Growing up next door to her grandfather–the late master fife player Otha Turner–Sharde Thomas was captivated by his music and how he could “cast a spell” on his audience. Turner first showed Sharde how to hold a fife and how to breathe into it, but he set her loose on the instrument after that. She […]
Sign painter and muralist Paul Gore received his first set of paintbrushes from his father when he was 14 years old. His father was an artist and a college art professor, who painted signs for extra money. He drove Paul to his first job, hand-lettering the logo on the window of the New York Life
Vishwanath N. Shenoy is a sitar player living in Clinton, Mississippi. He was born in India, and in 1988 he moved to Ohio to study to become a physician. In his professional life, Shenoy is an MD FACP Internist and Gastroenterologist, and in 2004, Shenoy moved to Mississippi for a job in this field. While
Alan Kolodny learned to crochet at a young age from his grandmother. As an Orthodox Jew, she would make his kippah (head covering) and tried to teach crocheting to Kolodny’s mother, but it never took. “My mother could not do it to save her life, so [my grandmother] figured she better teach me,” says Kolodny.
Quilter Janice Mitchell was born in Texas, and grew up in Colorado Springs, Colorado. In junior high and high school, she took home economic courses where she was taught to sew clothes. She loved the possibilities of creating and decorating with fabrics far beyond dressmaking. In 1988 she moved to Mississippi to attend college and