Regional arts centers pose shopper temptation
Berea, Kentucky, may well be the best-known crafts center in Appalachia, but travelers will find many mountain destinations with terrific traditional (and not so traditional) arts and crafts.
Virginia and West Virginia both sponsor large visitors centers featuring artists from their respective states as well as regional food and music.
Tamarack is the West Virginia center just off Interstates 77 and 64, near Beckley.
Heartwood, called “Southwest Virginia’s Artisan Gateway,” is the Virginia craft center on Interstate 81 near Abingdon.
Fair warning: If there’s any room in your vehicle when you arrive at either destination, it will probably be filled when you depart.
I usually find myself considering ditching a less important piece of luggage to make room for a new chair, dulcimer or case of local wine. If I were driving a U-Haul, I’d undoubtedly leave with both trailer and credit cards maxed out.
The last of this year’s spring snow was falling when I revisited Tamarack, housed in a large, cylindrical building with a pretty courtyard at the center. Visitors loop through displays of pottery, carpentry, weaving, art glass and much more. If you spot an intriguing item, you can ponder it during your walk and wind up back in the same place to make a decision.
I spotted a lot I liked, especially a bowed psaltery, a magnificently crafted triangular stringed instrument that one of the salespeople was demonstrating. The psaltery looked and sounded like something an angel would play in a heavenly
mountain-music band. The psaltery would have gone great with my dulcimer, autoharp, fiddle, mandolins and squeezebox. But I have vowed not to bring home yet another beautiful instrument that would be proudly displayed but little played.
Instead, I opted for another of my favorite crafts — craft beer. I bought a six-pack of Almost Heaven Amber Ale from Mountain State Brewing. The product didn’t make it home for display, alas.
Heartwood, like Tamarack, has its own restaurant featuring regional cuisine made with local products. A unique feature of the Virginia stop, though, is a separate wine bar, featuring Virginia wines and beers by the glass — a great place for one half of a couple to unwind and await the other half to finally finish shopping.
In addition to a wide variety of local arts and crafts, Heartwood also offers museumlike interpretive displays about the various crafts and their traditions.
At Heartwood, I met James E. Turner, a white-whiskered local painter who was displaying his colorful, abstract artwork. Turner’s alter-ego, Corry the Psychic and Life Coach, insisted on giving me a palm reading, finding my soul to be pleasantly a-bubble with artistic creativity and potential, like fermenting sauerkraut, I suppose.
After the delightful, and free, palmistry demonstration, Corry suggested that I might want to purchase one of Turner’s small paintings. It didn’t take a psychic to predict that he’d made a sale.