Art students create crafts

By Janice M. Howard / Style Editor for the Southern Standard

Scott Dunham goes all out with creativity and color as he makes a tie-dyed T-shirt.

Art students at Warren County High School accepted new challenges with eagerness and anticipation when recently participating in the High School Art/Vocational Craft Program at the Appalachian Center for Crafts. They were accompanied on the field trip to Smithville by WCHS art instructors Deborah Grepperud and Patsy Webb.

In its third year, the craft center’s art program introduces students to studies and careers in the art and craft field through demonstrations and intensive hands-on workshops in a variety of craft media. The program serves up to 600 students in the Upper Cumberland region including Warren, White, Bledsoe, Cannon, Fentress, Jackson, Overton, Putnam, Rutherford and Smith. All the projects are funded in part by the Tennessee Arts Commission.

Various workshops offered to the visiting students featured wheel throwing and handbuilding clay pottery, paper and fabric marbling, tie-dying, stained glass, copper forging, metal fabrication and pinhole photography. Exposure to these crafts gives some of them their very first experience in various arts, according to Gail Doss, workshop and events coordinator for the center, and can lead them into a lifelong vocation.

First, these creative students attended four 15-minute demonstrations focusing on glass blowing, wood turning, wheel-thrown pottery and blacksmithing. The remainder of the day was spent in one of the eight pre-selected workshops lasting 2-1/2 hours each.