Facts for Kids

Folk art is the kind of art people make as part of their everyday lives and local culture. It often includes useful things—like quilts, baskets, carved toys, or painted signs—that also look beautiful. Because these objects are part of daily life, they show the stories, beliefs, and tastes of a community.

Folk art can also mean music, dance, or festivals that people pass down. The idea of folk art grew in different places, such as Europe and the United States, so styles and names can vary. What folk art from your neighborhood tell you about the people there?

Folk art makers are usually people who learn by watching family members, neighbors, or local teachers rather than in a formal art school. They can be one person working alone, a small team, or many people in a town who share the same styles. Because they learn from the same community, their work often looks related and recognizable.

At the same time, makers add their own ideas, so traditions change bit by bit. Some self-taught artists, called outsider artists, work mostly on their own, but they still connect to folk ideas. Museums collect many of these artists’ works to show how people create in different places.

People use many different terms for art made outside formal schools. Some of these words are Americana, Naïve art, Outsider art, Art brut, Primitive art, Tribal art, Vernacular art, Visionary art, Tramp art, Folk Environments, and Genre paintings. Each word tries to describe certain ways art is made or where it comes from.

These labels often overlap. For example, an object made by a self-taught person might be called both Outsider art and Folk art, or a simple-style painting might be named Naïve art. The labels help people compare works, but the most important thing is what the object tells you about its maker and community.

Folk art is usually made one at a time, not in big factories. Many pieces are handmade, using simple tools and careful steps learned over years. Sometimes makers use small machines, but the focus stays on skill and personal touch, so each item is a little different from the next.

Because people make these objects by hand, the process keeps old skills alive. Folk art is not only something from the past: people still make new folk objects today, combining old ways with new ideas to solve everyday problems and to decorate homes and community places.

Materials for folk art come from what is near at hand. People use wood, clay, cloth, metal, plant fibers, and found objects depending on where they live. This choice shapes how items look and what they do—baskets from reeds, quilts from scraps, and carved toys from local wood.

Folk crafts include many kinds of making: basketry, ceramics, quilting, textiles, wood carving, blacksmithing, jewelry, and even small buildings or painted signs. Some special names you might hear are alebrije (bright painted figures) or vernacular architecture (everyday buildings made by locals). Which local material would you choose to make something useful and beautiful?

A strong part of folk art is tradition—shared ways of making things that a community knows and repeats. When many people make similar quilts, baskets, or carved figures, you can tell they belong to the same tradition. Makers often learn these skills from parents, grandparents, or neighbors, so knowledge moves from person to person.

Folk art usually has a clear purpose: it may keep food, warm a family, guide a celebration, or mark a special day. Because the items solve real needs, useful designs travel and get copied, which helps the community keep the style over time. Can you think of a useful object in your home that might become folk art someday?