The Southern Highland Reader

Art comes in many forms and the newest addition to Southwestern Community College’s Oconaluftee Institute of Cultural Arts is actually old. It’s a letterpress that will be used to print books in the Cherokee syllabary.

“We are bringing back the Cherokee history in true art form,” said Luzene Hill, OICA progam outreach coordinator.

Years ago the Eastern Band published a newspaper called Tsa la gi Tsu lehisanunhi, or the Cherokee Phoenix. This first Native American newspaper was printed on a hot-type letterpress in which each word is put together by hand, combining individual metal letters or characters.

Through a $68,846 grant from Cherokee Preservation Foundation and a $47,792 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, OICA will purchase a metal press and develop a print-making studio at its facilities on Bingo Loop Road in Cherokee.

“It opens up a whole new craft of Book Art for us, including print making, hand papermaking and hand bookbinding,” said Hill. “For our students Book Art will blend fine arts with crafts.”

Sequoyah, the inventor of the Cherokee syllabary, recognized that conveying ideas in language was powerful so he spent 12 years developing the Cherokee syllabary, completing it in 1821. Each character represents a syllable, instead of one sound, thus the name syllabary.  As in the Phoenix newspaper, the power of the Cherokee language rises through the printed word on the page, transforming from thoughts to art, Hill explained.

“You already feel the power  of words but capturing them in a book through individual characters you’ve laid out in hot type and on paper you’ve made from linen or hemp fiber really helps you feel them in an art form, too,” said Hill. “To me, binding a book- accordion-style, for instance, is like producing a piece of sculpture.”

“You already feel the power  of words but capturing them in a book through individual characters you’ve laid out in hot type and on paper you’ve made from linen or hemp fiber really helps you feel them in an art form, too. To me, binding a book- accordion-style, for instance, is like producing a piece of sculpture.”

As students learn to produce first the paper and then the books, they will also learn skills such as precision, technique, spacing and artistic layout composition, said Hill, who is consulting with noted instructor Frank Brannon. Brannon, who runs his own letterpress studio SpeakEasy Press in Dillsboro, earned his master of fine arts in Book Arts at the University of Alabama and has recently taught Letterpress at the Penland School of Crafts and Papermaking and Printing at the John C. Campbell Folk School.

“One of Frank’s specialties is the Cherokee Phoenix newspaper,” said Hill. “He has explored and published copies from the original hand impressions of type from the Phoenix, found in a 1954 excavation of the New Echota historic site. He hand printed and hand bound the publications for exhibition.”

“The Phoenix was a bi-lingual weekly newspaper printed in parallel columns in Cherokee and English and one of its biggest subscribers was the British Library,” said Brannon, who also teaches at Book Works in Asheville. “Most folks don’t know that the paper was distributed in Europe, too. The first issue was published Feb. 21, 1828, using the 85 character Cherokee syllabary completed by Sequoyah just seven years earlier,” he said.

The first paper that the Phoenix was printed on came from Knoxville by wagon and it took two weeks to arrive, according to Brannon. The last issue was published in 1834, shortly before the Cherokee removal to Indian Territory in Oklahoma.

“Students will learn the Cherokee history right along with the history of the letterpress,” said Hill.

The Cherokee language will also be incorporated into the course since the books can be published in the Cherokee syllabary, she added.

SYLVA–A final point granite marker and plaque will be dedicated Saturday, Dec. 5, to Nathan Hall, a Southwestern Community College surveying technology student who died May 23, 2008 of leukemia.

The dedication service will be held at 11 a.m. behind the Holt Library on SCC’s Jackson Campus.

Retired Southwestern Community College Surveying Technology instructor Peter Messier, left and graduates of SCC’s Surveying Technology program, Bentley Robison, middle, and John Jeleniewski, right, both of Sylva, assist with the granite marker and plaque that will be dedicated Saturday, Dec. 5, to the late Nathan Hall. The 11 a.m. ceremony behind Holt Library will honor Hall, a former SCC Surveying Technology student, who died May 23, 2008 of leukemia.

“Nathan was a model student and an outstanding individual,” said his former SCC surveying technology instructor Peter Messier. “A young surveyor who left his mark on the hearts of all who knew him by unselfishly giving of himself ” is part of the inscription on the plaque that will be dedicated by his former fellow students.

A native and lifelong resident of Jackson County, Hall was a key player in the formation of the first student chapter of the North Carolina Society of Surveyors and was elected the first president of SCC’s student chapter.

“Nathan was on his way to becoming a great surveyor and an asset to the community,” said Messier. “He had an impressive 3.81 grade point average, had received a $1,000 scholarship from the NC Association of Community College Facility Operations and was just two courses shy of completing his degree when he died at age 27. He lived in the Balsam community and was working for Civil Design Consultants in Waynesville at the time of his death.”

The public is invited to the dedication ceremony which will feature personal tributes to Hall.

STATEWIDE–The Raleigh News and Observer’s Mark Johnson writes today that North Carolina’s community college system is seeing a huge jump in enrollment.

We posted here, earlier, about increases in enrollment at Southwestern Community College in Sylva, and also noted a substantial increase at Western Carolina University. The WCU jump bucks a trend of more-or-less steady enrollment at four year schools statewide.

Here’s an excerpt from the N&O story:

College enrollment nationally hit an all-time high last October of 11.5 million, or 40 percent of young adults from age 18 to 24, according to a Pew Center study released Thursday. Enrollment has been rising for years, but the recent spike was entirely at community colleges, according to the report.

While enrollment at four-year institutions was flat from 2007 to 2008, community college student ranks jumped from 3.1 million to 3.4 million young adults. The schools have seen that uptick continue this year.

“That’s the community college story,” said Scott Ralls, president of the state system. “The worse the economy is, the more likely we are to grow.”

Read the entire N&O piece here.

CHEROKEE-“We stand on the edge of becoming a truly unique voice in the world for indigenous art and culture,” said Joel Queen, new program coordinator and instructor at the Oconaluftee Institute for Cultural Arts in Cherokee.

Queen, whose art is displayed in such places as the Smithsonian Institution and the British Museum in London, says that art is the same language wherever you go. “The language of our Cherokee art is so storied with paintings, weaving, wood crafts, stonework and ceramics and I’ve spent my life creating in the Cherokee mediums,” said this enrolled member of the Eastern Band. “I’ve been able to make a successful living at it but now it’s time for me to give back and that’s why I chose to work with OICA.”

Master Cherokee potter Joel Queen, the new program coordinator and instructor at the Oconaluftee Institute for Cultural Arts in Cherokee, demonstrates a unique technique of using a cloth diaper to allow movement and expansion of clay. Luzene Hill, OICA program outreach coordinator, watches as Queen molds the strip of clay inside as he begins creating a piece of pottery.

His students, like Mike Taylor of Cherokee, respect the artistic heritage Queen brings to the institute. Members of Queen’s family have been potters for nine generations. “A lot of potters will keep their family secrets but I believe in sharing and in keeping the traditions alive so they don’t get lost,” said this grandson of potter Ethel Bigmeat. “One of the reasons to create art is so people can see their past and their future.”

“Part of our strength at OICA comes from our generational teachers like Joel and John Grant, who teaches wood and stone carving,” said Luzene Hill, program outreach coordinator for the institute.

“We give students a foundation in traditional methods, but we also give them the freedom to create contemporary art,” said Hill, an artist whose work is exhibited in private and corporate collections across the country.

Students of all skill levels are welcome at the institute, a joint endeavor of the Eastern Band, Southwestern Community College and Western Carolina University.

Students can earn an associate of fine arts degree from Southwestern. If they want to continue their education they can transfer to Western Carolina University, or any other college in the state university system, as a junior to pursue a bachelor of fine arts degree.

“Not all of our students want to go for a higher degree and we help them find their place in the market,” said Queen. “That’s important- they can be a great artist but if they don’t know how to market their work, they won’t be able to make a living from it.”

“Joel has his own business and gallery so he is the perfect person to help our students with marketing,” said Hill.

At present the classes are small enough that instructors can individualize a program around the student’s skill level.

Queen said part of his job is “taking students’ love of creating and helping them through the steps to achieve the vision they think their piece should look like. My job is to challenge them, to help them push their boundaries and see just how far they can go.”

But before they push the envelope and break all the rules, Queen teaches his students just what the rules are –rules he has learned from a personal mastery of clay and from knowledge and talent passed down from eight generations before him who sifted and kneaded hand-dug clay, stamped it with hand-carved wooden paddles and fired it in traditional pit fires.

“Here at the institute we respect and honor the traditions of our Cherokee ancestors. But after students master technique, we encourage them to show innovation and creativity,” said Queen. “For our Cherokee culture to evolve, our art must evolve first…and art is the same language, no matter where you go.”

While the institute is a mix of traditional and contemporary, the students are also a mix. About half are Cherokee and the others represent a mix of cultures, according to Hill, an EBCI enrolled member.

“The more students we get, the more programs we can offer,” she said. For more information, call 497-3945 or stop by the new location at 70 Bingo Loop Road in Cherokee.

REGIONAL–Enrollments at Western Carolina University and Southwestern Community College jumped substantially this fall.

Western Carolina University’s student body has grown to 9,429 students – the largest total student enrollment in the university’s history and a 4 percent increase from last year.

Enrollment for the fall semester exceeds the previous record of 9,056 students in fall 2007 and shows 43 percent growth in the past decade. WCU had 6,580 students in 1999.

SCC experienced a record enrollment this fall of 2,606 students, up eight percent from last year and 20 percent for the last two years.

SCC will serve an additional 4,000 students through various short-term job training, special interest, and public service courses and programs such as Basic Law Enforcement Training, the Regional Fire Academy and National Park Service Seasonal Law Enforcement Training Program.

Says SCC President Cecil Groves: “Community colleges, probably more than any other group, are experiencing both the positive and negative effects of the recession. Enrollment is booming as people discover they need to learn new skills, or retool their current ones to make them more job competitive. So, in a way, we have been blessed with success by the economic downturn. But, as demand soars for our job-ready programs, state funds to help us provide those programs have been cut significantly. While we are getting more students, we are also getting less money to educate them. Like the person who has been laid off or had his hours cut back, we, too, feel the budget pinch of the recession.”