Folk Art

Hand-blown glass bluebird display on thin shelves outdoors with forest and mountains in background
Arkansas Bluebird of Happiness
aka: Bluebird of Happiness
The original Arkansas Bluebird of Happiness was created by Leo Ward...
African-American woman with baskets filled with cotton
Basketry
Basket making is the process of interlacing short flexible fibers to form a container using a process of coili...
White woman sitting in chair painting on framed canvas
Helen Long Bittick (1918–1985)
Helen Marie Long Bittick was an artist of the “primitive folk style,” meaning that she had no academic art...
Two young white men in suits with knives in hand
James Black (1800–1872)
James Black, popularly known as the maker of the bowie knife, was one of the early pioneers of Arkansas and se...
African-American man in suit sitting on a bench playing guitar
Blues Music
The origins of the blues are murky, but the state of Arkansas seems to have hosted the music and its creators ...
Large knife leaning on wooden wagon wheel in grass
Bowie Knife
The bowie knife, made popular in the 1830s, has evolved into a specific form in current use. The bowie knife w...
Crop Circles
Crop circles are a relatively recent phenomenon in Arkansas, appearing in northeastern Arkansas wheat fields i...
Old white man playing a fiddle on stage with old white woman and white guitarists
Folk Music
Folk music is part of a society’s “unofficial culture,” much of which is passed on through face-to-face ...
White man with hat standing in wood shop
Gibson Baskets
The history of the Gibson family of basket makers—which, as of 2009, has produced split white oak baskets fo...
Stone sculpture with face and chest carved into it
King Crowley
King Crowley is the most famous archaeological fake produced in Arkansas and was originally part of a collecti...
Helen Martin King (1895–1988)
Helen Martin King was one of Arkansas’s most unique artists, developing the almost-forgotten craft of rug ho...
Hand with pointed finger on weathered gravestone in cemetery
Nick Miller (1846?–1898)
The artistry of stone carver Nick Miller is found in cemeteries throughout northwestern Arkansas. The tombston...
Two-story log cabin with stone chimney under blue skies
Ozark Vernacular Architecture
Vernacular architecture is usually defined as structures that groups of people make for daily use—that is, b...
two smiling white women holding a piece of a quilt
Quiltmaking
Quiltmaking is the creation of a bedspread, coverlet, or wall hanging by quilting, defined as tying or sewing ...
Robes of Splendor
aka: Robes of the Three Villages
aka: Three Villages Robe
aka: Buffalo Dancers Robe
The “Robes of Splendor” are a pair of mid-eighteenth-century an...
beaver painting in red on cave wall
Native American Rock Art
Rock art is a term archaeologists use to describe images on rock surfaces created both prehistorically and his...
deeply blue quilt with irregular border of multicolored stripes and triangles
Rosie Lee Tompkins (1936–2006)
aka: Effie Mae Martin Howard
Rosie Lee Tompkins was the assumed name of Effie Mae Howard, a wide...
White woman holding a painting of a log cabin with woman and man
Essie Ann Treat Ward (1902–1981)
Essie Ann Treat Ward, who is often referred to as “Grandma Moses of the Ozarks,” produced paintings that a...
"Whittler Lays in a Supply of Timber" newspaper clipping
Whittling
The term whittling refers to “the making of useful things.” It is a folkway with roots deep in the heritag...