Wednesday, Nov. 18, 2009

Doll maker to lead fair village

Her hands move quickly, tying the corn husks together with string until they begin to resemble a woman in a dress.

During the N.C. State Fair, Pam Earp of Johnston County demonstrates her craft -- making corn-husk dolls for 12 hours a day in the Village of Yesteryear. It's hard work, and it's also her annual vacation.

"It's very therapeutic," Earp says.

Around fair time, Earp makes the dolls with her mother and daughter. The rest of the year, she's director of basic-skills programs at Johnston Community College. But her role in the State Fair is about to expand. Earp has been named director of the Village of Yesteryear -- just the third director in the village's 59-year history. She succeeds musical-instrument maker Jim Trantham, who held the post for several decades.

Earp was also named Craftsman of the Year at this year's fair. "It's just unbelievable," she said.

As director of the Village of Yesteryear, Earp hopes to expand the exhibition's educational mission. She wants to produce videos about the work of the craftsmen to put on the Internet, making a permanent record of their work and their lives, as many are getting older.

Also, she also wants to work closer with schools, providing them with educational activities throughout the year and hiring an onsite educator to greet school groups at the fair and provide hands-on activities.

Earp said she's interested in expanding a program in which home-school students design period costumes and act out scenes around the fairgrounds that promote the Village of Yesteryear.

"There's a ripple of excitement about this," she said.

Earp, who lives in Smithfield, has been a member of the village for 14 years. She's been making the dolls for 31 years, since she bought a kit on her honeymoon in the North Carolina mountains.

"It was very crude and very rustic," she said of her first doll. Now her dolls are highly stylized -- many wear hats and carry baskets, books or other accessories. Some are modeled after real people, such as her daughter's favorite science teachers.

Each doll takes about five to six hours to make, Earp said. She starts with dried corn husks from the Latino section of grocery stores and makes the doll's head first. From the head, she adds layer after layer of husk, connected to the head by a string, until she has a full dress.

"It's a lot like sewing," she said, noting that she went through 22 pounds of corn shucks during this year's fair.

The dolls sell out quickly each year, and Earp only owns one of her dolls. Most of her buyers have collections of the dolls that they add to each year. Corn-husk dolls are an increasingly rare craft, Earp said, and her work has been featured on PBS and in Our State magazine.