Missouri Folk Arts, Focus Exhibit 2024
Thanks for visiting to learn more about Missouri Folk Arts and the Focus Exhibit!
Mizzou’s Museum of Art & Archaeology and the Museum of Anthropology are re-opening on campus, and Missouri Folk Arts is excited to curate a designated display case. Visitors will find the case just inside the accessible Hitt Street entrance on Ground Level East of Ellis Library across the street from Memorial Union.
In the case, visitors will find a hand-crafted violin, the work of the late Bernard Allen of Naylor, Mo., as well as a dynamic photo collage.
To see Mr. Allen play his violin with his bluegrass ensemble Buzzard Run and to view performances by the performing artists in the collage, check out this YouTube playlist on Missouri Folk Arts’ channel.
The collage is but a small representation of Missouri Folk Arts’ participants and project–from Show Me Folk‘s regional artist surveys to the Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program and Missouri Arts Council Folk Arts grants. Below you’ll find descriptions of each image.
Row One
- Mary Barile (Boonville) and her 2023 apprentice Tina Edholm (Columbia) hold up a Laundry Day, a hooked rug in progress. Edholm (left) designed the rug, referencing New Deal era photos, for Missouri’s Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program (TAAP). Mary and Tina are members of the Big Muddy Rug Hookers in central Missouri. Photo credit: James Henderson.
- Arcola Quilting Club members (Dade County) work on a quilt top in 2022. From l to r: Cindy Brodie, Jackie Montgomery, Martha Alsup, and JoEtta Gleason. Kaitlyn McConnell of Ozarks Alive documented the quilting club, founded in 1939, for a Show Me Folk artist survey in the Ozarks.
- Ozark fiddlers Emily Garoutte (Springfield) and Nathan McAlister (Granby), a 2023 TAAP team, pause the to snap a photo in Taney County. They often join other musicians at the weekly McClurg Jam, a decades-old music party housed in a former general store. Photo credit: David Scrivner
Row Two
- Gospel artist Doris Frazier (Chesterfield) performs with a choir made up of family and church friends during a festival celebrating 30 years of the apprenticeship program. Frazier taught gospel piano and vocals in the TAAP’s inaugural year—1985. Photo credit: Lisa L. Higgins
- Latin Jazz musician and Missouri Bicentennial partner Pablo Sanhueza and his 2020 apprentice Brandon Cooper perform with the Kansas City Latin Jazz Orchestra, an ensemble dedicated to sustaining South American traditional music. Photo credit: Cynthia Ammerman.
- Longtime Missouri Folk Arts’ partner Carmen Sofia Dence (St. Louis) and performs a traditional dance from Barranquilla, Colombia, her birthplace, during the 2005 Festival of Nations in Tower Grove Park. Carmen founded Grupo Atlántico St. Louis in the 1990s, linking a community of Colombian and Latin American citizens who loved traditional dance and music. Photo credit: Darcy Holtgrave
Row Three
- The late old-time fiddler Pete McMahan (Harrisburg) jams with other musicians in downtown Columbia, Mo. during a KOPN Community Radio event. Photo archives at State Historical Society of Missouri, (C4035) University of Missouri-Columbia, Missouri Folk Arts Program Records
- Bernard Tappel, owner, and operator of the Osage Bluff Blacksmith Shop in Cole County, hammers out a fishing gig on his anvil. Tappel uses his gigs to fish on the nearby Maries River. Photo credit: Deborah A. Bailey
- Ripley County TAAP team Ernest “Uncle Punk” Murray (Doniphan) and his 1995 apprentice Steve Cookson work to carve a sassafras paddle. Paddles are used to navigate johnboats on the scenic Current River. Photo by Dana Everts-Boehm
Row Four
- Guru Prasanna Kasthuri, founder of Soorya Performing Arts in St. Louis, and his 2022 TAAP apprentice Saptheka Upadhya practice Bharatanatyam in the studio. Photo credit: Deborah A. Bailey
- Master Kore drummer Mulu Wani and 2014 TAAP apprentices perform during a lesson with the assistance of dancers at a Kansas City community center. Kore music and dance traditions, practiced by the South Sudanese immigrants, are intricately tied. Photo credit: Deborah A. Bailey
- Sugar Creek Slavic Fest, produced in part with a Missouri Arts Council grant, showcases local traditions–kola dances, tamburitza music, and foodways—brought to the greater Kansas City community over one hundred years ago. Photo credit: David Rainey