This summer in West Virginia, elementary school students had access to  a special summer art camp series almost every week. Students learned a  story telling art form rooted in Appalachian tradition called crankies. Crankies are also sometimes called moving panoramas, as they are a drawing or painting that can be […]

Walking down the streets of Greensboro, Pennsylvania, it feels a bit like a ghost town. There are houses, business signs, a post office, but only two cars drive by in 10 minutes and no one is walking the streets. The small town in southern Pennsylvania is just across the West […]

David Mitzel believes people have stereotypes about Appalachia– about Appalachian attitudes, Appalachia culture, and even Appalachian art. Mitzel organizes the annual Zanesville, Ohio, exhibit “Foot by Foot,” which celebrates art depicting Appalachian Ohio communities. “These [sterotypes] are all wrong,” Mitzel said. “It’s a much broader and deeper type of response […]

Most Americans typically wear clothes made in factories overseas. The same goes for fabrics in homes, such as potholders, rugs and blankets. But it has not always been this way. Hand weavers once made a majority of people’s fabrics and rugs using old wooden fashioned looms that one can often […]