Meet the Artists – Each page shares the artist’s background, images of their work in the exhibit, and links to more information about them.

Artist Locations – See where the 58 artists live and work.

Medium Galleries – In these galleries you’ll see the variety of ways in which different artists work in the same medium, and learn about their process. Here is Carol Welch describing dyeing river cane for her baskets: “To dye cane, it usually takes about two days, to get it to take the dye, boiling, maybe anywhere from eight to ten hours a day. I use butternut roots and walnut roots. The butternut gives black, and walnut different shades of brown. And bloodroot is a plant and it does the orange, different shades of orange.”

National Endowment for the Arts Awards – Three of the artists in Tradition/Innovation have received NEA Visual/Crafts Artist Fellowships, recognizing their artistic excellence:

• Glen Kaufman, Fiber Artist, Athens GA
• Gary Noffke, Metal Artist, Watkinsville GA
• Richard Ritter, Glass Artist, Bakersville NC

Six of the artists have been awarded a National Heritage Fellowship, awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts, the highest honor the country can bestow on a traditional artist:

• Mozell Benson, Quilter, Waverly AL
• Jerry Brown, Potter, Hamilton AL
• Gladys LeBlanc Clark, Cajun Weaver/Spinner, Duson LA
• Vernon Owens, Potter, Seagrove NC
• Philip Simmons, Ornamental Iron Worker, Charleston SC
• Nick Toth, Diving Helmet Designer/Builder, Tarpon Springs FL

Visitors Guide (Adobe PDF) – Read the stories behind ten of the artists and artworks in Tradition/Innovation – along with questions to encourage your own thinking about mastery, the creative process, and how contemporary craft and traditional arts fit into our lives today.

Audio Tour – A narrator and the voices of the artists themselves draw you into the exhibit and how these masterpieces were created, whether they are a unique and new interpretation of an idea, or are today’s result of generations of training and creativity.

Interviews – Of particular interest to students, scholars and researchers, several of the Tradition/Innovation artists granted interviews to assist in the development of the exhibit.

Portions of audio recordings are available for educational purposes.

The full, unedited audio recordings are available upon request for educational purposes. Please contact Teresa Hollingsworth for more information.

Curators and researchers have developed transcriptions, summaries and answers to questionnaires from interviews as well; these documents are available here for educational purposes.