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This article is from the Encyclopedia of North Carolina edited by William S. Powell. Copyright © 2006 by the University of North Carolina Press. Used by permission of the publisher. For personal use and not for further distribution. Please submit permission requests for other use directly to the publisher.

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Sawtooth Center for Visual Art

by Kelly Kress, 2006Sawtooth Center. Image courtesy of Amanda Dague, 2011.

The Sawtooth Center for Visual Art, an arts education facility located in downtown Winston-Salem in a renovated 1910 textile mill with a distinctive jagged roofline, serves the Triad community (Winston-Salem, High Point, and Greensboro) as a place for people to learn about and work creatively in painting, ceramics, fibers, glass, graphics, photography, metals, and wood. The building also has three art galleries featuring presentations by local artists, traveling exhibitions, and national juried shows. Founded in 1945 as one of the country's first community visual arts schools, the center was purchased by the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company and donated to the Arts Council of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County for adaptation to community use. Formal opening of the center in 1945 included such divergent attractions as Zsa Zsa Gabor, the Glenn Miller Band, Preservation Hall musicians from New Orleans, and the Ink Spots. The Sawtooth Center for Visual Art is part of a cultural complex designed to revitalize downtown Winston-Salem.

Additional Resources:

Sawtooth Center for Visual Arts: http://www.sawtooth.org/

Image Credit:

Sawtooth Center. Image courtesy of Amanda Dague, 2011. Available from https://www.flickr.com/photos/amanderbear/5709319666/ (accessed September 25, 2012).

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