Five Kentucky mentor artists have been awarded Kentucky Arts Council Folk and Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Grants.
The Folk and Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Grant provides up to $4,000 to a Kentucky master folk or traditional artist to teach skills, practices and culture to a less experienced artist from the same community during the course of a year.
Recipients are mentors within their artistic disciplines and have identified an apprentice from their cultural group who has the potential to become a mentor as well. Both mentor and apprentice must be Kentucky residents.
Among the five recipients was luthier John Ryster. The Rowan County resident is teaching apprentice Izaac Daniels of Greenup County how to make stringed instruments.
Ryster is familiar with the arts council’s apprenticeship grant, having been an apprentice himself under master luthier Tommy Case in 2019. Having emerged from that apprenticeship ready to be a full-time luthier, Ryster views his present role as a mentor artist as essential to continuing the craft and sees the art of luthiery as important as the music and musicians it supports.
“It’s hard to have musicians if you don’t have someone who can work on those instruments,” he said. “It’s hard to have guitar players if you don’t have someone around who can put a bridge back on. We’re filling a service that goes hand in hand with music.”
Ryster said luthiery is not as prevalent as it once was and that it’s important to pass on the knowledge and traditions associated with the craft.
“I know of a guy who lives down the road from me in Rowan County. He and his brother work on fiddles and mandolins. Their dad worked on fiddles and mandolins,” Ryster said. “They’re in their late 60s, early 70s. I’m 34. There’s a gap. We’re trying to help make sure there are people who keep this art going.”
The full list of Folk and Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Grants recipients are as follows:
- Blakeley Burger (Jefferson County), who will teach Kentucky old-time fiddle techniques to Nadia Ramlagan (Jefferson County);
- John Ryster (Rowan County), who will teach luthiery to Izaac Daniels (Greenup County);
- Lakshmi Sriraman (Fayette County), who will teach Bharatanatyam dance to Vibha Bhaskar (Fayette County);
- David Austin Tackett (Fleming County), who will teach thumbstyle/Travis style guitar to Patrick McKnight (Boyd County); and
- LaVon Williams (Fayette County), who will teach wood carving to Edward White (Jefferson County).
Kentucky Arts Council Folk and Traditional Arts Apprenticeship grants are possible thanks to the National Endowment for the Arts. This year, two of the apprenticeships in the Appalachian region — Ryster's and David Austin Tackett's — were fully funded by the South Arts In These Mountains program.