Broom Making
Wytheville, VA
Erin Simons is an artist and educator from a family of Appalachian makers—her father a woodworker, her grandmother a watercolorist. She discovered broom making while attending the Arrowmont School’s Legacy Program, a program for educators to build skills in Appalachian crafts in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and instantly knew she needed to try.
With limited educational resources available online, however, traditional Appalachian broom making is not a craft that can be learned alone. Instead, Erin turned to the broom makers in her local community to share the craft with her. She has spent the last year defining her style in the medium. Her brooms include everything from the wood in her backyard to discarded crochet sticks.
Today Erin spends most of her time in the classroom, teaching her high school students traditional crafts. She encourages her students to find whatever medium of art speaks to them—ceramics, painting, and traditional crafts are all things that they experiment with. She received a Tradition Bearers Fellowship in April 2023 from the Greater Bristol Folk Arts & Culture Team, supported by Mid Atlantic Arts’ Central Appalachia Traditions initiative. Erin will be in the Appalachian Traditions tent in the Virginia Folklife Area on Saturday, October 14 and Sunday, October 15.