Fund-A-Need Program
What Do You Support at the Folk School?
Our Fund-A-Need list represents a wide variety of necessities, from painting easels to woodcarving workbenches and from cooking studio shelving to weaving studio looms. As you know, our studios are where much of the magic happens: learning from your instructor, connecting with your classmates, and tapping into your own creative mindset.
Upcoming Class Collection
Make It, Play It!
Here at the Folk School, we've been playing beautiful melodies on handcrafted instruments for almost a century. When you build that instrument with your own two hands, creating that music takes on a special significance. Come craft your very own instrument in our Woodworking Studio. Or, try your hand at writing your own songs and tunes. ...
RECENT STORIES
Interview with Anna Fariello, Author of “Craft & Community: JCCFS 1925–1945”
If you love the Folk School and are interested in our history, I highly recommend curling up with Anna Fariello’s wonderful new book, Craft & Community, which explores the first 20 years of the Folk School, with a focus on Olive Dame Campbell. Earlier this summer, Fariello was given a Lifetime Achievement Award during the annual meeting of the Southern Highland Craft Guild. In addition to Craft & Community, Fariello has written numerous books about craft, curated many shows, and she developed the online Craft Revival archive. Let’s get to know more about an impressive WNC craft powerhouse! Enjoy our interview! Anna FarielloCP: What is your connection to the Folk School?
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The Folk School Cookbook
Fund-A-Need: What’s Important to You?
If you’ve been to the Folk School, you know how seriously we take our student comment forms. We ask every student and instructor in every class – that’s about 6,900 people per year – to tell us what would make their Folk School experience even better. And we read every single one.
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Learn to Call Dances in Our Upcoming Callers’ Workshop
Have you always wanted to learn to call? Join Diane Silver for a week of all-day, hands-on, calling experience and mentorship. The Dance Callers’ Workshop emphasizes program planning, teaching techniques, working with beginners and effectively using live music. Individualized instruction can also include various styles of traditional square dance calling. Two daily practice sessions with a group of real live dancers and nightly public dances ensure plenty of microphone time, particularly because the class is limited to 6 students. Register today!
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Hand-cut Stencils & Screen Printing with Jen Swearington
We are excited to have two Surface Design & Printmaking classes coming up this month with Jen Swearington. Learn to create Hand-cut Stencils for Surface Design (June 7-9) or techniques for Screen Printing on Fabric (June 9–15).
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Paper Thread Sculptural Basketry with Aimee Lee
If you are interested in basketry, paper art, or weaving, and want to learn new techniques, materials, and form, don’t miss our upcoming class with Aimee Lee, Paper Thread through Asia, scheduled for June 9–15, 2019. You will discover ancient techniques of transforming paper into thread, cord, small weavings, and sculptural basketry. Based on Korean and Japanese traditions of jiseung (paper basketry) and shifu (paper cloth), you will learn to spin one-ply thread and twist two-ply cord in completely different ways.
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Thank You for a Wonderful Friends & Family Day
A volunteer in the Quilting Studio holds samples of the studio project: Mug mats!
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A Spring Tradition at the Folk School: Dancing around the Maypole
When winter fades and the trees and shrubs burst into glorious bloom, the Folk School tractor lumbers out of the shed and is given a circular turn to mow around the Maypole field. For the last dozen years or more it’s been Jan or John Clarke who climbs to the top of the twenty-foot pole and wedges there a wooden ring holding many pairs of colorful ribbons. As he lets each ribbon drop to the ground, the inevitable wind tangles them up faster than we can put them in the hands of eager children and “grown-ups,” ready to weave them around the pole to the sound of the fiddle, accordion, and banjo.
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White Coconut Cake with Lemon Curd Filling
This lovely cake is perfect for Easter, May Day, or Mother’s Day, a wedding or baby shower or a spring birthday. It’s both beautiful and scrumptious and tastes like the very epitome of spring. If, for no other reason, you want to simply make it to mark the season, share it proudly and lovingly with friends and family.
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Traces of Beauty: Rust Printing with Lauren Koch
Expand your ideas about printmaking with found objects in a new weekend class taught by artist Lauren Koch: Traces of Beauty: Rust Printing. Rust printing is a unique way of mark making that utilizes steel and iron to create images on paper and cloth. I recently talked to Lauren about her work, rust printing, and her relationship with the Folk School. Enjoy our interview!
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Upcoming Classes Celebrate Irish Music & Dance
Do you love the sounds of Irish music? Do you dream of playing a reel or dancing a jig? We have some great upcoming classes to immerse you in the spirit of Ireland! Gain confidence to join in the fun of traditional Irish music and dance in your community and abroad.
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Expectations
It is Thursday afternoon. Outside the writing studio window, the day is bathed in sunlight, the limb patterns on the grass motionless. Inside the studio, writers are at work with pen or laptop, or staring out the window, or sitting chin in hand. Chairs squeak, the printer clacks, the clock ticks. Small sounds that only accentuate the silence. The writing group is focused, which is different from a focus group . . . or maybe it isn’t.
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Rags to Riches with JoEl Levy LoGiudice
Rag rug weaving embraces the folk art tradition of using everyday, readily available materials to build aesthetically beautiful, yet functional art: textiles made from the things we have, can forage, or acquire. With the craze du jour surrounding KonMari, now is a good time to think about new options for all those clothes you may be putting into the “Thank you, goodbye” pile. Rag rug weaving might be your perfect option!
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March of the Fiddlers
When students show up at an Intermediate-level fiddle class, they already know how to play some tunes — maybe some fast ones, maybe some waltzes; tunes learned from a friend or teacher or family member, tunes laboriously acquired from a scratchy old recording, or tunes read out of a tunebook.
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