Traditions: Ohio Heritage Fellows; 102; Judy Sacks interview with Doug Unger, part 2 of 3

Q: Ok, why is Doug considered a master instrument maker?

JUDY: Doug has this entirely rare combination of the most developed craft skills a person can have, paired with great art training and an artistic point of view. Um, he carries on a kind of an old world tradition where you learn one on one in a hands-on way using tools and methods that are transmitted to you by a master creator. Doug, himself, has become that person and is now in the position to pass that to other people who want to train with him.

Q: Why does he take on apprentices? He doesn’t need to. What... what is it about Doug that you know, he’s... he’s... passing that tradition on?

JUDY: There is a value that Doug has that we share which is that you don’t just become a solo artist. You are obliged to share your art within your community. That is one of the ways that folk arts is unique as compared to other kind of art traditions. There’s a great deal of emphasis on sharing arts. So it makes all the sense in the world for Doug to be the person who’s not content to only perfect his own skills but to want to transmit toward the future.

Q: And I may be wrong here but I get the sense as you like to call it folk art, craft art, it is one big community. It’s like everybody knows everybody. They all help each other out um, if you need something, I mean, there’s artists but these guys just seem to, I don’t know, gather together... it’s... is it different um, or not?

JUDY: There’s a history in folk arts of knowing who the masters are in your community and also in your art forum. So you could not expect a “quilter” to be utterly familiar with the instruments makers. But that quilter will know every other quilter in the vicinity. Likewise, with people who... like Doug Unger are fine craft people in the area of musical instruments, he will know everyone who plays the music. First of all, Doug is very interested in the music itself. And not only the musicians but those have the opportunity to make instruments. So there is something to be said about folk arts being distinct in having a community of people who share their traditions.

Q: How has Doug helped the traditional arts in... and the artists in Ohio?

JUDY: Doug as done so much to, not only perfect his own skills, but to say to others that it’s important that we recognize that fine craft is as meaningful and legitimate as fine art. He has done that uh, by supporting other great musicians and musical instrument makers. I think right away of the Lake Clift Hardesty violin maker and Bob White the mandolin maker. Doug supports their careers and they’re renowned every bit as much as he, himself, has been interested in getting out among the public. So what that means practically is if Doug gets invited to an invent, say a festival, he’ll tell that festival presenter, well you really need to talk to my friend so and so and so and so and he just wants that light of recognition shared because he’s committed, not only to those people as individuals, but the idea that these are folk traditions that need greater exposure and um, greater recognition.

Q: Ohio has a rich history in traditional arts and Doug is helping that along the way. Um, can you talk to me a little bit about Ohio and its rich history in the traditional arts? Can you give me kind of an overview or, you know, a statement about how Ohio is trying to continue with it?

JUDY: Ohio’s folk arts very definitely represent a population movement, and who the population has been in the state of Ohio. And that explains why, for example, we have Germanic traditions of wood carving um, and that persists in things like furniture makers but also instrument builders. These connect directly with an old world tradition based on the people who came here in the 1700’s and 1800’s and likewise, you look at the African American exodus from the south, we had new populations of African Americans and with them there i—are now populations in Ohio that play blues music. Um, so when we look at folk craft in Ohio, we’re seeing a lot of deep connections with the European populations that... that migrated here.

Q: Why is Doug’s instruments so sought after?

JUDY: Doug is a very patient maker of instruments. And he will take exactly the amount of time it takes to make an instrument. Now for Doug that could be two years, let’s say, but he may want to solve a problem whether it’s a design problem or a technical problem and take all the time it takes to do that. Now, obviously, that means that the world is not flooded with Doug instruments... Doug’s instruments. They are um, rare and selectively processes through Doug so, of course, people want them ‘cause they know that the end result, first of all, is going to be a beautiful instrument with unbelievable sound qualities and unbelievable amount of artistry in them. Um, so it has to do with Doug. He is not the easiest person to get an instrument out of. He’s not like the guy you go down the street and say I need this now. Um, you’re getting all those years of thought and training in one instrument.

Q: What is his drive? What makes him do what he does?

JUDY: Doug is a rare combination of someone who looks at the past, especially the Golden Era of American instrument building, which is roughly, let’s say, from the 1920’s to the 1940’s. He’s very inspired by that and actually maybe a decade earlier. So he’s kind of got a historical bent but he’s also an individual creative artist, so he has a great need to make the world more beautiful. That’s the easiest way to say it. He wants everything in his environment to be beautiful. He wants to teach you to value beauty and he also wants to share just the respect he has for craft and for art.

Q: Are there many instrument makers like Doug out there?

JUDY: Doug is in a very, very rarified tier of instrument makers. When I think about the people, especially his talent as an engraver of pearl inlay, now pearl inlay is what makes an instrument um, light up on it’s fret board, for example, or on the headstock, that very top part of a banjo. You will look at a banjo from Doug and see that there’s this elaborate flower pot and it’s not just a pot that’s a vase but, it’s got all sorts of furling out flowers. Now, to work at the level and the... and the tiny scale of what Doug does is a highly focused act that very few people can even entertain trying to do. So actually Doug has a national, an international reputation, especially for the pearl work. Um, you can also say that about his design of instruments from scratch. But there are very few people worldwide who can accomplish what Doug does.

Q: Why... why was Doug deserving of the Ohio uh, Heritage Fellowship Award?

JUDY: The Ohio Heritage Fellowship Award is designed to recognize the very finest representatives of people who work authentically to represent a root American tradition. Um, Doug is both of the highest artistic quality and the um, other part of that is the idea of him passing that skill around and to others. So it seeks to honor people who share what their art is and who, furthermore, help us recognize that that’s important in Ohio. So it’s really that, sort of, teaching role that the artist disperses into the community, as well as their own talents.

Q: Why does... why does Ohio need traditional artists?

JUDY: What traditional arts do for Ohio is give credit to local communities. We live in a time of increasing homogenization where you can drive from town A to town B and all the built structures look the same, all the stores look the same. What traditional art does, it reminds us that what our grandparents valued, had value to it and what our daughters and sons need to know is more than what they get out of mainstream culture. We need to stay connected to our traditions um, our occupations, our memory so that if minors have a certain song they’ve always song, when we lose that we’ve lost a lot of information about who we are as Ohioans. That’s why the people who work in traditional arts bring to the future... the present and the future... important parts of our history that we do not want to see erode.

Q: How’d you meet Doug?

JUDY: I met Doug in a very funny way that almost resulted in me not meeting him. I had a banjo, this was, oh, let’s say thirty years ago, and I didn’t know much about banjos, but one of the first things I learned about banjos is that Doug Unger was the person who restored and repaired them bar none. He was the person to go to if you had a problem, if your banjo wasn’t set up right, if the neck was yucky and you wanted a better neck made. So I wrote to Doug Unger. He didn’t know me from Adam. And I said Doug, I bought this kind of banjo, famous one called the White Lady and I hear that you’re the person who can restore it and make it a wonderful piece. Um, do you have time in your schedule and I can bring it up and we’d have a conversation about it. Doug wrote back and said you can’t afford me. I don’t think we could work together. I have tremendous responsibilities, I’m booked for the next two years. Now, in fact, he was pulling my leg, because what he really was doing was seeing what kind of response he’d get out of me. And I wrote back to Doug and said, Doug... whatever it takes, whatever you need to do to accomplish helping me get this banjo back to life, to bring it back to life, I am more than happy to do that. So, in a way, he was just joking with me to see if I was a serious person about a musical instrument, because he knew he wanted to take whatever time it tooks... took to accomplish this to do it right. And he wanted to make sure that the person that he was in communication with was on the same page about that. The P.S. of the story is he was no more expensive than anybody else to do the work. He was just setting me a test to know what kind of person I was. Did I share his values of great craftsmanship? Was I ready to take all the time it took to get it right? He found out that I was that person and we’ve been friends for thirty years.

Q: He told us the story about uh, a girl who was playing the banjo, it was... it fit her perfectly (inaudible) and he walked up to her and asked her whose banjo it was and she said it was, something of what... I wanted to meet the artist. And he goes well who is it? And she said Doug Unger. And he said he never introduced himself to her because he... he walked away because he didn’t want to ruin the moment, basically. What does that tell us about him?

JUDY: Well there’s a dirty little secret that everybody knows about Doug and which is that he’s a romantic. He has a romantic point of view. Restating