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Missouri Folk Arts Program

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Missouri Folk Arts, Focus Exhibit 2024-2025

Thanks for visiting to learn more about Missouri Folk Arts and the Focus Exhibit!

Missouri Folk Arts is excited to curate a designated display case in our home at the University of Missouri’s Museum of Art & Archaeology in Columbia, Mo.. Visitors will find the case just inside the accessible Hitt Street entrance on Ground Level East at Ellis Library across the street from Memorial Union.

Starting on April 2, 2025, visitors will find a new installation of objects made by the late Joseph Patrickus, the longtime maker of custom Western boots at JP’s Boots, his shop in Camdenton, Mo. From the exhibition label:

The fifth-generation bootmaker established JP’s Custom Handmade Boots in Camdenton, MO. He honed his skills with his Uncle Aldie, then with a maker in St. Louis, who sold “JP” used equipment, including an 1898 lathe to turn wooden lasts (or molds) of Canadian Rock Maple for custom fits.

Exhibition case with glass doors includes graphics with images of artists in action. Inside the case, are two text panels, a pair of black Western boots and wooden lasts for making the books.

Joe Patrickus crafted these black English leather boots from measurements taken of the customer’s feet, ankles, and calves and recorded in his ledger in 2003. The wooden lasts to the right are made of Canadian Rock Maple and were turned on an 1898 lathe.

Over the decades, Patrickus fashioned custom works of art for hundreds of well-heeled and everyday clients. He employed many techniques: sketching, etching, carving, sewing, chiseling, embroidering, piecing, and sometimes bejeweling. His work evolved on many canvases (paper, wood, and leather) to produce one work of art—or more accurately, a pair. 

Read more about Joseph Patrickus, II, in this essay, Joe Patrickus and the Magic of Bootmaking, written by previous Missouri Folk Arts graduate assistant Ryan Habermyer. 

The photo collage that fills the case is but a small representation of Missouri Folk Arts’ participants and projects–from Show Me Folk‘s regional artist surveys to the Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program and Missouri Arts Council Folk Arts grant-funded projects.

Below you’ll find descriptions of each image.

Row One

  1. Mary Barile (Boonville) and her 2023 apprentice Tina Edholm (Columbia) hold up Laundry Day, a hooked rug in progress. Edholm (left) designed the rug, referencing New Deal era photos, for their participation in Missouri’s Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program (TAAP). In April 2024, Laundry Day won a best of show award at A Show of Hands, a special fiber arts exhibition during the Persimmon Creek Residences at Arrow Rock, Mo.  Mary and Tina are members of the Big Muddy Rug Hookers in central Missouri. Photo credit: James Henderson.
  2. 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. The Smithsonian Folklife Festival invited Martha and JoEtta to demonstrate quilting during the 2023 festival in celebration of the Ozarks. They invited all visitors to their tent to sit and add stitches to a beautiful purple and white quilt top. Their club finished the quilt, and it’s now in the permanent collection of Meyer Library at Missouri State University in Springfield.
  3. 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. Nathan and Emily are also active with the non-profit Ozark Mountain Music, Inc., whose mission is to preserve and promote traditional music of the Ozarks for future generations. Photo credit: David Scrivner

Row Two

  1. 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. In 2022, her grandson produced a documentary film called Compositions of Life: Doris Fiddmont Frazier. That film chronicles her life story in Chesterfield and within the Union Baptist Church in historic Westland Acres. Photo credit: Lisa L. Higgins
  2. Latin Jazz musician Pablo Sanhueza first came to Missouri Folk Arts’ attention during a Show Me Folk artist survey in Kansas City, and then as a fellow partner in planning for Missouri Bicentennial celebrations. Pablo and Brandon Cooper, a 2020 TAAP team, perform with the Kansas City Latin Jazz Orchestra. Sanhueza is a prolific performing artist, who is dedicated to sustaining the South American traditional music he grew up with in Chile’. Photo credit: Cynthia Ammerman.
  3. Longtime Missouri Folk Arts’ partner Carmen Sofia Dence (St. Louis) 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. The Missouri Arts Council recognized Carmen’s artistry with a 2023 Individual Artist Award. Photo credit: Darcy Holtgrave

Row Three

  1. The late old-time fiddler Pete McMahan (Harrisburg) jams with other musicians in downtown Columbia, Mo. during a KOPN Community Radio event with the Missouri State Old-time Fiddlers Association.  Pete regularly taught young fiddlers often in TAAP and at the Bethel Youth Fiddle Camp, now funded in part with a Missouri Arts Council Folk Arts grant. His album Ozark Mountain Waltz has been digitized and is available via the Missouri State Old Time Fiddlers Association. Photo archives at State Historical Society of Missouri, (C4035) University of Missouri-Columbia, Missouri Folk Arts Program Records
  2. 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. Bernie has participated in the apprenticeship program, as well as served as an adviser on exhibitions, Missouri Bicentennial presentations, and the first year of the Show Me Folk artist surveys. He still demonstrates annually at the Missouri River Valley Steam Engine Association’s Show and is a founder of the Blacksmith Association of Missouri. Photo credit: Deborah A. Bailey
  3. 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. In 2024, the Missouri State Museum included a paddle hand-crafted by Uncle Punk in its special exhibition Missouri Artists. Photo by Dana Everts-Boehm

Row Four

  1. 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
  2. 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
  3. Sugar Creek Slavic Fest, produced in part with a Missouri Arts Council Folk Arts 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