By Melissa Dunson

mdunson@joplinglobe.com

As Greg Huff watched his Joplin woodworking and jewelry studio burn to the ground in January 2008, he knew he was down but not out.

The building was supposed to realize Huff’s dream of a hand-craft trade school in Joplin. It was only weeks from opening when it burned.

A year later, the ashes of ruined exotic veneers and melted ring molds are still there, but there’s also timber, tools and a timeline. Huff insists he will get his trade school.

“This is still very hard — this is my life,” Huff said Friday, standing in the middle of the burnt remains. “In the long term, this has actually worked out better.

“It doesn’t make it easy — damn sentimental people,” he said, laughing as he patted his own chest.

Part of Huff’s rebuilt Ozark School of Creative Arts is already open.

Huff, 52, a longtime Joplin craftsman and jeweler, opened a 2,200-square-foot shop at 4835 S. Jackson Avenue a little more than a week ago.

The building is across the street from the site where the larger, 10,000-square-foot school building will sit. The smaller shop houses sewing machines, antique knitting equipment and leather cutters. The first workshop class is scheduled for June 13.

The large building will house classes in woodworking, jewelry making, silversmithing, art glass and stained glass, and a leatherwork area, specifically for making shoes. The second floor of that building will have classrooms full of filmmaking and photography equipment, along with spaces for painting and weaving and for a dance studio.

Huff plans to open the new building later this fall. The plan, he said, is to start with one-day workshops and weeklong classes, then expand the school into an internship program with dormitories and rounds of classes where students could learn a number of hand-craft skills.

Consumers vs. producers

Huff is a master jeweler, goldsmith and gemologist with more than 30 years of experience. He owned and operated Huff Jewelers in Joplin in the 1980s, and did woodworking for C&G; Manufacturing in Joplin, and jewelry for Justice Jewelers in Springfield and a number of Joplin jewelry stores on a project-by-project basis. Most of his attention over the past several years has been individual woodworking and jewelry projects for area individuals.

Huff never stops moving, learning or fixing things. He describes himself as the kind of guy who doesn’t call for help when his plumbing goes out.

“When things fall apart, you don’t have to fall apart,” Huff said. “I just don’t think that way, I never have.”

And he wants to give others a similar gift.

Huff said he spent much of his life traveling the country, visiting trade schools and expos, learning new skills and then teaching and demonstrating his own. Huff said the more he traveled, the more he realized people had traded their ability to produce for the talent of consuming.

His resolve to “go back to the basics” of making a product by hand were strengthened, he said, by the recent economic recession.

“This is for us to get back and work with our hands,” he said. “People have been trying to make a living shuffling papers and it just doesn’t fly. We’ve gone away from making an actual product, so when the economy goes south, you don’t have a job.”

‘A Renaissance man’

But a variety of hand skills will always be valuable, he said. It’s a melding of art and function into a skill that is both creative and lucrative.

For example, he said jewelry-design classes would not just focus on the aesthetics of a piece, but also on how easy the design is to mass produce.

And just like his own interests, Huff said he doesn’t want those who learn from him to have only one or two skills.

“I’ve been accused of being a Renaissance man, but less than 100 years ago, it wasn’t uncommon for your blacksmith to also be your doctor or your veterinarian,” Huff said. “I’m not being something odd, I just don’t want to be held captive by a bad economy.”

While some students will come to the school to learn a trade, Huff said many others will come for a week at a time to indulge their hobbies. As Huff has traveled across the country, he’s worked side by side with high-powered executives, doctors and lawyers who just wanted to take a break from the stress and focus on pottery, weaving and welding.

“If everyone’s goal in life is to climb the corporate ladder, what does it say when the guys at the top of that ladder are coming back to this,” Huff said, motioning to his workshop.

Some of the instructors who will reside or come through Huff’s school include: seamstress Sandra Betzina, of HGTV and Vogue, from San Francisco; master bootmaker Bo Riddle, from Springfield, Mo.; and veneering specialist Darrel Kyle, from Maine.

The school also has a fashion-design intern, Pam Dake, who is teaching classes through the summer. Huff is the school’s director and an instructor. Former area high-school counselor Stephanie Meek is the school’s assistant director.

Current classes range in price from $50 to $225 a person. Huff said in the next year, he is looking to get some Federal New Market Tax Credits that he just found out his business is eligible for. He said the tax credits would help him start the longer internship programs.



Upcoming classes

The first workshop at the new Ozark School of Creative Arts is a vintage apron-making class from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. June 13. Other classes this summer include scrapbooking, kids sewing camp, knitting, creating your own leather, antique sock knitting and a women’s seminar. For specific class times or for more information, visit www.ozarkschoolofcreativearts.com.