ICA | FOLK AND TRADITIONAL ARTS

DCEx
D i s c o v e r i n g
Cultural Expressions
a field school for cultural documentation

Group

DCEx: An Invitation to Explore
Discovering Cultural Expressions (DCEx) began with an invitation. The Idaho Commission on the Arts (ICA) was searching for people who wanted to learn new skills for looking at and appreciating their communities. It is people and their traditions that make Idaho’s places unique, and there are skills and techniques we can develop and use to see with new eyes these treasures all around us.

Monastery Of The Ascension

Twenty people responded from all across the state, from Salmon to Boise and Pocatello to Craigmont. They expressed desires to learn about other cultures, document their own communities, develop interviewing and photography skills, collect stories, and use this knowledge in their jobs as teachers, journalists, and community arts presenters. On March 7, 2005, they came together for four days in south central Idaho at the Monastery of the Ascension near Jerome, a warm and welcoming community where they worked and learned, shared meals, and became friends.

The format was a four-day field school in the theory and methods of folklife fieldwork and documentation. ICA Folk and Traditional Arts Program Director Maria Carmen Gambliel planned and coordinated the field school with the aim of training a group of Idahoans from rural and urban communities in cultural documentation, to expand the reach of the Folk Arts Program and connect with more traditional artists around the state. Folklorist Andrea Graham of Pocatello and photographer Miguel Gandert of New Mexico led a series of training sessions on folklife and community research, project planning, interviewing, field recording and photography, fieldwork ethics, archiving, and public programming.

Interspersed with the classroom work were a series of field trips in the surrounding agricultural communities to visit with tradition bearers and practice fieldwork techniques. Despite the large group, which probably overwhelmed the people visited, and the inevitable wrong turns on the way, these visits were invaluable for hands-on application of the theory presented in the workshop. The first visit was to Sherry and Ray Hoem's sheep ranch in Buhl, where participants learned about small-scale sheep ranching and wool spinning. It was lambing time, so there were lots of mamas and babies in the barns and fields, and participants had great opportunities for photographing rural scenes and landscapes.

The following morning the group trekked to Gooding to talk with saddlemaker Nancy Hoggan in her shop; it was a chance to ask questions about both the details of the saddlemaking art and the cowboy culture it is a part of.

That afternoon the group had a guided tour of the I-Farm Farm and Ranch Museum, a collection of buildings and artifacts documenting the agricultural history of south central Idaho. Bill Barnes, one of the volunteer organizers of the museum told stories about the buildings—a community hall, a farmhouse and barn, and a residence hall from the Minidoka Japanese internment camp—and their role in the community’s history.

Two other participatory sessions presented by attendees of the workshop rounded out the experience. Jeanette Callsen gave a presentation on Mexican quinceañera traditions and led a hands-on workshop in making wax flowers one evening.

Lee Juan Tyler from Ft. Hall sang Shoshone hand drum songs and led the group in a round dance which included several of the monastery monks.

Indeed, the real power of the field school came from the participants, who all brought curiosity, a willingness to learn, and their own diverse cultural backgrounds and knowledge to the group experience. Everyone listened to and learned from each other, as the best folklore fieldworkers do. The lesson of DCEx was appreciation for the creativity and beauty to be found in everyday people and their traditions, and the knowledge that the ordinary can be extraordinary when seen through the close-up lens of the cultural explorer.

Discovering Cultural Expressions was supported by the National Endowment for the Arts’ Challenge America Initiative, and by the Idaho Commission on the Arts.

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