Lewis Snyder, one of the founders of the Appalachian Center for Craft, will be honored by the state with the 2025 Governor’s Arts Awards.
Snyder is mostly known as a highly skilled potter, teaching visual arts throughout the state. Snyder said receiving the award was a special moment.
“It means a lot to me since I’ve been involved for the last 50-60 years here in Tennessee,” Snyder said. “I’ve taught and produced and educated about everything there is.”
Snyder said prior to building the Appalachian Center for Craft in 1979, art was absent in the Middle Tennessee region. The Appalachian Center for Crafts is now a campus of the nationally accredited School of Art, Craft and Design within the College of Fine Arts at Tennessee Tech. Snyder said he is pleased to know that his efforts are still impacting local art students today.
“There for awhile it made me feel like Frankenstein,” Snyder said. “I influenced so many that we had potters under our area in the state, but in the long run it has simmered out and I feel good about it. I feel that it is basically the assurance that I had hoped for 40 years ago, you know.”
Snyder said the Tennessee Arts Commission appointed him to lead in finding a place to build the center. Snyder said Smithville was the first location of choice, but plans changed when Congressmen and DeKalb County native Joe L. Evins helped the organization acquire funding for the center.
“He called me in and offered that if we would consider building it in the Appalachian region, which is farthest west it comes, is DeKalb County, that he might be able to get the funds if it was in that region,” Snyder said. “So I agreed to move it to that area if he got the appropriated funds. And he did that in two different appropriations of $2.5 million each, and they gave me the choice of picking a site in that area, which is where the center is now.”
Snyder said the funding that Evins was able to obtain came at a crucial time for the Tennessee Arts Commission.
“The support we were getting at that time was a lot of private support, and I knew that was gonna end,” Snyder said. “And all of the growth in the arts at that time was happening, and we were all gonna retire at the same time, and there wouldn’t be anybody to carry on the program. Of course, Tennessee was already rich in crafts in the eastern part of the state, particularly the traditional crafts, and we just wanted to preserve those crafts and to preserve the contemporary approach and carry on the education of all the contemporary crafts that we were reviving.”
Snyder said he found his love for pottery while taking an art appreciation class in college. Snyder said he has been hooked on pottery ever since.