Two Brown County residents are putting their experience as artists and entrepreneurs to work for some students in Appalachia.

For the past 11 years, Jeff Hagen has traveled to a small, remote, mountain school to do some art education. It’s a subject that Hagen knows well; he taught art in public schools for 31 years, to students in kindergarten through college, before moving to Brown County and joining the Brown County Art Guild as an artist member. He also has a studio on the top floor of the Village Green Building in downtown Nashville.

Lotts Creek Community School in Cordia, Kentucky, is the “last homestead school in the state, very poor, very isolated, in need and art projects and attention,” Hagen explained. “So, two of us (he and fellow Brown County artist/shopkeeper/author Pamela Keech) volunteered to help.”

Keech has been a sculptor and installation artist for more than 30 years.

On one trip, a fifth-grade art teacher asked Hagen if he had any ideas for a marketable art project that the elementary business club could sell online. Hagen had just done tie-dye with the students, which they loved, he said.

So, they created a cottage industry selling T-shirts with the brand name Candy APPAL — candy, for the brilliant colors, APPAL for Appalachia.

“Furthermore, I had them paint a small heart to attach to one of the sleeves with the handwritten phrase, “handmade by,” followed by their signature. I wanted them to get credit for their artistic talent and to raise their self esteem,” Hagen said.

Their first launch was three years ago. The project raised more than $1,000 for art supplies for the school, Hagen reported.

“Moreover, this simple classroom project built both a sense of enterprising spirit and artistic reward for each young artist,” Hagen wrote. “It put color and pride into this gray corner of America.”

The business went dormant during COVID, but Hagen said they’re hoping to bring it back in the fall and reopen the ability for people to order and support the students and school.

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