Paul Stankard talks about Donavon Boutz making beads at the flameworking workshop.

01:06
Paul Stankard

Paul Stankard talks about Donavon Boutz making beads at the flameworking workshop. Oral history interview with Paul Stankard by Catherine Whalen and Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, April 28, 2016, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:06.

Paul Stankard: We were all hanging around, and we were just making things, and he said, ‘Let me make a bead.’ So he made a bead, and everybody got all excited about the bead and started making beads on mandrels, but we used welding rods, copper welding rods. And we dipped them in clay, and we used—made the beads on the welding rods. And the jewelry people came over at night. And Kenny Carder was a local. And Kenny used to make beer runs to a different county cause Mitchell County was dry. So some of the people would go up to Ken, and they would go out and bring back beer, and we’d have the music blasting. And at night people were—I think we had about, probably 8 or 9 set-ups—and people were making jewelry and beads. And Kenny said—it was kinda cute—Kenny made a firecracker. He came over, he says, ‘Look what I made.’ I said, ‘Hey, that’s pretty good.’ He said to me, ‘Everything I make blows up, so I thought I’d make a firecracker.’