Asheville Trip

Folk Art Center

The arts and crafts community in the Appalachian area started from a Presbyterian missionary woman named Fracis Goodrich who's goal was to unite the Appalachian women in their daily chores and hobbies to produce quality craft and boost the local economy. Eventually, the crafting community grew along with the demand for their craft and evolved into a unified guild that is committed to producing high quality craft.

Out of this guild, the Folk Art Center was established to provide a gallery and marketplace for various types of arts and crafts and also to inspire and teach others about the individual genras.

The artist I chose out of the Folk Art Center is Shadrick Mace who works with wood, specifically green wood, to make various types of chairs. His technique of using green wood provided extra strength in the chair as the wood dries out and starts to shrink and tighten around the joints. Picture taken from a bought brochure/catalog belonging to Colleen Trapuzzano from the Folk Art Center Handmade in America

Interior Designers can promote craft through their work by informing clients about the unique qualities craft can provide for their home or business and the benefits of buying locally made craft to their economy.

  The artist I chose from this exhibit is John Sharetts-Sullivan who is a cabinet/box maker. This specific box is a jewelry box made out of Brazilian tiger wood with white oak dovetail drawers. The story behind as to why this box was being displayed is that it has been difficult to sell due to its awkward size. Its shape is too cumbersom to sit on top of a vanity like a normal jewelry box and too short to be used as a functional surface if it stood by itself.    

 Center for Craft Creativity and Design

I participated in a research program at the Center for Craft and Creativity for the Lia Cook whose work was being displayed. Her work centered around weaving images using computer software and Jacquard Looms. Her survey was researching the emotional impact of a traditional picture verses a woven image has on the viewer.

The Oriole Mill

The Oriole Mill is a weaving company that specializes in custom orders and prints. This company advocates quality in their products and continually researches and tests out new products, designs, and materials.

The Jacquard Loom is a completely automated loom that is capable of producing intricate deisigns at a high level of quality.The software runs through computers that are connected to these orange cords that have eye rods on the ends. Each individual warp string is threaded through its own eye rod. As the textile is being woven, each orange cord will be pulled upand released acordingly to produce the design as the weft strings are woven through.River Arts District

I visited the Pottery studio in the River Arts District. I met a potter named Sarah Wells Rolland who was in the middle of producing a set of oversized cups to sell in the studio's front room store/gallery. She stated that she had been working with clay for 20 plus years. In speaking with her about how she came up with her forms she explained that her forms are just transformations and maybe infatuations from previous forms she has created. When it came to technique, she described herself trying to perfect a certain technique (image one) for more than 20 years because of its difficulty. Image One