OFN at the 2018 FisherPoets Gathering

Cloudy weather couldn’t dim our enjoyment of the FisherPoets Gathering

Every year, the FisherPoets Gathering brings together fishermen from around the world to Astoria, OR during the last weekend in February to share their poetry, prose, and song and to celebrate the commercial fishing industry. This year’s FisherPoets Gathering featured over 100 performers at 8 different venues, workshops, a poetry slam, and the ever-popular Saturday night poetry contest. For the 5th year running, Oregon Folklife Network staff, students, and volunteers were all there to help document the weekend.

OFN Executive Director Riki Saltzman, Graduate Assistant Brad McMullen, OFN Program Manager Alina Mansfield, students Brandie Roberts and Kayleigh Graham, and volunteer folklorist Tiffany Purn spent the weekend experiencing the events and interviewing fisherpoets, documenting their poetry and their commercial fishing heritage. We got to see a number of fantastic performances from fisherpoets like Harlan Bailey, Rich Bard, Moe Bowstern, Meezie Hermansen, Tom Hilton, Cary Jones, Rob Seitz, and Cowboy Poet-in-Residence Ron McDaniel.

One event that stood out for first-timer Kayleigh Graham was the Strength of the Tides workshop, which focused on empowering women fishermen (their gender-preferred term) and other women who work in maritime industries. Strength of the Tides was well supported outside of its workshop too, with the movement getting shout-outs at performances throughout the weekend and lots of sightings of the new t-shirt.

For graduate student Brandie Roberts, another first-timer who described it as a weekend of “heartfelt expression,” what really stood out was her interview with fisherpoet Harlan Bailey. She writes, “For [Harlan], as with many others, gathering as the collective Fisherpoets means creating a space that staves off alienation and allows transformation – from the quotidian to the symbolic, and the mundane to the meaningful. Harlan Bailey will be back next year, and I’ll be in the audience to cheer him on.

(From L to R) Brandie Roberts, Brad McMullen, ED Riki Saltzman, Kayleigh Graham, & Tiffany Purn

As always, the FisherPoets Gathering is a great chance for fishermen to celebrate their industry and the art that they create in isolation and share as a community. The OFN is proud to attend every year and help document the stories of the men and women of the commercial fishing fleet, and we’re already looking forward to next year’s gathering!

Former OFN Staff Member Makaela Kroin Gets Job with Washington State Parks & Recreation Commission

It is with great excitement that we announce that Makaela Kroin, a graduate of the University of Oregon’s Folklore Program and the former program manager at the Oregon Folklife Network, has accepted a position as a public folklorist with the Washington State Parks & Recreation Commission.

Washington State Parks & Recreation Commission hired Kroin as the manager of the Folk & Traditional Arts Program. Founded in 2004 by public folklorist, Dr. Jens Lund, the Folk & Traditional Arts Program planted deep roots in state parks across Washington. Kroin, who started in January 2018, Makaela replaces Deborah Fant (one of OFN’s former contract folklorists), who retired in September 2017. Ryan Karlson, Parks’ Director of Interpretive Services, says “We are quite excited to have Makaela Kroin coming to Washington State Parks to lead our Folk & Traditional Arts Program. We look forward to building new partnerships and the reach of Folk & Traditional Arts programming within our diverse state park system.”

Kroin has a Bachelor’s Degree in Portuguese and Brazilian Studies from Smith College, a Master’s Degree in Information and Communication Science from Ball State University, and a Master’s Degree in Public Folklore from the University of Oregon. During her time as Oregon Folklife Network’s Summer Folklore Fellow (2016) and Program Manager, Kroin conducted fieldwork, produced exhibits, coordinated public programs, wrote grants, and did extensive community outreach.

Kroin credits her mentors at the University of Oregon and the OFN for her success, “I am incredibly grateful to have had the opportunity to work with world class scholars in the Folklore Program at the University of Oregon as well as the dedicated staff and interns at the OFN. It was the practical experience that I gained through internships and fellowships at the OFN that gave me the professional skills, the extensive network, and the confidence to flourish in the field of Public Folklore.”

At Washington State Parks, Kroin is responsible for coordinating the statewide Folk and Traditional Arts program and related community partnership development efforts. In 2018, she will oversee a packed schedule including annual events and festivals such as the Salish Sea Native American Cultural Celebration, Cambodian Cultural Celebration, and the American Roots Concert Series, as well as a collaboration with New Old Time Chautauqua to tour Washington State Parks and small towns in the North Central and North regions of Washington as well as the Confederated Tribes of Colville Reservation.

Willamette Valley Folklife Survey Project Folklorists, Spring 2018

Amy Howard

Amy Howard received a BA in Anthropology from Brigham Young University and an MA in American Studies and Folklore from Utah State University. Her love of folklore fieldwork began in 2007 on an undergraduate field study in Guatemala. Since then, she has interned at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, coordinated public programs, and worked on multiple documentation projects in Utah and Idaho. In 2013, she collaborated with other fieldworkers documenting and producing a book on quilting traditions in the Bear River Heritage Area. In 2015, she and two of her students documented artistic, occupational, and recreational traditions in the Southeast Idaho Snake River Plain for the Idaho Commission on the Arts. Together they created an exhibit and organized public performances at the Idaho Museum of Natural History. She is currently documenting traditional Mexican music in Southern Idaho, also for the ICA. She has worked at Idaho State University as an instructor since 2014, teaching courses in folklore, English composition, and Spanish. Contact: maxwamy@isu.edu 


 

Alina Mansfield

Alina Mansfield, OFN’s Program Coordinator, has a Bachelor’s Degree in Folklore and Mythology from UC Berkeley, and a Master’s Degree in Folklore from the University of Oregon. As a master’s student, Mansfield produced a documentary about material culture and costume making in Biloxi, Mississippi’s Mardi Gras festival. Mansfield served as OFN’s Summer Folklore Fellow, where she co-produced OFN’s 2017 publication, Oregon Traditional Arts Apprenticeship MasterArtists: 2012-2016, and managed OFN’s Oregon Culture Keeper’s roster. Mansfield holds a concurrent position as Archivist in the Randall Mills Archive of orthwest Folklore. Previously she was a Circulation Supervisor at UC Berkeley’s Doe/Moffitt Libraries. Contact:alinam@uoregon.edu


 

Thomas Grant Richardson

Thomas Grant Richardson (MA, Indiana University, ABD Indiana University) is an independent folklorist based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He has done ethnographic fieldwork across the western United States, the American midwest, Appalachia, Canada, and Scandinavia.He has worked for New Mexico Arts, Museum of International Folk Art (Santa Fe), Utah Folk Arts Program, Missouri Folk Arts Program, and the Minnesota Arts Board. He previously served as the Curator of Education and Outreach at the Birthplace of Country Music Museum in Bristol TN/VA. He is also currently working with the Vermont Folklife Center and a team of fieldworkers to re-launch a fieldwork gear review site aimed at the needs of ethnographers. Contact: tgrantrichardson@gmail.com

NEA Funding for OFN—Willamette Valley Folklife Survey, Spring 2018!

The National Endowment for the Arts has awarded the Oregon Folklife Network funding to conduct folklife field surveys and documentation of traditions in the Willamette Valley. We are pleased to announce that folklorists Amy Howard, Alina Mansfield, and Thomas Richardson will be conducting this fieldwork with the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde and in the counties of Polk and Benton as well as the portions of Marion, Linn, and Lane counties in the Willamette Valley.

OFN, Oregon’s Folk & Traditional Arts Program, is in search of excellent folk artists and culture keepers. We’ll include the best of those documented in our Culture Keepers Roster, an online curated resource for local festivals, parks, school, and library programs looking to hire performers, demonstrators, and speakers. We are also looking for master artists to serve as mentors for the Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program.

OFN will be working with a range of cultural partners such as Lane Arts Council, Lane County Historical Museum, Salem Arts Association, Corvallis Arts Center, County Cultural Coalitions, Independence Heritage Museum, da Vinci Days, Corvallis Multicultural Literacy Center, CAPACES Leadership Institute (Latino workers), and Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, and our operational partners (Oregon Historical Society, Oregon Arts Commission, Oregon Cultural Trust). We’ll be partnering with some of those organizations to create public programs with traditional artists in the region.

Please put us in touch with the traditional musicians, dancers, quilters, embroiderers, storytellers, fly-tiers, cooks, artisans, and others in your part of the Willamette Valley. We very much want to hear from the range of the region’s communities— regional, ethnic, and occupational folklore, including but not limited to Asian and Pacific Islanders (Asian Indian, Chinese, Filipino, Hawai’ian, Japanese, Korean, Lao, Vietnamese), Latino (Mexican, Cuban, Puerto Rican), Native American (Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde), and European (Dutch, English, French, German, Irish, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Russian, Scotch-Irish, Scottish, Swedish) as well as logging, hunting, railroad, sheep and dairy farming, orchards, viticulture, brewing, hops growing, fishing and fishing guides, boat building and other waterways traditions along with foodways, music, storytelling, and other relevant traditional expressions.

Contact information for Project folklorists:

OFN preserves this documentation at the University of Oregon, Special Collections and University Archives.

To provide OFN with contact information for tradition keepers, contact Riki Saltzman, riki@uoregon.edu; Alina Mansfield, alinam@uoregon.edu; or phone 541-346-3820.

OFN is a University of Oregon administered program with operational support from the Oregon Arts Commission, Oregon Historical Society, and Oregon Cultural Trust.