2020 Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program: Bob Alexander & Matt Dickson

It is with great pleasure that we roll out profiles of the 2020 Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program (TAAP) teams of master artists and apprentices. Our regular Show Me Folk blog readers should recognize both members of this team from posts in 2019. [Be sure to click on hyperlinks for more of the story.]

Bob Alexander & Matt Dickson, Blacksmithing

Robert (Bob) Alexander (DeSoto, Mo.) is a three-time TAAP master artist. Just last year, he taught apprentice Lisa Thompson, of Ste. Genevieve. And, in 2015, Mr. Alexander taught apprentice Mark Clifford, of Bonne Terre. In both previous apprenticeships, the intended (and achieved) outcome was for Thompson and Clifford to produce signs for their blacksmith businesses. This year, Alexander had a different apprentice, and their lesson plan included different goals and end products.

Readers here should also recognize Matt Dickson of Pevely, who had a successful apprenticeship in 2019 with master blacksmith Pat McCarty of Washington Forge in Washington, Mo. Dickson told Mo Folk Arts staff that he “learned an important advanced skill from [McCarty]–traditional joinery (mortise and tenon).” In that project Dickson made a beautiful garden bench, which required not only the skills he brought to the apprenticeship but new ones he learned from McCarty.

With over six years of experience, Dickson approached Alexander for this 2020 apprenticeship in order to perfect a more advanced process–forge welding–something Dickson admits he had yet to perfect, but “not for lack of trying.” Dickson and Alexander came to TAAP with an established relationship, as blacksmiths and friends. Dickson especially admired the master blacksmith’s expertise at forge welding: “he makes it look so darn easy.”

Alexander told us that he himself learned forge welding from two of the best, Robert Patrick (a Blacksmiths of Missouri co-founder, now in Arkansas) and the late Doug Hendrickson. From them, and with diligent practice, Alexander says he gained the skills and the confidence to quit his longtime job in carpentry and open his own full-service blacksmith shop in 1996, Scrub Oak Forge. [Click on the gallery below to see larger images.]

For this apprenticeship, then, Alexander and Dickson designed their lesson plan to create Colonial style table lamps, chandeliers, and cooking utensils. The master blacksmith noted that Colonial era reproduction pieces rely heavily on forge welding, and the team, then, would rely on traditional tools throughout their meetings, rather than use any electric or gas welding equipment. The table lamps, like those pictured above at the blacksmiths’ feet, for instance, can each require five forge welds. Based on a site visit by Folk Arts Specialist Deborah Bailey, and the smiles, it definitely appears that Matt Dickson is one step closer to his goal to be a master blacksmith some day.

The heart of Missouri Folk Arts Program is its Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program. Master artists work one-on-one with apprentices to keep folk arts knowledge and practices alive. In Missouri, with support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Missouri Arts Council, and the University of Missouri, the first master-apprentice lesson took place on December 10, 1984. Since then, Missouri has supported over 400 apprenticeships in which 200+ master artists have mentored more than 500 apprentices in every region and many communities in the state. Many apprentices have in their turn grown in their artistry and later recognized as master artists in TAAP. They forge anew living links in the chain of Missouri’s folk arts. Some TAAP artists practice traditional regional crafts that date back to Missouri’s Native American peoples and early European settlers. Some newer immigrants, such as Latinxs, Sudanese, and Bosnians, have sustained their artistic traditions in their new homes in Missouri. Still more traditions have migrated to Missouri from other regions of the U.S. All are re-imagined and honed into dynamic Show Me State traditions. Among the arts that have been fostered in TAAP over the decades are blacksmithing, cowboy poetry, old-time short-bow fiddling, African-American storytelling, Ozark Riverways paddle carving, Vietnamese dragon dancing, Western saddle making, old-time clawhammer banjo, wood joinery, square dance calling, German bobbin lace, turkey calls, Mexican paper flowers, and Slovenian button-box accordion. 

Published March 29, 2020