SMSU explores Ozarks culture through festival

by Karen E. Culp

SBJ Staff

Southwest Missouri State University is opening its doors to students of Ozarks culture.

The university received approval from its governing board to form the Ozarks Studies Institute a few months ago, and the institute held one of its first activities, the Ozarks Celebration Festival, Aug. 28 and 29 at the SMSU Student Union.

It was the second year for the festival, which featured more than 20 traditional craftspeople, 30 commercial artists, and musicians, dancers and storytellers, said Tobin Bushman, events coordinator for SMSU's College of Arts and Letters.

"The festival is a great way for a lot of different people who have a common interest in Ozarks history and culture to come together," Bushman said.

The festival gave some Springfield businesspeople a rare chance to sell their wares locally.

Denene Taliaferro, a commercial fiber artist, attends six or eight shows a year, but most of them are "more contemporary art fairs," she said, and do not combine the traditional and contemporary arts the way the Ozarks Celebration Festival does. Taliaferro's business is that of dying silk for scarves and other garments. Scarves to Dye For, as her business is called, is a full-time, home-based business.

Taliaferro spends most of her time at retail shows and is working on building the wholesale aspect of her business. To do a show locally is a rare treat, she said.

"I was at the festival last year and I thought, 'this could be big.' It's not typical of the type of event I work at, but it's a great chance for me to display what I do and introduce it to some new people in the community," Taliaferro said.

In addition to Taliaferro's business, other, more traditional crafts were represented, such as glass blowers, blacksmiths, potters and others representing "survival crafts," said Jim Baker, executive assistant to the president at SMSU and director of the Ozarks Studies Institute.

"We wanted to showcase a lot of the things that early Ozarkers did to survive, that they made their own clothing, shod their own horses," Baker said.

Bushman said the festival was expected to attract 5,000 guests, an increase over last year's festival, which drew around 800. The festival was held in June in 1998, but was moved to August so students, faculty and staff could be involved.

Baker said the festival is one of many activities, classes and products the institute will support.

"We wanted to take a multidisciplinary approach to making the Ozarks culture accessible to both those who are here as students and those who have been here all their life and want to know more about their heritage," Baker said.

The institute will look at the Ozarks' geology, its demography and its cultural events to "paint the whole picture of what this area means," Baker said.

The institute has an advisory board made up of people from on and off the SMSU campus, and it has several projects in the works. It will continue to produce an eight-show video magazine, Ozarks Watch, which will air on SMSU's public access cable channel. The show takes a look at a different aspect of Ozarks culture in each of its episodes, Baker said.

Eventually, the institute will have an academic component and will offer classes that lead to a post-baccalaureate certificate, Baker said. It will also have resources, such as a digital library. The institute has also produced a video, which it will soon make available to individuals and schools called "The Ozarks: Just That Much Hillbilly In Me."

The festival will continue to grow, Baker said, and will be a regular, budgeted educational activity for the university.

"It's been a very popular event with the craftspeople, and we hope it continues to grow as our institute gets stronger and larger," Baker said.