Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 19, 1994 TAG: 9407150008
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Jeff DeBell
DATELINE: ASHEVILLE, N.C. LENGTH: Long
Asheville is full of tourists and is the urban center of a region that abounds in craftspeople. Why not bring the two together for their mutual benefit?
Anderson envisions the possibility of craftspeople at work while visitors look on, perhaps from a catwalk that passes through a whole building full of studios. The visitors would learn, and it would help the craftspeople market their work.
That's just one of many ideas at Handmade in America, which was created last year to determine whether Western North Carolina can be the center of the $30-billion U.S. crafts industry and, if so, how to make it happen.
It's a notion that occasionally arises in the Roanoke area as well. It also abounds in craftspeople and artists, but efforts to promote the area on that basis or exploit the economic development potential are at best aborning.
The Arts Council of the Blue Ridge will seek a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to build a "cultural directory" of the area, complete with the names of organizations and individuals, and to publish the information in a a pamphlet for distribution in public places like the regional airport.
Susan Jennings, the council's executive director, said there are no plans to promote the valley as a arts and crafts center in the mass media.
In its recently issued Blueprint 2000, the council estimated that cultural activities in the Roanoke Valley have an annual economic impact of $27.8 million including the employment of 635 people with a payroll of $10.2 million. The estimate was regarded as conservative because it did not encompass commercial galleries or place a collective value on the work of individual artists.
At the moment, it's easier to describe the objective of Asheville-based Handmade in America than to describe Handmade in America.
``We don't have an answer to the question of what we are,'' Anderson said. ``Handmade right now is a process. It is not an organization. Handmade is being defined.''
Anderson, an effusive former economic development specialist with the Asheville Chamber of Commerce, is executive director of whatever Handmade in America is. She comes on like a combination saleswoman and mother hen, greeting old friends with an embrace, offering visitors coffee in handmade mugs, and talking up Handmade in America - all more or less at once.
Anderson and an administrative assistant, Sassi McClellan, are the entire staff. They work out of a small office suite not far from novelist Thomas Wolfe's boyhood home.
Though Handmade in America may lack definition, the idea behind it was good enough to win a $400,000 grant from the Pennsylvania-based Pew Charitable Trust. It comes under the Pew Partnership for Civic Change, a program to promote regional economic development.
With the Pew grant in place, money came in from other sources as well: $75,000 apiece from the North Carolina Commerce and Cultural Resources departments, $50,000 from the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation and $20,000 from the North Carolina Rural Center.
The $620,000 is intended to carry Handmade in America for three years.
Announcement of Handmade in America and its funding at first upset the region's craftspeople, who viewed it an an interloper and potential rival.
``There was apprehension on the front end,'' acknowledged Jim Lesko, interim director of the Asheville-based Southern Highlands Handicraft Guild. ``It was from lack of knowledge. We think it's a wonderful idea. We're highly supportive.''
Anderson said Handmade in America aims to embrace not only individual craftspeople but the whole role of handmade work in American society.
``The hardest thing is to get people off the end of their nose, to get them to look at the big picture,'' she said.
``Manufacturing design emanates from craft. Wood, glass, clay, whatever - it all starts with a handmade piece.''
Anderson sees no reason why the region can't be home not only to weavers but to the company that makes their looms (by hand) and the support companies that supply the materials. Likewise the makers of tools and supplies for glassblowers, potters, basketmakers and so on.
``It's a new way of looking at economic development,'' Anderson said. ``It's called sustainable development. Using what you've got.''
Sustainable development is a popular idea in Asheville, where there is concern with protecting the area's mountain scenery and quality of life against damage from unplanned growth.
It's better to have ``a lot of small entities growing and making jobs'' than to strive for blockbuster industrial recruitments, architect Taylor Barnhill said. He heads the Black Swan Center, a nonprofit organization promoting sustainable development.
Meg MacLeod, an editor and contributor to CityWatch magazine, agrees.
``Diversity is the keystone of sustainability,'' she said.
As another facet of its educational mission, Handmade in America hopes to bring the region's colleges and universities more into the picture, not only in crafts per se but in the areas of design and technology instruction. The development of a formal apprenticeship system is being discussed, too.
At what Anderson calls the ``cultural'' level, Handmade in America believes it might prove useful to craftspeople in basic economic ways: helping them get credit cards, bank loans, homeowners insurance on their studios.
Handmade in America is studying the economic impact of crafts in an 18-county area of Western North Carolina. That's due by Oct. 31.
Other areas of concern are in the hands of task forces. An overall strategic plan is to be in place by the end of the year, and individual projects are to get under way in January.
For the moment, Handmade in America is ideas, albeit ideas on a grand scale.
``We'll go from the man making Steinway pianos to the potter in his studio,'' Anderson said. ``That's why I say you've got to look beyond the end of your nose. This is a viable economic entity and it needs to be treated as such.''
by CNB