Instructor Voices
07 May The Photographic Tool Box with Stephanie Gross
Do you have a basic understanding of your DSLR camera and want to learn more in-depth techniques for improving your photography? Check out The Photographic Tool Box on July 22–27, 2018 with instructor Stephanie Gross. Summertime at the Folk School provides an abundance of photographic material: pastoral landscapes, interesting folks, gardens, old buildings, barns, music, dance, craft studios. Stephanie has a BFA in Photography from the Rhode Island School of Design and has been making and thinking about photography for 25 years. Enjoy our interview!
CP: How did you get started in photography?
SG: I had an amazing photography teacher in high school who is an incredible photographer and was also a great teacher (not always the case). We're still friends and I occasionally shoot with him. I assisted him after I graduated high school, through college.
I was interested in both photography and ceramics. I chose RISD because I could do both. I could make pots, but they were a creative dead end for me. Photography was scary and I had to struggle to learn to make pictures, but it's been that struggle that's kept me interested for 30+ years.
CP: What is your favorite subject matter to shoot?
SG: Stories, specifically people with stories. I suppose that's anyone from the right point of view, but it's more the search for what makes someone or some place interesting that's my favorite.
Even in the most boring situations, I start to look at faces, at the light, playing with the background, composition, etc. It's like a game. You know something fascinating is going on, but how do you show it?
06 Dec Back in Time at the Folk School, and Biltmore
[caption id="attachment_17769" align="aligncenter" width="630"] Challah created by students in Emily's class.[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_17763" align="aligncenter" width="630"]
(L-R) Emily's mom at the Biltmore, Emily in front our our outdoor wood fired oven, Emily's mom's quilts at Show & Tell.[/caption]
My recent trip to the Folk School was a little different than usual. For one thing, after ten years of teaching “The Science of Bread,” I shifted gears slightly and taught “Making Traditional Breads.” Thankfully, science still applies in traditional breads.
The other difference was that my mom accompanied me for the first time, to take a quilting class. While I was busy lighting the wood-fired oven, hunting down recipes, and mixing doughs to demonstrate with in class, Mom was putting in long hours at the studio, turning the bags of scrap fabric she’d brought into quilts. Three times each day we met for meals in the Folk School dining hall.
20 Jun Life Lessons from a Week in Bread Class
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01 Jun Letterpress Printmaking with Jessica White
Posted at 12:43h
in Instructor Voices, Stories: Book Arts, Stories: Paper Art, Stories: Printmaking 0 Comments
Next week is a special week for our Book & Paper Arts Program as our brand new beautiful studio opens its doors to students for the very first time. It's appropriate that the first class is a letterpress printing class considering that printmaking will flourish with the new space and room for equipment and presses. We talked with instructor Jessica White who is teaching the inaugural class about her craft and process. Enjoy our interview!
CP: Congratulations on being the very first instructor to teach class in our brand new Book and Paper Arts Studio! So what drew you letterpress printing? Why is the medium meaningful to you?
JW: When I was a printmaking grad student at the University of Iowa, I made drawings and prints that combined images with text. One day, a friend saw me struggle with different methods of printing the text on a lithograph, and he suggested letterpress. He showed me how to set and print one line of text, and I haven't stopped since!
For me, letterpress printing started as and still is a means to an end; I like all types of printmaking, but my love of text always brings me back to letterpress because it's the perfect method to printing my work.
CP: How would you describe your work?
JW: My work tends to be humorous and looks sweetly charming, but there is a philosophical and slightly dark side. I've been told that my work is "what you get if Beatrix Potter crashed into Edward Gorey."
[caption id="attachment_16857" align="aligncenter" width="630"]
"Never Mind the Bears" letterpress print by Jessica White[/caption]
24 Feb The Magic of Paper Cutting with Ingrid Lavoie
Posted at 11:49h
in Instructor Voices, Stories: Book Arts, Stories: Painting, Stories: Paper Art 0 Comments
The intricate paper cuts of Ingrid Lavoie draw you into a fantastic world of whimsy, nature, and storytelling. She is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) who fell in love with papercutting while on vacations visiting family in Denmark. Self-taught, she found her rhythm and style by using an X-Acto knife to "draw" images, instead of scissors. She enjoys unfolding a new work to reveal the paper's transformation, and has been teaching others this delightful art form for several years. Enjoy our interview!
13 Jan What’s a Hobo Nickel?
Tom Patterson has been a hand engraver and metalsmith for more than 50 years. Starting in his father's shop at age 14, he has been a lifelong student of metals and their manipulation. Currently, Tom continues his studies from his home studio in the mountains of western NC, where he fabricates artifacts of astonishing peculiarity. Unsure of what a hobo nickel is, I resisted the urge to google and decided to sit down with Tom and find out a bit more about the class. Enjoy our interview!
[caption id="attachment_16076" align="alignright" width="150"]
Hobo nickel by renowned original era carver Bertram "Bert" Wiegand[/caption]
CP: What is a hobo nickel?
TP: It’s a modified Indian Head Buffalo nickel and the profile of the Indian or the buffalo on either side has been modified to be something else. It was commonly used by hobos during the Great Depression to increase the value of a nickel. They could trade it for a ride, buy a meal, or buy off a train cop. People started liking hobo nickels and then coin collectors start to collect hobo nickels. Some of nickels created by carvers during the Depression Era became so valuable that modern people, who had some engraving ability, began to buy nickels from coin dealers to copy and counterfeit these original hobos. The counterfeit artist would get the big bucks for their “collectable” nickel. They were discovered, and instead of being discredited, they were celebrated and collected for their own abilities. So today, even though it is definitely a niche, there are a lot of hobo nickel carvers. One of the famous carvers, he had this little kit, or box, of his handmade tools, and it went to auction a few years back and it sold for $9000. The old original nickels are worth thousands of dollars now and some of the new nickels are worth a lot of money too.
09 Dec Folk School Holiday Traditions with Nanette Davidson
Posted at 00:23h
in Community, Events, Instructor Voices, Stories: Crochet, Stories: Paper Art 1 Comment
[caption id="attachment_15948" align="aligncenter" width="630"]
Children make cookies for the Holiday Kids Party[/caption]
The month of December is a special time at the Folk School. Events, parties, food, themed classes, concerts, dances and performances unite the community in the holiday spirit. When the wreaths, garlands, and handcrafted ornaments appear in early December, we know the magic of the season has arrived. Recently, I connected with Nanette Davidson, our longtime decorating maven and mastermind, to ask about holiday traditions at the Folk School. Enjoy our interview!
[caption id="attachment_15944" align="alignright" width="228"]
Nanette in the Cooking Studio[/caption]
CP: When does the holiday season begin for you?
ND: Well, I think about this off and on through out the year, planning simple projects for the winter holiday season and for spring's May Day and June's Auction Gala sometimes many months in advance. I have asked for help from other artists and dancers in the community to generate handmade decorations including giant puppets for parades. Jan and I love the seasonal celebrations that come from many rural, agricultural communities. When you live in the Appalachian countryside where there are distinct perennial landscapes, it's easy to celebrate the beauty of the changing seasons.
CP: What is your favorite Folk School December holiday tradition?
ND: We have so many great parties in December for the local community as well as our students who come in for a week. In the original days of the JCCFS, the student body was closely tied to the community and seasonal events were held to pull everyone together. We still want to include our local community and they are present here at weekly dances and concerts. We have the Old Folks Party, Christmas Dance/Dessert Potluck, New Year's Eve Dance, and the Children's Party when Santa arrives in the BFD Firetruck, sirens wailing. I have always helped with the Children's Party which includes crafts, musical chairs, storytelling, Morris performance, homemade cookies, and live music and dance for the kids. Even though we are an adult school we reach out to our local kids at Christmas and in the summer. More and more show up on the dance floor now. Every child that has a great folk school experience can help us preserve the school for the future.
01 Sep A Gingerbread House to Call Your Own
Are you ever inspired during the holiday season and decide to try your hand at making a gingerbread house from scratch? Annnnnd then your dreams of edible decorative glory come crashing down when your gingerbread house looks more like a shanty shack than a storybook chalet? I’ve been there, and maybe you have too. Have no fear! Expert baker and cake decorator, Jodi Rhoden will be here to save the (holi)day with her upcoming weekend class: Handmade Gingerbread Houses. [caption id="attachment_15383" align="aligncenter" width="630"] Jodi and her son Jasper show off their gingerbread house creations.[/caption]
CP: What do you like about gingerbread houses?
JR: The first time I ever made a gingerbread house, I was enchanted. I really felt like I wanted to become miniature and live inside the house! It feels completely magical and fantastical to create a little home out of candy and sweet gingerbread, and the smells, and textures (and of course, tastes, because there’s always scrap pieces of gingerbread that need to be eaten!) are uniquely pleasurable to the senses.
[caption id="attachment_15381" align="alignright" width="226"]
Photo by Nicole McConville[/caption]
CP: Do you have to be architecturally skilled to make a good gingerbread house? Who is the ideal student for your class?
JR: You do not have to be architecturally skilled to build a gingerbread house! The icing and the candy make it very forgiving. Like most things worth doing, though, it does take time. We will spend a good amount of time in the planning phase, cutting and measuring templates to create the right sizes for the pieces. I also always like to bake extra pieces, in case something breaks or bakes wonky.
CP: Have you ever participated in the National Gingerbread house Competition is at the Grove Park Inn? Did the proximity of this annual event in Asheville influence your interest in gingerbread house making?
JR: It has always been my dream to enter a house into the competition at the Grove Park Inn, though up until now I have been too busy with my business, Short Street Cakes, to seriously consider it. But now that I have sold my business to my employee, this just might be the right time!
31 May My Fascinating Lunch with Tim Ryan: Auctions, Dibbles, Zen, Gardens & More
Posted at 12:15h
in Instructor Voices, Stories: Blacksmithing, Stories: Gardening & Homesteading 6 Comments
I first met Tim Ryan on a misty morning in the Folk School Garden when I was a Work/Study in 2011. My immediate impression of him was that he was a very witty & interesting character with lots of fantastic stories. Tim is involved in the Folk School in so many different ways. He recently handed over his position as Resident Artist in Gardening and Homesteading to Karen Hurtubise and he will be co-auctioning (with Bob Grove) the Gala & Benefit Auction on June 11, 2016. I thought this would be a good moment to sit down and learn a little bit about Tim the gardener, auctioneer, medicine showman, raconteur, kettle cooker, blacksmith, instructor, former Folk School Board member, bibliophile, and storyteller, that is Tim Ryan. We recently sat down over lunch to talk about many things. Enjoy our interview!
CP: When did you first come to the Folk School?
[caption id="attachment_15023" align="alignright" width="289"]
Tim Ryan with a bonsai tree[/caption]
TR: I had gotten divorced and it killed me. This was 26 years ago. I was depressed and blue and three things saved me: my Blacksmithing buddies, Al-Anon, and having a daughter.
At one of the Appalachian Area Chapter Blacksmith Meetings in Mt. Juliet TN, they were having a raffle and the winner would get a free class at the Folk School. Well I don’t usually enter raffles, but my Blacksmithing buddies convinced me to enter and I won. I think they set it up because I was depressed and they knew I needed something else to focus on. It worked because I won the raffle in March or April and the class wasn’t until October, so all summer long I worked hard to become a better blacksmith, worthy of the class at the Folk School.
In the fall of 1990, I used my scholarship to take a 2-week Blacksmithing class at the Folk School with Francis Whitaker, which I was by no means near prepared for, naturally.
[caption id="attachment_15036" align="aligncenter" width="630"]
The Folk School Blacksmith Shop (Original Francis Whitaker Shop in the foreground, the new Clay Spencer Shop in the background)[/caption]