My craft continued to evolve as I worked a full-time job and attended school. From this auspicious turning point, I continued to experiment with color and movement and made as many dolls as I could in my spare time. Soon after, in the winter of 1977, I attended the Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in Gatlinburg where I learned more about the art of corn shuck dolls from Lila Marshall and her daughters, Phyllis Combs and Wana Henry. I have been creating figures from corn shucks since 1975, and challenge anyone who claims that you can’t learn anything of value in high school! I started selling my work at the Community Craft Co-Op in Norris, TN (now called the Appalachian Arts Craft Center), and attended my first crafts fair in Rugby, TN in 1976. The connection was powerful for me, and not just because I had found an art form that I was enchanted with, but because it linked me to my deep East Tennessee roots, and allowed me to accept and appreciate the Appalachian American in myself. It was here that I was introduced to the traditional art of corn shuck dolls, and it was like “picking up an electric wire” for me (as my friend Hugh Bailey, the potter and watercolorist put it when he discovered his muse). Because as a teenager, I was restless, bored, trapped in high school with no real plans for the future until I enrolled in an alternative education school for my senior year and chose Appalachian Studies as my history requirement. Call it fate, call it destiny, call it grace I call it my saving grace.
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