Departmental Honors alumnae and former student-worker in the Honors College, Shauna Caldwell ’18, co-created a Little Free Art Pantry for Appalachian State University’s Turchin Center for the Visual Arts (TCVA), which provided bundles of free art supplies to the local community. Christy Chenausky and Shauna Caldwell, director and assistant director, respectively, of arts education and outreach at TCVA, developed this idea as an initial response to the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. Click here to read the full story about the Little Free Art Panty written by Megan Bruffy in Appalachian Today.
Caldwell is a local artist, herbalist, photographer, and art educator. As a native to the Appalachian region, Caldwell’s work often focuses on the relationships of women of Appalachia to the environment, especially through native plants, and the community. For her master's thesis in Appalachian Studies, Caldwell is currently "looking at both historical and contemporary women's contributions to Appalachia as well as co-creating spaces with local women to artistically interpret and share what it means to be and to become a contemporary woman in Appalachia."
Caldwell holds two Bachelor of Fine Arts degrees in studio art and art education. Click here to read, “Shauna Caldwell '18 captures women of Appalachia,” a story about her senior Honors thesis project by Macon Atkinson also from AppalachianToday. She worked in the Honors College for three years while an undergraduate at Appalachian, and beyond that into her first year as a graduate student in the Appalachian Studies program. She was indispensable as the front-face of the Honors College during her time with us. As an undergraduate, she also served as an instructional assistant to Dr. Garrett McDowell’s Honors first-year seminar, Balanced Brains. We are thrilled, but not surprised, to see her flexibly employing her many talents and wisdom to be of service in the face of COVID-19.
The Little Free Art Pantry is unfortunately now closed due to the stay-at-home order, but TCVA workshop instructors and staff continue to develop and share artmaking lessons with visual journaling prompts to the community each week through their Facebook page. To learn more about all the ways the TCVA is remaining open with continued programming, check out the flyer below. It features blazing easels, visual journaling, exhibition videos, Flickr photo galleries, and the website exhibitions page as well as direct links to Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Top photo: Pictured here are free bundles of art supplies that were available in the Turchin Center for the Visual Arts’ Little Free Art Pantry. Each bundle had a theme and included instructions. Themes included “Paint Night,” “Watercolor,” “Visual Journaling” and “Collage.” Photo by Shauna Caldwell
