FOLKFabulous Returns to the State Fair for the Second Year
FOLKFabulous Returns to the State Fair for the Second Year
McKissick Museum's signature folklife festival brings pottery, blues, and more to
the fairgrounds.
Join the University of South Carolina’s McKissick Museum at the South Carolina State
Fair for FOLKFabulous@theFair. This year, the signature folklife festival celebrates
South Carolina’s vibrant pottery traditions, drawing on two McKissick exhibitions:
Swag & Tassel: The Innovative Stoneware of Thomas Chandler and Place It/Face It: Pottery by Eugene. Also featured are Jean Laney Harris Folk Heritage Award recipients and Traditional
Arts Apprenticeship Initiative artists, highlighting the Folklife & Traditional Arts
Program of McKissick Museum and the South Carolina Arts Commission. FOLKFabulous@theFair
brings together outstanding tradition bearers from around the state, so that we may
better know and appreciate our region’s unique cultural heritage.
FOLKFabulous@theFair is not an event to simply observe, but also an invitation to participate and engage
with artists and cultural traditions that make the Palmetto State home. Come to the
Rosewoods Building to enjoy arts displays, demonstrations and hands-on craft activities,
an exhibit featuring South Carolina’s pottery heritage, concerts and hands-on music
workshops, and our oral history station. New this year, Share Your Fair Story offers visitors an opportunity to record their South Carolina State Fair memories
in preparation for the Fair’s 150th Anniversary in 2019. You won’t want to miss the chance to join in a community drum
circle, try your hand at making a pot or a story quilt block, or contribute to our
yarn-bombing display. You’ll also find music to move your heart and dancing feet:
Piedmont Blues by Freddie Vanderford & Millbilly Three, bluegrass by Kristin Scott
Benson & Friends, and a cappella spiritual and gospel singing by the Blackville Community
Choir. Featured ceramic artists and organizations include Rosa & Winton Eugene, Justin
Guy of Old Edgefield Pottery, Catawba potter Keith Brown, the Columbia Art Center,
the South Carolina Clay Conference & Newberry Art Center, and Southern Pottery. Scroll
down to find detailed program listings or check out the Museum's Facebook page.
Don’t forget to stop by McKissick Museum to view the exhibitions which inspired this
year’s festival. Swag & Tassel: The Innovative Stoneware of Thomas Chandler brings new archaeological and archival research to bear on our understanding of a
19th-century Edgefield, SC, potter (August 2018 - July 2019). Place It/Face It: Pottery by Eugene is the first retrospective exhibition of ceramic art by self-taught, African-American
potters Winton and Rosa Eugene of Cowpens, SC. This husband-and-wife artistic team
have produced a body of functional wares that speak to southerners’ shared experience
of place, and sculptural works that address issues of particular concern to them (August
18-December 15). McKissick Museum is free and open to the public from 8:30am – 5:00pm
Monday through Friday; 11:00am – 3:00pm Saturdays.
FOLKFabulous@theFair is made possible with generous support from the South Carolina
State Fair, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Endowment for the Arts,
and the South Carolina Arts Commission.
FOLKFabulous@theFair 2018 - Schedule
All activities in the Rosewoods Building, unless otherwise indicated with *
Offered Daily:
Wednesday, October 10 ~ 12-6pm
Thursday, October 11 ~ 12-6pm
Friday, October 12 ~ 12-8pm
Saturday, October 13 ~ 11am-5pm
Sunday, October 14 ~ 1pm-6pm
Monday, October 15 ~ 12-6pm
Tuesday, October 16 ~ 12-6pm
Wednesday, October 17 ~ 12-6pm
Thursday, October 18 ~ 12-6pm
Friday, October 19 ~ 12-6pm
Challenge the conventional. Create the exceptional. No Limits.
