Tag: rural arts

OFN Practicum: Week 7 Log

Emily, Maya and I met on Monday and we discussed our first postcards. Riki looked over them and suggested we edit the tone of the postcards to be more promotional and personal, instead of informational. If the idea of the map is to promote Oregon rural artists and the Oregon Folklife Network, we want the postcards to be a starting off point for more exploration. I had not thought of the postcards like this prior to this meeting, so I had to edit my postcard. I had written my postcard as more of a summary about an artist than a story with a hook. I’m still not sure if my edited postcard fits the tone Riki suggested, but I made an attempt. The revision of the 1st postcard is now posted and I’ve sent it to Emily and Riki to look over.

I also began work on my 2nd postcard this week. I called Tina and I got her permission to post about her on the map. I also told her I would email her the postcard once it is written. I started to write the postcard, but I decided not to finish it till I better understood the style OFN wanted me to use. Hopefully I will be able to finish it in week 8. Emily, Maya and I have agreed that we may not get to post 3 full postcards, but that posting the best model for future practicums is more important. We discussed the guidelines Maya and I wrote and Emily suggested that we write an official document as a resource for the next practicum. Emily also suggested that we make a list of possible artists (including non TAAP artists) for the rural map to be included in the document. I plan to email Nathan and see if we can add a rural category to the inventory. This will help us and future practicum students in the research process. Our hope is to lay the groundwork this term so that the process can be more streamlined in the future.

OFN Practicum: Week 6 Log

Emily, Maya and I met on Monday to discuss finalizing our first postcards. My postcard is essentially finished, but Riki is going to look over it before I post it. Emily has set up a meeting with Riki to review the postcard. Emily will also be meeting with Riki to discuss the tagline for OFN that will be included at the bottom of each postcard. We also discussed issues of using material from the Oregon Historical Society. Maya has found some information and images about rural artists on the OHS website, but they have a policy forbidding duplication of material. However, since their material has a connection to the OFN, it may be possible to use it with their permission. Emily will be checking in with OHS to make sure. This is mostly important for the older artists we don’t have digital images for. We decided to start working on our 2nd postcard this week. I have selected the artist Tina Aguilar: she lives in Warm Springs and makes Wasco baby boards. Emily informed me that she is definitely still working as an artist since she applied for a TAAP award last year. I have emailed Tina to get permission to post about here. I also created a profile for OFN on the Placestories website so that Emily and Riki can discuss what the profile should look like at their meeting.

Maya and I met on Thursday to discuss some possible guidelines for future practicums regarding this project. The steps for creating a postcard are fairly basic: do research, contact possible artist, create rough draft, get approval from OFN, post to Place Stories. However, we discussed how this project would continue in the future considering there are only a finite number of artists who are TAAP awardees and live in rural areas. Obviously people can continue the research Maya and I are doing, but the project may have to be broadened. There are artists who are not TAAP awardees but live in rural areas and are affiliated with the OFN that could be potential artists for the map. Or future research could be done on the OHS website or in the folklore students’ field work. Maya and I also discussed recording what we’ve already found on the inventories of the archives. I need to email Nathan about this, but it would be helpful to mark on the inventories whether the artists in each box are rural or not, whether we’ve posted about them, and if they are a TAAP artist. This will have to be something I will work on next week.

OFN Practicum: Week 5 Log

This week, Emily, Maya and I met on Monday and went over our first drafts of our postcards. Emily looked over both of our postcards and gave us some editing suggestions. Maya and I both agreed to start our postcards with a quote and a short description about the artist and his/her work. Emily agreed that we should mention that the artist is a TAAP awardee on the bottom, but that we she include the year he/she was awarded. We discussed whether or not we should contact artists and ask for their permission to post about them. Emily suggested that I contact my artist, Alex Llumiquinga Perez, and let him know we are going to post about him, but that we could remove his postcard upon request. On the other hand, Emily said in most cases (especially for Native American artists) we should ask permission beforehand. Emily also suggested that for older TAAP artists, we can either link to the artist’s individual website or direct them to the OFN website for more information about traditional arts in general. Emily and Riki will be discussing what the OFN tagline will be to include in the postcards. In the meantime, Maya and I will continue our research by looking through the archives. Riki and Nathan directed us towards 3 boxes (47-49) of artist files that will hopefully lead to some more possible postcards.

After meeting with Emily, I edited my postcard. I have yet to post it because Riki has not seen it. I also sent it to Maya for peer editing and she approved it. I went to special collections and put the artist boxes on hold. I then looked through all of box 47. Surprisingly, there were not that many artists in the box that lived in a rural area and are TAAP awarded. I did write down some artists from rural areas that are not TAAP awardees in case they could still be good candidates. Right now the best candidates are Tina Aguilar who lives in Warm Springs, OR and makes Indian cradle boards (baby boards) or Betty First Raised who lives in Burns, OR and does traditional bead work with leather. One interesting candidate, though not a TAAP artist, is DW Frommer who makes leather boots and lives in Redmond, OR. There is a lot of information about him in the archives and could be a good representation of rancher culture in Oregon. I will run this by OFN to see if he is appropriate. In the meantime, I plan to contact Tina Aguilar to see if I could use her for the map.

OFN Practicum: Postcard 1

Link to Postcard

Alex Llumiquinga Perez

Andean Instrument Maker

Otter Rock, OR

“It was just a hobby when I started… I never thought I’d do this as a career.”

Alex is a master artist of crafting and playing Andean folk instruments. Growing up in Ecuador, Alex was surrounded by music and remembers his grandfather plucking leaves from trees and using them as instruments. He received his first flute at the age of 11 and his first charango (ten-stringed guitar) at the age of 12. Traditionally made from armadillo shells, Alex fondly recalls that his first charango had a panther carved into it.

Through performance, Alex immediately fell in love with Andean folk music. He formed a 5 piece band called Chayag and landed his first professional music performance at the age of 17. The band soon started spreading his love for Latin American folk music by touring the world. As he grew older, he became interested in learning how to craft Andean instruments himself, like the charango, bamboo flutes and river cane flutes. Over the last decade, Alex has developed his instrument-making techniques and now owns his own workshop. He loves teaching instrument-making skills to children, but when it comes to his own children, Alex says “I’m waiting for them to tell me they want to learn.”

Alex Llumiguinga Perez earned Oregon’s Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program award in 2012. For more information about traditional arts in Oregon, visit the Oregon Folklife Network at ofn.uoregon.edu.

Oregon Folklife Network:

Making a meaningful difference in Oregon communities by empowering our tradition-keepers to pass on their skills and knowledge.

For more information about the artist and his craft, visit www.andeanmusic.org

OFN Practicum: Week 4 Log

This week Maya and I met on Monday to discuss some of the issues we had come across and compiled a list of questions. Maya has sent a list of these questions out to Emily and Riki, which include questions about what links we should be providing (especially for the older artists we found in the archives), whether or not we should contact artists and if we need to ask for permission to post about them. Other questions pertained more directly to the Art of the Rural’s guidelines. We just need to get a better definition of rural so we aren’t picking artist that don’t represent their mission. Also, we were wondering if we should have a postcard to represent Eugene even though it’s a fair sized city. I need to email Savannah about these questions as well some map capability issues I talked about in the last post, though I’m going to wait till after our meeting with OFN on Monday. Maya and I also plan to do some more research in the archives next week now that we have identified more boxes to look through. This week we focused on creating our first drafts of postcards, as discussed below.

I chose to do my first postcard on a current TAAP artist: Alex Llumiquinga Perez. He is one of the few international artists I’ve found so far living in rural Oregon. I created a first draft of my postcard based on information about him on the web, his TAAP application and a newspaper article. You can see my first draft here. In crafting the draft, a lot of questions came up as to how OFN would want the postcard structured. For instance, do we need to describe the TAAP program? Are we focusing on the artist or his/her craft? I essentially tried to emulate the content I found in the TAAP application and I mentioned that Alex is TAAP awarded including a link. Maya and I also thought it would be nice to include a quote from the artist for each post and that the location should be forefront. A lot of the postcards I looked at on the map did not say what town they came from, which I thought was strange for the purpose of the map. Thus, I think we put the location of the artist in the title, so people can see what area this artist represents. Maya and I will be comparing our postcards and trying to find a good format for us both to follow hopefully before tomorrow’s meeting.