 on exit 273 towards Smithville. We are on property that overlooks center hill lake, and because of the remoteness of the location and this occlusion, we're totally self-contained. We have housing for the students,

the cafeteria, stores, with supplies for students for their workshops, and for their coursework. In addition, we have two exhibit areas, a large gallery and a small gallery, as well as a large sales gallery, which is an exhibit area in itself, and items in the sales gallery are made by both the students and the faculty, as well as artists and craftsmen that represent the 13 Appalachian states that are represented by the craft center. I think that people in this area, and throughout Tennessee who have not seen the craft center, should be urged to visit the center. During the summer, it is an incredibly interesting place. It's possible to spend an entire day here to see the facility, which is possible by 11 o'clock and two o'clock tours, in which the guide takes you into the studios,

shows you what's going on, you can talk with the participants, and you're really in its own. Also, it's possible to come here and eat lunch in the cafeteria. If there are numbers more than 10 people, we need to be notified in advance, because we are small in number, and we don't have a large capability in serving large numbers of people. There is so much to see up here, and so much to do. It's something that everyone can take advantage of. Tennesseeans are fortunate to have the Joel Evans Appalachian Center for Crafts located within the state's borders. The craft center not only offers the opportunity to learn to appreciate and to carry on tradition, but also presents the chance for those who desire to create new contemporary craft techniques to create new traditions. By supporting and expressing an interest in the center, the craftsmen, the unique talents,

skills, and knowledge they make available to us all, Tennesseeans can be proud to say they have helped preserve the old, explore the new, and have been part of creating and carrying on tradition. Music Music Music