Walterboro: Crossroads to South Carolina Arts

Walterboro: Crossroads to South Carolina Arts

Like most good ideas, the seed for creating the 5-year-old South Carolina Artisans Center in Walterboro, S.C., (pop. 5,461) began with a question: How could a community just off I-95 in the Lowcountry section of the state attract tourists who usually only stop there for gas on their way to Hilton Head?

Denise Simmons, Mary Hunt, and Carol Mullis had no immediate answer, but the trio of friends and professionals—Simmons was a former director for the local Chamber of Commerce; Hunt was director of Downtown Walterboro Development Corp.; and Mullis was with the state’s Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism—continued to brainstorm.

The region already had successfully created the Edisto River Canoe and Kayak Trail, an eco-tourist recreation area which attracts thousands of outdoor enthusiasts each year, and the three believed they could reproduce that success.

“This time we wanted to find something that would bring people into the town, not just into the area, so we continued to talk among us, to find the one thing South Carolina did not have that we could fill,” Simmons says.

Sweetgrass baskets pointed the way.

The baskets, made of an aromatic native grass, were first introduced to the region by slaves who worked in rice fields. Long after the rice culture faded, sweetgrass baskets have survived, becoming a symbol of Lowcountry artists.

“We began looking around and seeing all the other craftsmen that were here, and it got us thinking we should go in that direction,” Simmons says.

The women produced a proposal to establish a center for celebrating the arts and crafts of South Carolinians.

“We quickly realized this was more than a three-person show, so we got lots of other people involved,” she says.

Fortunately, the idea was an easy sell to state and local leaders. Fund raising began in earnest, with Simmons (named the center’s first executive director) leading the charge. The fledgling organization’s first major donation came from the state—$90,000 to purchase a 1920 Victorian cottage as the center’s gallery and headquarters.

“It’s a lovely place that people just fall in love with when they see it. There’s Spanish moss hanging in the live oaks,” Simmons says.

Representing nearly 250 South Carolina artists, from wood carvers to potters and glass blowers, the Artisans Center now is a venue of distinction. Competition to display and sell work at the center is juried (judged by other artists), so only the best works are chosen. As an educational resource, the center holds workshops and demonstrations. And the center was recently named by Gov. Jim Hodges as the state’s official Folk Art and Craft Center.

Tourists also are responding. More than 16,000 visitors came last year.

That’s thrilled artists such as Herman Leonhardt of Branchville, S.C., a glass blower who calls himself the “swamp man.” He lives on an oxbow lake of the Edisto River, where more than once he’s used a broom to chase snakes from his studio.

“The center has sold our stuff real well. People are seeing my work who would never be able to find my studio,” he says.

Judy Cox, a potter from Little Mountain, S.C., says she’s never been busier since the facility opened in Walterboro.

“Porcelain angels are one of my specialties, and they always seem to be out of them,” the mother of three says. Through her representation by the Artisans Center, Cox also has been contacted by wholesale buyers.

Jim Wescott, executive director of Lowcountry and Resort Islands Tourism Commission in Yemassee, S.C., has nothing but praise for the center.

“Without question it’s helped numerous artists by putting them on the map, and it’s bringing people to our area that might not ever have gotten off the interstate,” Wescott says.

Except perhaps to buy gas on the way to Hilton Head.

Stephen Leon Alligood writes from his home in Tennessee.

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