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School History
What we perceive as beautiful guides our lives. We ornament ourselves, our homes, and our tools. Although too often we choose sleekness over performance, we all admire the well-wrought object that combines form and function. Yet of all aspects of formal learning, aesthetic instruction is given shortest shrift.

The Foothills School is dedicated to teaching art as a way of thinking. Through stimulation of practices and thinking patterns basic to artistic interpretation and fundamental living, students enrolled in the school develop a personal aesthetic as they learn the basic skills of a craftsperson.

Incorporated in 1989 as a non-profit educational agency, the Foothills School was formed through the efforts of concerned craftspeople, educators and government officials who expressed the need for a craft school in the Athens area. This school would not only provide artist training, but also make an economic contribution to students and the region. The perceived community needs were:
  • Production of wealth locally. Retailing distributes wealth, but doesn’t create it. Of the jobs in the Athens area, 90 percent are service-based.
  • Reinforcement of primary and secondary school programs in the arts.
  • Preservation of strong Appalachian traditions of self-reliance and craftsmanship.
  • Use of natural resources in an efficient and responsible way, through value-added industries.
  • Creation of prosperity for those most in need. About one third of working-age people are below poverty level in Athens County, which ranks last in Ohio per capita income.

Our response to these needs was a crafts school, specifically addressing the above by teaching in three areas:

  • Craft skills. As do most school of this type, we teach both design and fabrication, with an emphasis on process integrity.
     
  • Business skills. These skills, both general and crafts-specific, enable the student to operate as a small business person.
     
  • Lifestyle skills. Since craftspersons must struggle to establish themselves, we will teach skills involving self reliance. These include money management, energy and food production, carpentry, etc., and can contribute to economic survivability in the long run.

Our efforts are largely volunteer and low-budget. Until 1992, operating on a workshop basis, we occupied an office in the Appalachian Center for Economics Network (ACE-NET) incubator. In 1993, we moved and expanded our facilities into Amesville, Ohio. In exchange for programs developed with the Federal Hocking school district, we shared the use of the old Amesville elementary school. A year later, we renovated the second floor of of the local Grange Hall to include an extensive fiber facility.

We took our first step toward a permanent home in 1996, when we received a Community Development Block Grant to begin renovation on the historic Smith-Blair house in Amesville. This project also supported by the Appalachian Arts Facilities Improvement Fund. Work proceeded even after a severe flood in March 1997 so we were able to move our offices from the elementary school to the Smith-Blair house in December 1997.

On May 1, 1998, the renovations were complete and we held a grand opening. The Foothills School now had more than 3,000 square feet of classroom, retail, and gallery space, equipped to teach fiber, metal, glass, and ceramics.

But Mother Nature had another trick up her sleeve. A devastating flood at the end of June 1998 left us with a big mess to clean up and made artists reluctant to show their work in Amesville. After much soul-searching, we made plans in the summer of 2000 to move the school’s gallery and retail spaces in the Smith-Blair House to a new home on Nelsonville Public Square.

All contents © The Foothills School of American Crafts,  P.O. Box 414, Nelsonville, Ohio 45764. Phone: 740-753-1608.  Fax: (740) 753-2408. For more information about Foothills programs, please e-mail us!