Art Works Blog

"Language can also be play and music and beauty and desire and grief and rage and truth without always having to be message-driven or purely functional. Moving away from 'useful' doesn't mean it isn't necessary. You can still need poetry while also needing money or food or physical health." — Ada...

Beatriz “La Paloma del Norte” Llamas and Blanca “Blanquita Rosa” Rodríguez are the surviving members of Las Tesoros de San Antonio, a group of elder women performers who teamed up to preserve Mexican and bicultural musical expressions through their singing and storytelling. Along with Janet “Perla...

Decoy carver Rich Smoker spends as many as 12 hours a day creating wildfowl decoy carvings out of his home workshop on the banks of the Big Annemessex River, a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay on Maryland’s Lower Eastern Shore. Living as he does on the edge of the Atlantic Flyway, Smoker only has to...

Proceeding from his post in the Tennessee State Parks, folklorist Bob Fulcher has spent four decades engaged in relentless folklife fieldwork and programming, ardently supporting traditional artists and providing inspirational mentoring to young culture workers. Currently the park manager of the...