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Missouri Folk Arts Program

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ANNOUNCING MISSOURI’S 2024 TRADITIONAL ARTS APPRENTICESHIP PROGRAM TEAMS

Hooked rug detail shows a saltbox style house with green lawn and two sheep resting. The house's roof and the background reference the American flag.

LauraLee Rose is a rug hooker apprenticing with Mary Barile. Rose submitted this rug as a work sample with their application.

Columbia, Mo., June 8, 2024—Missouri Folk Arts is thrilled to announce the seven teams participating in the 39th annual Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program (TAAP). They are engaged actively in a series of one-on-one lessons and will continue through the spring.

Stay tuned to Missouri Folk Arts’ website and social media for 2024 team profiles, progress, and special events.

Please help us congratulate the following artists:

  • Mary Barile (Boonville), master rug hooker of Boonville, and apprentice LauraLee Rose (Centralia);

  • Sasha Daucus (Doniphan), master Ozarks herbalist, and apprentice Marisa Frazier (Springfield);

  • Rajendra Kedlaya (Columbia), a master of Yakshagaaana, traditional theater of Karnataka, India, and apprentice Sapthaka Upadhya (St. Louis);

  • David Scrivner (Springfield), master Ozarks dance fiddler, and apprentice Coy Stephan (Montrose);

  • TJ Southard (Perryville), master woodworker, and apprentice John Grantham (also of Perryville);

  • John G. Stewart (Columbia), master jazz swing guitarist, and apprentice Charles Baerwald (also of Columbia);

  • And Boone County native Charlie Walden (Evanston, Ill.), master old-time musician, and fiddle tune accompaniment apprentice Mason Herbold (Hallsville).

“The 2024 TAAP cohort is exceptionally talented and represents an exciting slice of Missouri’s traditional arts,” says Lisa L. Higgins, Missouri Folk Arts’ director. “In their proposals, mentoring artists and apprentices exhibited artistic excellence and demonstrated their intentions to build upon the roots of their traditional art forms, to practice them in the present, and share with others in the future.”  

Missouri Folk Arts is proud to host one of the oldest, continuous statewide folk arts apprenticeship programs in the U.S., funded since inception by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Missouri Arts Council with support from the University of Missouri. In its inaugural year, TAAP featured traditional musicians in old-time, gospel, blues, and jazz. The following year, the project grew to include material culture, or things made by hand. Since those early days, 1,000+ individual traditional artists in every corner of the state––rural, suburban, and urban centers—have participated in the project as mentoring artists and apprentices. A few, like 2024 master fiddler David Scrivner, have participated as both.

The 2024 TAAP cohort represents the breadth and depth of traditional arts as defined by the National Endowment for the Arts, the project’s primary funder: rooted in and reflective of the cultural life of a community. Community members may share a common ethnic heritage, cultural mores, language, religion, occupation, or geographic region. These vital and constantly reinvigorated artistic traditions are shaped by values and standards of excellence that are passed from generation to generation, most often within family and community, through demonstration, conversation, and practice.

Missouri Folk Arts—a statewide arts partner of the Missouri Arts Council, a division of the Office of the Lieutenant Governor—is anchored at the Museum of Art & Archaeology in the College of Arts & Science at the University of Missouri. The program strives to build cross-cultural understanding by documenting, sustaining, and sharing our state’s living folk arts and folklife in collaboration with Missouri’s citizens. 

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