Work is Art and Art is Work
This exhibition celebrates the work of six contemporary Missouri luthiers, all of whom participated in Missouri’s Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program (TAAP). All are accomplished musicians, passionate about their music and instrument making. Each learned through a combination of sources: formal instruction, mentors and peers, books, imitation, and old-fashioned trial and error. Each begins his work with carefully selected wood. Each, by cutting, measuring, shaving, shaping, bending, tuning, and finishing, turns simple boards into intricate instruments that are pleasing to both eye and ear.
Geoffrey Seitz – Violin, Viola, Cello
Geoff Seitz is the only urban-based luthier in the exhibition. Because of his location, his customers are quite diverse: young and old, amateur and professional, classical, oldtime, bluegrass, jazz, country, Irish, and others. In his…
Transformation & Creativity
As a young woman of only eighteen, Naoma Powell, now eighty-one, accompanied her father to Cope Ashlock’s violin shop on Broadway Street in downtown Columbia. They brought along an old, badly battered, and broken Italian…
Luther Medley – Bass and Fiddle
Luther Medley and assistant Ed Holden show off a Medley designed bass. After he retired, Medley thought instrument making and repair work would bring in a “few extra dollars” for his favorite pastime, “goin’ fishing.”…
Gregory Krone – Violin and Viola
Greg Krone shows a viola-in-process balanced lightly on his fingertips – a test of skilled carving. Before apprenticing with Geoff Seitz, Krone trained at the Violin School of the Americas in Salt Lake City, Utah,…
Donald Graves – Walking Cane Dulcimer
Donald Graves still plays his great-grandfather’s dulcimer as well as his own. Maw-Hee, also a fiddle maker, wrote his name and the year of completion inside each instrument. Graves continues that tradition today. Like many…