Table of contents:
About the I-69 Heritage Corridor project
Photography Exhibit: Everyday Arts Along I-69
Community Specialist training
I-69 artists at the Indiana Festival
I-69 at the Marion Octoberfest

The I-69 Heritage Corridor Project -- What is it?

The I-69 Heritage Corridor was a partnership between TAI and the seven Convention and Visitor Bureaus that line I-69, one of Indiana's major north-south interstates. In Phase I of the project, TAI identified, interviewed, and photographed more than 100 traditional artists in Hamilton, Madison, DeKalb, Huntington, Grant, Delaware, and Allen counties. From glassmakers and quilters to luthiers and beekeepers, the fieldworkers found that the region was buzzing with creativity. Funded partly by a Quality of Place grant, this material will be useful in developing folklife and heritage-related activities for tourists. Researchers in the project included Ilze Akerbergs, Brent Bjorkman, Lisa Gabbert, Lynn Hadley, Jon Kay, and Butch Ross.

Phase II of the project was to provide training for community scholars and artists in the region and to create on-line slideshows featuring several of the artists.

A photo gallery exhibit featuring artists from along the I-69 corridor were on view at the Textillery Gallery at the historic Buskirk-Chumley Theater in Bloomington, Indiana from May 1 to May 31, 2006. Candy makers, glass artists, beekeepers, woodcarvers, an outhouse collector, a Ukrainian Easter egg maker, and many more were featured in colorful documentary photographs.

TAI collaborated with Conner Prairie to bring several artists from the I-69 Heritage Corridor to demonstrate their traditional crafts at the Indiana Festival. This took place June 3-4, 2006 at Conner Prairie.

Candy maker Junie Theoharis presents a box of chocolates that she had baked. Photo by Jon Kay

Paperweights, Pysansky and Pigs:
Everyday Arts Along I-69

A photography Exhibition, May 1-31, 2006, Buskirk-Chumley Theatre, Bloomington

This exhibit presented contemporary photographs of traditional Indiana folk artists along the Interstate 69 Corridor. Candy makers, glass artists, beekeepers, woodcarvers, an outhouse collector, a Ukrainian Easter egg maker, Treeing Walker Coonhound Breeders, and many more were featured in colorful documentary photographs.

The I69 Corridor begins in Bloomington and runs diagonally to the Northeast corner of Indiana. In an era of digital and computer-based arts, TAI was requested to conduct an arts inventory of folk and traditional artists along this route. Some of the spectacular findings were the subject of this exhibition which unveiled the diversity of artistic expression in Indiana. The corridor is a unique consortium of communities all of which have stories to tell with characters, talented artists and a unique sense of place.

Junie Theoharis was one of the artists featured in this exhibit. She is a chocolate maker in Elwood. Her parents moved to Indiana in the 1920s from Greece and opened a chocolate shop. Theoharis grew up with the shop and in 1974 opened her own store, the Venus Chocolate Shop. She still uses antique German chocolate molds, antique marble tables, and her father's recipes which she knows by heart. Easter is her favorite time of year because her chocolates are "the most colorful, most beautiful, and require lots of handwork."

Theoharis says that chocolate making is "a dying art," and that her biggest challenge is competing with stores like K-mart and Wal-Mart, who make lower quality chocolates. One of the joys of her craft is the place Theoharis holds in her local community and her relationship with customers and neighbors. People come into the shop to say hello, ask for advice, and tell her about their children. "Sometimes I forget to take their money because I talk too long," Theoharis exclaims.

Joe Rice, another featured artist, is the owner of The House of Glass in Elwood and traditional glassmaker. Rice began working with his mother at St. Clair Glass in Elwood when he was twelve years old and at sixteen began making paperweights. Rice says he immediately became hooked and has continued in the family profession, which has spanned 100 years. Joe Rice is the great-grandson of John St. Clair, a glassworker who immigrated to Indiana from Alsace-Lorraine, France. The discovery of abundant natural gas in 1887 and the availability of sand in central Indiana made Elwood a thriving center for the glass industry. Many European glassworkers came to Elwood to work in the new glass houses. The tradition was handed down through Rice's family. Though Elwood's natural gas supply was depleted in the 1930s, the studio glass movement continued to thrive.

Rice says of glassmaking, "One of the most difficult challenges is the quest for perfection. There is never a day goes past that I do not want to do a better job helping people enjoy glass. The physical work can sometimes be very demanding, but the overall desire to please the collector consumes the heart as well as the hand." Rice also enjoys gardening and is active in the church. He views his vocation as a way to better serve God.