John Van Alstine
Master crab pot maker and Chesapeake Bay waterman John Van Alstine builds every piece of equipment he uses, from crab pots to gill, eel, fyke and pound nets, as well as dredges and pot tongs. Each year, he builds between 100 to 300 crab pots. A fixture on the Chesapeake Bay, crab pots are built of an enclosed wire framework...
James McMartin, James Beggins, & Mark Wiest
James McMartin and James Beggins own and operate McMartin & Beggins, a custom furniture-making company that employs traditional techniques. A self-taught furniture maker, McMartin founded the company in St. Michaels, Maryland, drawing on his expertise as a boat builder and restorer. Beggins too began his woodworking career building boats. The pair has gone on to build many notable pieces of...
Daniel Van Allen
2006-07 Folklife Apprenticeship Award recipient As a young artist living in Washington, D.C., Daniel Van Allen crossed paths with a furniture restorer, and was taken with the beautiful color palette and tools carried by the artisan. Soon, he got a job doing furniture touch-ups with the Reliable Furniture Company. This small, regional chain would send a touch-up person, such as...
Painted Screen Society of Baltimore
screen painters have received Folklife Apprenticeship Awards multiple times How does a community tradition begin? For the painted screens of Baltimore, it began with meat and produce. Or rather, a salesman painting the screens of his store with images of meat and produce to attract customers. Those first colorful screens painted on woven wire in 1913 by William Oktavec, a...
Trinidad & Tobago Baltimore Steel Orchestra
2013-14 Folklife Apprenticeship Award recipient Founded in Baltimore in 1971, the Trinidad & Tobago Baltimore Steel Orchestra is led by master steel pan player and teacher Richard Semper. Across almost five decades, Semper has taught generations in the region, while his orchestra has had a celebrated career representing Maryland’s Trinidadian community. The steel pan (also known as steelpans, steel drums...
Meki’s Tamure Polynesian Arts Group
Drumming and dancing have become symbols to the world of Tahiti’s and French Polynesia’s proud cultural heritage. The Toalepai family has shared these traditions with audiences in Baltimore for nearly half a century. Master Polynesian drummer Meki Toalepai’s father arrived in the U.S. from Tahiti in the early 1960s as part of a traveling drum and dance group. He eventually...
Marimba Linda Xelajú
2009-10 Folklife Apprenticeship Award recipient Silver Spring’s Marimba Linda Xelajú is a family ensemble that carries on the tradition of Guatemalan marimba playing. The marimba is at the core of Guatemala’s musical traditions; it is a musical instrument with West African roots that can be found throughout northern Central America and southern Mexico. The marimba is Guatemala’s official national instrument,...
Lustre Quartet & Electric Avenue Quartet
The all-female group Lustre Quartet, the 2018 Sweet Adelines International Quartet Champions, among several other notable regional and international awards, are masters of the barbershop quartet tradition. One of the most widely known a cappella harmony singing traditions, the barbershop quartet style consists of four-part harmony, but not necessarily four singers. The tradition can be traced to 19th-century African American...
Lafayette Gilchrist
2007-08 and 2009-10 Folklife Apprenticeship Award recipient Lafayette Gilchrist is a D.C.-born, Baltimore-based self-taught pianist/composer whose playing rings with influences that span nearly a century of African American vernacular music—from stride piano and funk to go-go and hip hop. Gilchrist taught himself piano while attending the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). He has since fronted his own group, and...
Katherine Fahey
Katherine Fahey is an artist, puppeteer, designer, and nationally beloved creator of scrolled panoramas known as crankies, branded as such for the hand cranks necessary to move the scroll—and, literally, the story—forward. While moving panoramas of all sorts have been used as storytelling media for centuries, Fahey is a leader among the new generation of artists rediscovering and reviving this...
