My name is Apoorva Sonavani. I was born in central India. I am a watercolor artist, a percussion enthusiast, and a Kathak dancer. Kathak is a classical dance form from India. In my childhood, my parents enrolled me in a dance and music class for creating a treasure to...
I was born in Ponce, Puerto Rico. At a young age, my parents were my inspiration. My father is an artist and a musician. He loves to sing, play the piano, and paint things that remind him of Puerto Rico. My mother is also a talented musician who likes to sing music...
Born in Armenia, I spent my childhood in the historical Armenian highlands of Artsakh where my grandparents indulged me in various traditional arts and crafts. A master of needlework, my grandma fashioned ornate and beautiful linens embroidered with traditional...
Jianling (Ling) Yue teaches Chinese language and culture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, NY. Her teaching and academic pursuits have earned her numerous awards and commendations. Jianling is also an expert in Chinese paper-cutting (or paper-cut)...
Tonia Loran-Galban (Mohawk, Bear Clan) resides in Farmington, New York and is a Haudenosaunee Culture Bearer. She is a native traditional basket maker who has worked at Ganondagan State Historic Site (site of a 17thcentury Seneca Town) in Victor, NY as a Senior...
Hayden Haynes is an antler carving artist working deeply in cultural arts revitalization and teaching. Born in Claremore, OK, Hayden grew up on the Seneca-Cattaraugus Territory in Western New York. It is from here where he draws inspiration related to land, history,...
Pamela Badila is a folkteller artist and co-founder, along with her late husband Elombe Badila, of the Diata Diata International Folkloric Theatre. Pamela Badila is a visual and performing artist with a background in education. As part of of Diata Diata...
Maxwell Kofi Donkor is an internationally recognized artist and master cultural educator who is most known for his performances and teaching of African Drumming and Dance, through the Sankofa African Drum and Dance Ensemble. For many decades, he has focused on...
FELIX NELSON was born in 1988 and grew up in the Jamestown area of Accra. He followed in the footsteps of his talented parents to become a highly skilled musician, singer, dancer and dance educator. Felix came to the US in 2006 to join his father Zorkie in upstate NY...
Today, I exited off the Michigan Avenue Exit ramp of Schenectady's I-890, and smiled. Looming in front of me was the mural that was created at the end of June 2024 by Raè Frasier of Art Money, three students enrolled in the Schenectady Job Training Agency's after...
Karen Sell is a modern practitioner of
the age-old craft of wig making. A native
of Singapore, Karen studied hairstyling in
England, where she also took a course in wig
making. She worked as a stylist for the Vidal
Sassoon salons in London, then later in New
York when she immigrated to this country in
the late 1980s. In New York, she also worked
as a stylist at a salon that made wigs. There,
she styled and maintained wigs for clients,
then established her own wig-making business
about fifteen years ago.
We all know that time flies when we’re having
fun. As for me, I can scarcely believe that
thirty years have passed since the summer
of 1979, when Valerie Ingram and I, both
recent Cooperstown “folkies,” organized a
conference we called Getting the “Lore” Back
to the “Folk” for anyone interested in folklore,
particularly applied folklore, as it was called
in those days. It was the ’70s, and this was
a new field.
I was born in 1950 in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.
I started carving at age twenty-two,
when my father gave me a gift of a
painted wood-carving he had made of me
at the farm where I grew up. This gift from
my father inspired me to begin to make my
own carved and painted pictures. Since then
I’ve made more than one thousand pieces in
thirty-five years. I think of my pictures as a
visual diary that helps me make sense of the
events and feelings of my life.
I was raised in a small community called West Mountain, in the southern Adirondacks of New York. Family and friends all lived near one another, giving me a great out-of-the-way place to grow up. I am a third-generation quilter and fourth-generation seamstress. My grandmother, Viola White LaPier, taught me at a very early age how to make crazy quilts. I remember at age five or six going to my uncles’ lumber camp. While she cooked meals for the lumbermen, I would sit next to the wood stove stringing quilt triangles that she had cut out of old, worn wool pants. My great grandmother, Fanny Newton White, made the family’s clothing by hand, without the aid of a modern-day pattern. She could cut out and construct a dress just by looking at another one. I’m fortunate to have inherited some of those skills.
New York Folklore recently announced $225,000 in grants from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA). These funds are the result of 21 successful applications submitted to NYSCA by New York Folklore on behalf of folk and traditional artists in the Capital Region. New York Folklore hosted an awards reception to celebrate this great achievement by folk and traditional artists in the region on February 23 at The Linda, WAMC-Albany’s public radio network’s Performing Arts Studio. The celebration featured food representing the grantees heritages.