2018 Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program application now available, due April 1

We are currently accepting applications from master artists and their apprentices for our Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program (TAAP). One of the Oregon Folklife Network’s cornerstone programs, TAAP assists master artists in teaching and passing on their living traditions to promising apprentices from the same cultural background. Master artists receive stipends to cover costs of focused, individualized training and a final public presentation. OFN hosts a biannual awards ceremony in Salem where legislators and government officials recognize master artists.

Download the application on our website and submit by April 1st.

Artists from a number of different traditions have participated in TAAP over the years. For a full list of participants, check out our Oregon Culture Keepers Roster – just type “TAAP” into the keyword search to see the full list. The 2017-2018 recipients are Palestinian embroiderer Feryal Abbasi-Ghnaim, horse trainer Tonya Rosebrook, Persian storyteller Azar Salehi, and Hanis Coos weaver Sara Siestreem.

OFN is honored to support these master artists in their efforts to keep and pass on their cultural traditions to the next generation. Keep your eye on our Vimeo and YouTube pages for upcoming interviews with these artists – and be sure to check out the interviews with some of our previous master artists while you wait!

Funding for TAAP comes from the National Endowment for the Arts Folk & Traditional Arts discipline and Oregon Arts Commission. The Oregon Community Foundation’s Fred W. Fields Fund provided further funding for our 2018-19 awardees. Additional support from the Oregon Historical Society, Oregon Cultural Trust and the University of Oregon makes this program possible.

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OFN at 2018 National Cowboy Poetry Gathering

Every year, folklorists from across the western states reunite at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada.  OFN Associate Director, Emily Hartlerode, joined colleagues to staff the festival as stage manager and host to cowboy musicians and poets Feb 1-3. This year’s 34th annual festival theme, “Basques & Buckaroos: Herding Cultures of Basin, Range and Beyond,” made the beret, or Basque txapela, as common as the ten-gallon hat. A rich assortment of Basque music, dance, language, and rhymes came gathering from near as Elko and far as Spain’s Basque Country. Oregonians performing at the Gathering included photographer Mary Williams Hyde (Klamath Falls), poet Annie Mackenzie (Jordan Valley), and musicians Caleb Klauder Country Band (Portland) who played the famous Saturday Night Dance.

Mary Williams Hyde, whose family has been ranching in Klamath Falls since 1911, shared an hour of her photo slides in a collection called “Images of the Buckaroo: On the Ranch and in the Arena.” Her documentation of this culture specializes in the rare million+ acre ranch of the Great Basin, like Oregon’s ZX Ranch in Paisley.

Annie Mackenzie was a fresh new voice in Elko, attending her first Gathering as a recipient of the Rod McQueary & Sue Wallis Scholarship. This fund, established by an anonymous donor in memory of two of the Gathering’s earliest poets, brings emerging poets, writers and reciters to the Gathering. OFN looks forward to adding to our artist roster Ms. Mackenzie, who writes thoughtful and humorist poetry of her experiences on her family’s fourth-generation ranch in southeast Oregon.

Interested in performing or exhibiting at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering?  Get in touch with OFN, or watch the NCPG website where applications for 2019 will be posted soon!