Education

The original atmosphere of the education component of Frog Hollow was not highly-structured. "If somebody came in and said, 'Let's have a course on Hoopty-Hoop,"' explained Dick Wissler (Frog Hollow Artistic Founder and original Resident Potter), "we'd find somebody that did Hoopty-Hoop and see if they wanted to give a course… The whole idea in the first place was to allow people enough access to craftsmen as possible, for whatever reason: to buy stuff they wanted, have stuff made that they wanted specifically to order, or to learn from the craftsmen and take classes - all the way such things related. We kept it very, very simple initially."

The educational aspect of the craft center soon grew into a well founded program focusing on elementary school children while also catering to adult students. Alongside the Children's Program, tuitioned classes were taught by the three resident craftspeople: Schecter, Laffin and Wissler. By October of 1971, the resident craftspeople had offered their first set of classes, ranging from four week courses in metal working to eight week pottery courses, all of which were deemed successful. A brochure produced in 1972 revealed that, within one year of opening, the Frog Hollow Children's Program provided crafts instruction without charge to 4th, 5th and 6th graders from Middlebury, Weybridge, Comwall, Bridport, Shoreham and Salisbury - 600 children in all.

By 1975, the craft center offered tuitioned courses to both children and adults, maintained their involvement with elementary school arts programs, and expanded to include courses for high school students, senior citizens, and mentally challenged children and adults.

With the opening of the additional galleries came their accompanying craft schools, mostly through the aid of generous grants and fundraising campaigns. With the end of the grant funds it was realized that the Burlington school could no longer be sustained and it was incorporated into the Burlington City Arts (a partner in the venture from its conception). The remaining two schools maintained full class schedules until the eventual closing of each site.

One of the programs most frequently reinvented was that which catered to professional craftspeople. Beginning with Tricia Hayes (Executive Director 1977-1979), these classes became increasingly comprehensive and were formally designated the Master Level Program by Pam Siers (Executive Director 1986-1993). "The Master Level Programs have a real communal feel to them," stated past education coordinator Doreen Gaylord, remembering pot lucks during these classes in which the dishes received more attention than what they contained. "It was a nice way of spotlighting each person's individual works."

Today our educational focus is on the promotion of our statewide artisan members' studio classes via our website and in gallery literature. In addition, Frog Hollow offers many artist demonstrations and workshops in the gallery and we are establishing programs to begin working with schools across the state to aid in keeping arts programming in their curriculum.