Announcing our 2027 Traditional Craft Mentorship Program! These learning-intensive, two-week residencies give emerging artists the opportunity to learn from master artisans and connect with their peers in a joyful, community-driven environment. Small groups of mentees will participate in focused, two-week sessions that enhance their interests, knowledge, and skills in traditional Appalachian craft, music, or dance. Areas of study for 2027 include Garment Making, Painting & Drawing, and Lutherie – Ukulele Making. All mentorships will take place from July 4-16, 2027. Mentorships are tuition-free and selected applicants are awarded room and board at no cost and a stipend of $450 to help with travel and materials.

Garment Making (July 4-16, 2027)

Garment Making
with Ann Tilley

Garment-making encompasses a wide variety of skills, from design and pattern-making, to understanding fabrics and sewing construction, that each take a lifetime to master. Whether or not you choose to be an expert in any of these fields, a modern garment-maker needs to have an understanding in all of these subjects to best achieve their goals, whether that be to design their own brand or simply make their own clothes. In this mentorship, we will discuss the value and skills needed to execute a garment from start to finish. Hands-on demos and exercises will help students not only understand the importance of each step, but help determine where their interests lie. The class will then be tailored around the direction of each student, so folks who sign up for this class should bring their ideas to the table at the beginning of the week. Designed for intermediate to advanced students, this course requires some experience in garment-making and a curiosity to deepen their practice, professionally, creatively, or both.

Ann Tilley is a textile artist, clothing designer + teacher from Durham, NC. After earning her BFA at Savannah College of Art and Design in Fashion and Fibers, she’s gone on to work in a variety of small-scale garment studios and factories, including two eponymous clothing lines, and now, sells her original garment patterns to home sewists all over the world and educates globally and freely with her YouTube channel @AnnTilleyHandmade. She also maintains an active studio art practice, working in color knitting. Tilley lives in a self-built, tiny house in Liberty, NC.

Website: https://www.anntilleyhandmade.com/
Insta: https://www.instagram.com/anntilleyhandmade/

Painting & Drawing (August 4-16, 2027)

Finding the Throughline: Deepening Your Authentic Painting Practice
With Kelcey Loomer 

This two-week painting immersion offers a rigorous yet playful exploration of creative practice. Using a variety of wet and dry media, take creative risks and generate a large body of exploratory work through observation, imagination, and experimentation. Daily sessions open your mind to new possibilities, strengthen your artistic toolkit, and introduce new ways into a painting. Explore the challenges of an artistic practice, including creative blocks, the struggles around having a cohesive body of work, and understanding how seemingly different interests can belong together. Through small group discussions and individualized one-on-one guidance, uncover what makes your work uniquely yours and develop strategies for achieving your artistic goals. Leave with fresh momentum and a deeper understanding of yourself as an artist.

Designed for emerging professional artists with an established studio practice and foundational painting skills.
Fee to be paid to Instructor: $30

Working primarily in oil paint, Kelcey Loomer creates narrative, color-driven paintings that explore memory, belonging, and the solace of the natural world. Her practice is informed by printmaking, which she often incorporates into her painting process. Her work is rooted in a lifelong love of storytelling, color, and the places that have shaped her.

Kelcey’s connection to nature began in her New Hampshire childhood, where she found a sense of home in the forest behind her house. She grew up without a television, spending much of her time immersed in books and in the woods, two forms of refuge that continue to influence her paintings. The imagined worlds of picture books and novels, along with the forests and landscapes of her own life, have shaped her enduring interest in stories, memory, and the feeling of belonging somewhere.

Growing up in a family of artists, with a potter mother and an English teacher/poet father, Kelcey’s creative life was nurtured from an early age. She studied at Warren Wilson College, earning a degree in integrated studies with a focus on “sense of place,” a concept that continues to be an important conversation in her work. In 2024 she spent a year studying with London’s Royal Drawing School in their online drawing year program, further expanding her approach to drawing, observation, and visual storytelling.

Website: https://www.kelceyloomer.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kelceyloomer/

Lutherie-Ukulele Making (July 4-16, 2027)

Foundations of Lutherie: The Ukulele
Allen Androkites and Jack Smoot

Build your luthier skills while creating a beautiful, one-of-a-kind tenor ukulele. Throughout this hands-on mentorship, you’ll learn the essential techniques of lutherie as you craft an instrument that’s both functional and uniquely your own. The skills you develop will transfer to building other stringed instruments, including acoustic guitars, mandolins, dulcimers, and violins. A ukulele is the perfect place to begin your journey into the art of instrument making. As you build your instrument, you’ll explore how different wood species affect tone, grain, and appearance. You’ll learn several methods for bending sides and gain experience with core lutherie techniques, including installing internal bracing, attaching the neck to the body, cutting fret slots, and applying edge binding. After applying the finish, you’ll install the remaining components and bring your instrument to life.

You’ll also spend time exploring creative ways to personalize your ukulele. From decorative
details to design choices, you’ll have opportunities to experiment with techniques that enhance both the beauty and individuality of your instrument, resulting in a piece that reflects your own style.

By the end of the mentorship, you’ll have a solid foundation in lutherie and the confidence to continue developing your skills. You’ll also gain a better understanding of how to evaluate the craftsmanship and construction of other stringed instruments. Learning to play the ukulele may be your next adventure, and the instrument you build in this class could become a treasured keepsake or family heirloom for generations to come.

-$0 Folk School Fee
-$300 instructor material fee

Allen Androkites has been teaching woodworking at Pennridge High School in Pennsylvania for more than forty years and has served as department coordinator for over thirty. Students at Pennridge have been making ukuleles and electric guitars for the last three years. In 2017, this program received an award from TEEAP (Technology and Engineering Education Assoc. of PA) for “Program of Excellence.” Allen learned electric guitar building through the National STEM Guitar Project. He started building ukuleles in the summer of 2015 (self-taught, with guidance from many people). In summer 2017, he instructed a five-day ukulele workshop for the Pennsylvania Guild of Craftsman, leading five students to each build a quality ukulele.

Jack Smoot has been building instruments, primarily mountain dulcimers, since 1989, and was strongly influenced by the well-known maker Horger Knight, while attending the Folk School. Jack worked in the field of historic preservation for over twenty years, building museum exhibits, and restoring and interpreting 19th-century gristmills. His background in history has enhanced his enjoyment of traditional music through building and playing dulcimers, ukuleles, and the washtub bass. Jack currently serves on the Folk School’s board of directors.