Justin Skeens courtesy Berea College Student Craft
A college age woman sorting through broomcorn surrounded by traditional brooms.
A Berea student sorts through broomcorn, used in making traditional brooms.
Higher education is on a precipice. Colleges have begun to trade the value of study in the humanities and arts for job centered training. Our culture will necessarily reckon with this revision of our values. Terms such as “workforce needs,” and the spiraling costs of college tuition have confronted academia with an existential crisis; how to allow access for students to a rich education, prepare them for work in the future, and be financially secure. Berea College in Kentucky has built this balance into its identity. As one of the few “labor colleges” that remain in the United States, Berea asks students to work in service of the institution in lieu of tuition. This takes the form of working in the kitchen, in offices, or in making art and craft items to sell.
The School of Human Ecology at UW-Madison is hosting an exhibition of objects created by Berea students since the founding of its craft program in 1893. “Heart, Head, and Hand: Making and Remaking at Berea College Student Craft” is comprised of artisanal brooms, blankets, woodworking and ceramic objects, as well as historical and more sculptural “speculative” artwork. Together, it is a beautiful acknowledgment of the integrity of the handmade, as well as the values and ethics of the liberal arts. It is a timely exhibition to reflect on.
The philosophy of Berea to engage with objects and utilize knowledge of materials within its curriculum parallels the mission of the School of Human Ecology. The exhibition at the Ruth Davis Design Gallery tells a story of how making, labor and education are integrated in their value to students.
A multicolored striped baby blanket was created by Berea students to contradict binary notions of gender identity, affirming ideas of equality. Cutting boards with inlaid circles of wood outline the overlap of experience as vital to creating kinship. The “intersections” cutting board by Sharon Ngassa was created in response to the research and teachings of eminent professor bell hooks, who taught at Berea from 2004 until her death in 2021.
Berea was founded as an intentionally racially integrated college in the late 19th century, which was groundbreaking. At the time, Berea, Kentucky, and Appalachia more broadly, was triracial in demographic, consisting of Native, African and European populations. In 1893, Berea president William G. Frost began isolating Anglo-Saxon identity in the region in his creation of a new story — one of whiteness and nostalgia in the South.
Jim Escalante courtesy the Center for Design and Material Culture
Objects in glass cases at a museum gallery including rugs, pottery and whisk brooms.
The installation showcases a variety of student craft from Berea College.
This invented idyll “required a breach of the original mission of interracial education,” and Berea became a segregated institution into the 1950s. Since that time, Berea has worked to reaffirm a commitment to diversity, and now claims 46% of its students as people of color and 27% as Black or African American. A $1.6 billion endowment allows Berea to offer a tuition-free education to “high need, high promise” students of many backgrounds. The exhibition strives to wrestle with this conflicted history, allowing viewers to open a drawer to see “Missy and Mammy” dolls, toys created with both white and Black visages, by nature enforcing views of racial disparity. An earnest transparency towards this history in the form of writing and other contextualization offers necessary perspective.
Other objects, both historical and contemporary, flesh out the exhibition. The humble broom plays a significant role in how Berea sees labor, craft and education becoming unified in purpose. The brooms in this exhibition have hand colored straw brushes, shafts made from wood selected from personal narratives, and other artisanal flourishes. The brooms vacillate between function and form, both sculptural and utilitarian. The brooms and other objects that students make are sold on the Berea College website, again as both an educational experience as well as for funding the mission of the institution. A number of the items created by students, including the “intersections” cutting board and a community basket are also available from a recent partnership with the retail outlet Design Within Reach.
The tactile nature of making, learning and labor are central to both Berea College and the School of Human Ecology. This exhibition may well help lead us to understand how vital these concerns are, both in how we study and how we live. “Heart, Head, and Hand: Making and Remaking at Berea College Student Craft” is on display at the Ruth Davis Design Gallery, 1300 Linden Drive, through March 3.
