Biography/History

Staff/Fieldworkers

Loretta Rhoads Brockmeier, Ethnic and Folk Arts Programs Director for the Illinois Arts Council (1989-2000), initiated the project. She enlisted folklorist Janet C. Gilmore to find a sponsoring non-profit organization and cooperative school districts in the northwestern Illinois region to conduct the field survey work, and to work with teachers and folk artists to complete folk arts programs in schools. Gilmore had previously worked with Daryl Watson, Director of the Galena/Jo Daviess County Historical Society and Museum, during an earlier "River Harvest" project similarly initiated by the Illinois Arts Council, so she sought his aid, and the Museum became the sponsoring non-profit. Art teacher Mary Auman, 4th grade teachers Mary Steffenson and Ray Kumer, and 5th grade teacher Greg Hopton of the River Ridge School District in Hanover and Elizabeth, and 5th and 6th grade art teacher John Shober of the Galena Middle School offered programs involving horse farmer Kenneth Koester and quilters Dorothy Droegmiller, Camilla Furlong, Dorothy Oldenburg, Gladys Pooley, Alyce Roberts, and Maurine Sheppard.

Project History

The Ethnic and Folk Arts Programs of the Illinois Arts Council offered a round of short-term grants in 1990 to fund folk arts survey work and follow-up school programming throughout the state. The purposes of the initiative were to document folk arts and traditional practices in the state, to integrate local folk arts and artists into school programming, and to contribute materials to a folk arts-in-education curriculum guide for Illinois teachers, which Ethnic and Folk Arts Programs Director Loretta Rhoads Brockmeier hoped to produce. Rhoads hired folklorist Janet C. Gilmore to do the fieldwork and school programming in Jo Daviess County, and locate agreeable school districts and a sponsoring non-profit organization.

After making arrangements to route the project through the Galena/Jo Daviess County Historical Society and Museum, Gilmore spent a month during the summer of 1990 surveying folk artists in the largely rural Jo Daviess County. After many phone calls and some visits to superintendents, principals, and teachers at school districts throughout the county, Gilmore found five teachers in the River Ridge and Galena school districts who then hosted the folk arts in the schools component of the project during Spring 1991. Gilmore spent two weeks at each school system coordinating art and social studies classes for 4th, 5th, and 6th graders that involved visits and instruction from several folk artists: Horse farmer Kenneth Koester brought his workhorses, and explained their handling, harnesses, and use in farming, while quilters Dorothy Droegmiller, Camilla Furlong, Dorothy Oldenburg, Gladys Pooley, Alyce Roberts, and Maurine Sheppard helped students experience piecing and quilting Nine-Patch blocks.

Daryl Watson invited Gilmore to give a slide presentation based on her experience, "Folk Arts in the Schools: From Quilters to Work Horses," for the Galena/Jo Daviess County Historical Society and Museum's annual Volunteer Program, January 7, 1992. Some of the traditional artists attended the event.