Records from three surveys of southeastern Illinois folk arts, conducted by half a dozen fieldworkers through the Eastern Illinois University (EIU) School of Fine Arts, document over 150 traditional artists and musicians. The first survey (1976-1977) canvassed the southeastern sixth of the state and resulted in a 1977 EIU Sargent Gallery exhibition that included artist demonstrations. Many of the featured artists also appeared in the 1977 Festival of the Arts Celebration on the Charleston, Illinois campus. A follow-up survey (1978-1980) narrowed the view to traditional artists within a 50-mile radius of campus and contributed to EIU's 1979 Festival of the Arts Celebration. The third survey (1983-1985) focused on traditional musicians and folk artists chiefly in and around Danville and Decatur in Vermilion and Macon counties. Documentation from the surveys, now housed at the Tarble Arts Center on the EIU campus, also informed a 30-minute TV documentary about three of the region's folk artists.
Staff for the first two folk arts surveys included folklorist Jens Lund and traditional music fieldworkers Garry Harrison, Dave Miller, and Lynn Smith. Folklorists Judith McCulloh, Roger Welsch, and Sandy Ives served as consultants, while Vaughn Jaenike, then Dean of the School of Fine Arts at EIU, was principal investigator.
For the third survey, folklorist Jan Laude investigated folk artists and the human landscape, while folklorist Paul Tyler, assisted by John Holliday, focused on musical traditions. The principal investigator was Phillip M. Settle, then Assistant Dean of the School of Fine Arts at EIU.
The third survey, conducted from 1983 through 1985, focused on folk artists and traditional musicians primarily in the cities of Decatur and Danville, with some documentation in the rural areas of the surrounding counties. From June through September 1983, folklorist Jan Laude interviewed and photographed 29 folk artists and documented 5 “vision painters,” a Macon County Historical Society women's folk art group, the Kickapoo Karvers woodcarving group, Decatur's Yesteryear Fair, Danville's Little Vermilion Fair, and a range of public murals, business displays, and yard art. Her documentation includes tape recordings, notes, color slides, and black and white photography, and features quilting and a variety of needlework skills, rug braiding and hooking, a range of woodworking and woodcarving skills, toy, doll, marionette, and duck decoy making, blacksmithing, painting and china painting, folk medicine, narrative and singing traditions, and more.
The folk arts documentation consists of field reports, logs, correspondence, grant reports, administrative files, and sound and video recordings from the three surveys and related exhibits/productions. Also included is EIU festival documentation from 1989 to 1994. These records are housed in the Tarble Arts Center office and adjoining vault. Indexes and logs created by the fieldworkers provide access to most of the fieldwork in the collection. The majority of the documents remain in their original boxes, however some files related to the slide portion of the records have been integrated into the Arts Center's filing cabinets.
The sound recordings consist of 7-inch reel-to-reel tapes and audiocassettes. Most sound recordings, created on Sony portable stereo cassette and Nagra IV portable stereo equipment, contain field interviews and include live performances from EIU's annual Festival of the Arts celebrations. The reel-to-reel tapes are primarily from the first two surveys. Audiocassettes are mostly dubs, but also include: 11 commercially-produced tapes from the series “Showcase of Folk Arts” which contain profiles of traditional artists featured during EIU's 1992 festival; and 6 tapes which are copies of a 1988 radio/television show featuring folk artists produced by Western Illinois State University. Audiocassettes are housed in cases within old card catalog file drawers inside the vault, and reels (in original boxes) and BETA tapes (in polypropylene cases) are housed in a metal filing cabinet in the vault.
Color slides (35 mm), both fieldwork and studio shots, dominate the graphic images within this collection. Ten binders contain roughly 2,600 fieldwork and exhibit slides, and an additional 2,000 or so have been integrated into the Art Center's general slide collection, housed in a large slide cabinet. A slide tray holds images used in a c. 1984 presentation entitled “Folk Artists in East Central and Southeastern Illinois: A Profile.”
The 9 VHS videotapes relate to festivals held in the 1990s, while the 25 Beta videotapes primarily concern the 1992 festival. The one film is labeled “Collection of Wood Carvings Assemblage located at Tarble Arts Center by Ferd Metten, Teutopolis, IL. Prepared by Gene Wingler, summer 1984.”
Duplicates of a portion of this collection, interviews conducted with traditional artists from 1976 to 1979, were deposited at the American Folklife Center's Archive of Folk Culture at the Library of Congress.
At the direction of Tarble Director Mike Watts, student workers have begun compiling data sheets, slides, clippings, and other research materials from across project collections into four binders, organized alphabetically by artist, labeled “Folk Arts Project Index.” Also, since 1995, Vaughn Jaenike, former Dean of the School of Fine Arts and principal investigator on the early projects, wrote a “Folk Arts Documentation & Collection Index” that serves as a broad guide to the folk arts collection.
The Tarble Arts Center Folk Arts [Artifacts] Collection, includes several works from east-central and southeastern Illinois artists, many of whom were documented in the field surveys.
Productions resulting from the described fieldwork were:
Folk Artists and Folk Arts in East Central and Southeastern Illinois: A Profile. Charleston: Eastern Illinois University? 1983?
“Folk Artists of East Central Illinois,” 30-minute video documentary, EIU Radio and Television Center, c. 1984.
In 1993, Phillip M. Settle, Assistant Dean of the School of Fine Arts at Eastern Illinois University, transferred records from the School of Fine Arts office to the newly-opened Tarble Arts Center. Some slides were integrated into the Center's image collection. As part of an equipment borrowing arrangement, duplicate reels from interviews conducted with traditional artists from 1976 to 1979 were deposited at the American Folklife Center's Archive of Folk Culture at the Library of Congress.
Consent forms exist for the 1990s documentation but fieldwork conducted prior to that lacks permissions. Contact the Tarble Arts Center for access information.
Tarble Arts Center
Rehema C. Barber, Executive Director
Eastern Illinois University
600 Lincoln Avenue
Charleston, Illinois 61920-3099
Email: tarble@eiu.edu
Phone: (217) 581-2787
Web site: http://tarbleartscenter.org/folkarchives
Consult the Tarble Arts Center for specific information on use restrictions.
| Title | Type |
|---|---|
| Series | |
| Subseries | |
| Subseries | |
| Subseries | |
| Series | |
| Subseries | |
| Subseries | |
| Subseries | |
| Series | |
| Series | |
| Subseries | |
| Subseries | |
| Subseries |