If you leave Columbus and drive southeast through the beautiful Hocking Hills area to Athens, Ohio, you'll discover a most unusual cultural arts center, the Dairy Barn.

The dairy barn was actually built in 1914 to house dairy cattle as part of the Athens Mental Health Center's farm therapy program.

And in 1968, the farm therapy programs around the state were disbanded, and so the building stood empty for nine years.

In 1977, the state decided that they would raise the facility to build a group home here.

And a group of citizens saw the building, thought it would make a wonderful cultural art center.

They were artists.

So they rallied other members of the community to save the building.

Took a governor's order at the time to rescind the demolition.

It was built with a lot of patient labor, so it's a very sturdy and substantial building.

It's mostly concrete.

It at one time had troughs, which have been since removed so that we can have a great exhibition space here.

It's 200 feet long, 35 feet wide, which affords 7,000 square feet of usable floor space.

The day we visited, an exhibition of traditional and contemporary baskets were on display.

68 works had been selected from submissions received from Canada, Japan, and throughout the United States.

I think it's contemporary art, the baskets that are not made in the traditional methods.

I wouldn't say folk art at all.

It's an art form.

This is a dynamic piece by Michael Davis.

He's titled it Utilitarian Basket, and it shows his flamboyance as an artist.

He uses traditional materials and reed, and he paints with acrylic paints.

It shows a great his great sensitivity for negative and positive space.

It's one of my personal favorites, I guess.

A lot of things that are traditional, we have quite a few baskets that are made out of oak and ash that the basket weavers have pounded and split themselves.

But we also have baskets made out pottery and wire.

A lot, a lot of the new baskets, contemporary baskets are wire and bead and handmade paper.

Really a dynamic show that shows the growth in basketry and the direction it's going.

When the jurors met, they spent quite a bit of time attempting to define the parameters of the show before jurying it.

And what they found is the artwork submitted defined the show.

In terms of baskets used to be called vessels, or fiber was strictly limited to natural fibers such as tree bark.

And... What's happened in the field of basketry today is that the artists are defining what constitutes a basket.

I think the fact that these baskets stand on their own as artwork and are not necessarily utilized as a basket, as a vessel, as they had been in the past, just as quilts now have been recognized as a form of artwork instead of... Just a cover lit on a bed as a bedspread.

And I think that's brought so much excitement to the artist.

Forty-two baskets from this exhibition will tour internationally through September 1992.

National and international juried shows which are usually seen here in their entirety and then travel in part throughout the country.

It's ambitious but it seems to work.

We're also hoping to expand into the performing arts area which is we plan at some point in time in the future to build an amphitheater.

We have a variety of concerts now that we do on the lawn in the summer but I think that we could expand that to theater.

I know we want to do more in the area of dance, music, children's activities.

One of the top art centers in the state.

It's very innovative.

I think it's very in tune with what's happening in the field of art and craft.

We do focus on a variety of different kinds of medium.

Art, you know, the illustrators, the baskets, the fiber art of quilts.

We have American Contemporary Works in Wood, which is a traditional wood exhibition.

The thing that impressed me the most about the Dairy Barn is how well they interspersed exhibitions, juried exhibitions of fine art and craft, international and national juried exhibitions with regional and fun festivals.

And I think that's the ultimate goal of the Dairymarn is to continue in that vein.

Our mission is to promote the art, craft, and cultural heritage of southeastern Ohio.

That means bringing in what's not here and promoting and featuring what is here throughout the country.