Folk Art Center exhibition marks a century of making
A century after its founding in Brasstown, the John C. Campbell Folk School continues to champion the handmade. Opening this January at the Folk Art Center, We Still Make Things sustains the school’s ongoing 100th-anniversary offerings with work spanning generations of students, instructors, and community members. “… this exhibit will outline the origins of the school and its evolution over time,” says Susanna Pyatt, collections and archives manager at the Folk School. “Media represented in the exhibit include blacksmithing, weaving, woodcarving, woodworking, dance, instrument making, pottery, enameling, basketry, and paper arts. Objects range in age from items made by the Folk School’s founders and earliest students to works created in 2025.” Running concurrently in the Focus Gallery, Curves Ahead features five artists whose work embodies movement and grace. Among them, mixed-media artist Theresa Clower explores transformation through nature’s materials, using flax leaves and rusted metal to capture the quiet poetry of impermanence. “I want to communicate that life is not always what we think it is,” Clower says. “What appears one way can be shaped and manipulated into something very different.”
Curves Ahead: January 3-March 22, 2026
We Still Make Things: 100 Years of Craft and Culture at the John C. Campbell Folk School: January 31-April 29, 2026
Folk Art Center / Milepost 382, Blue Ridge Parkway / southernhighlandguild.org