Keeping traditions alive

Folk Center looks to preserve crafts with apprenticeships

By Amy Widner

MOUNTAIN VIEW - It is 85-year-old Geniveive Dawson’s last year as the quilting craft master at the Ozark Folk Center State Park in Mountain View. Craft director Jeanette Larson said Dawson is an award-winning quilter whose skills deserve to be passed on.

“The world is full of quilters, but there’s just one Geniveive,” Larson said.

The park’s mission is to preserve traditional crafts, passing them down between generations through individuals like Dawson. In an effort to connect craft masters with others who can help preserve these traditions, the park has reinstated a free apprenticeship program that will continue through the summer.

Apprenticeships are still open for knife making, printing, old-time cooking, leather working, quilting, broom making and spinning. Apprentices trade their labor for what they learn and are not charged for material costs. They are required to spend six and a half hours a week at the Craft Village, which is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday.

Apprentices dress in period costume and are expected to study and complete projects. The Craft Village is a collection of shops, so apprentices learn to assist customers and be able to talk to tour groups about the history behind their craft.

Thirteen craft masters have agreed to participate in the program, and six already have apprentices. Dawson may soon have found her apprentice in parkvolunteer Charlotte Russell of Mountain View, who said the apprenticeship program is another way to learn and contribute.

“I think it’s interesting and important to keep all the old crafts going,” Russell said. “I’ve taken classes in town but on a modern sewing machine. I would like to learn to set up a frame, quilt by hand - learn to quilt the way my grandmother used to do it.”

For some of the apprentices the program provides a way to fulfill long-held dreams. Woodcarving apprentice Craig Kroon Van Diest said he wants to start his own craft business.

“I have always been interested in woodcarving and appreciated the skills it took. My father did some woodcarving, but I never had the opportunity to learn from him,” Kroon Van Diest said. “So when we moved here 12 years ago, it was always in the back of my mind as something I wanted to do. And then they started it up again, and I jumped at the opportunity.”

Costume-design apprentice Oneda Morrow said she’s always been interested in fabric and sewing but has dreamed since she was young about the skills she’s learning now: altering patterns and tailoring items of clothing to fit.

“I’ve come across a good opportunity here,” Morrow said. “I don’t knowof anywhere else where you could do something like this. And I think there’s a need for it. I don’t know if there are more people like me or not, but these things need to be preserved.”

Morrow’s craft master, Gail Lewis, has been working at the Craft Village for three years and owned her own alterations business before that. She said the program was a win-win situation for craft masters and their apprentices.

“I like the opportunity to share what I know and have spent so many years practicing,” Lewis said. “When you learn something, you don’t keep it to yourself, you pass it on.”

Most of the apprentices are retirees, but craft director Larson said she hopes more young people will apply.

“I was looking back through the history of the Folk Center, and it was started by very passionate young people who were in their 20s. That was in the ’70s, and it’s that same age group who are still involved and are now older,” Larson said. “But we want to get a new generation of young people interested.”

Katie McClellan, who just turned 16, is one of two high school-aged apprentices so far. Her craft master, Melody Conaster, is using her 21 years of experience to teach McClellan to spin thread.

“It’s wonderful to teach a young person a craft and preserve some of that history,” Conaster said.

The program ends with a craft master and apprentice show and reception Friday, Aug. 8, and Saturday, Aug. 9. If approved, apprentices may sell their work in the Folk Center gift shop and participate in a Gallery Walk on Saturday, Sept. 13. Their work will be judged by the same fourperson panel used to judge new craft masters, so successful apprentices could also be offered a job at the Craft Village.

Apprentices must go through an application process. More information is available by calling (870) 269-3851 or by visiting ozarkfolkcenter.com.

- awidner@ arkansasonline.com

Three Rivers, Pages 55, 58 on 05/15/2008