Tamarack Marketplace, Beckley, WV
We pulled off the highway expecting a quick stretch-your-legs stop. We left with art, a very good lunch, and a banjo. Tamarack Marketplace earns its exit sign.
Tamarack calls itself the nation’s first showcase of handcrafts, fine art, and regional cuisine, and it isn’t just marketing. The big circular building with the peaked red roof sits right at Exit 45 of I-77/I-64 near Beckley, and inside it carries work from more than 2,800 West Virginia artisans representing all 55 counties. Everything is juried, which explains why the quality stays so consistent from one table to the next.
Studios ring the perimeter of the retail floor: pottery, woodworking, and a glassblowing studio where we watched the work happen with the furnace glowing. The resident glassblower, John DesMeules, has a whole table of his ring holders out front.
You get to stand in the air conditioning while the artists do the hot, hard part, which seems like the right division of labor to us.
The artistry on display is worth the visit all by itself: blown glass, pottery, quilts, woodwork (including a full-size wooden STIHL chainsaw priced at $16,700), soaps, candies, and the David L. Dickirson Fine Arts Gallery with juried work from over 500 artists. You won’t be disappointed, but you’d better be prepared to part with some of your hard-earned money. We certainly did. A few art pieces made it into the car, and then there was the instrument display.
About that banjo. John walked through the handmade instruments exactly once, and a hand-carved open-back banjo followed him home. He’s learning to play it now. The banjo is beautiful and the artist who made it is remarkably talented, so it stays. John called Tamarack “one of the nicest collections of real art I’ve ever seen in a permanent location,” and he doesn’t hand that out lightly.
Lunch surprised us too. The Greenbrier helped set up the food service when Tamarack opened, and fried green tomatoes have been a signature here since the groundbreaking. We had the fried bologna sandwich and a burger with sweet potato fries, both very good and very affordable, and the Marketplace Kitchen lists the West Virginia farms it buys from right on the wall.
Outside, the Open Air Gallery scatters sculptures across the lawn, and the wooden “Almost Heaven” swing is ready for your photo.
Take a quiet minute with the bronze near the walkway, too. Mortality, by West Virginia sculptor Bill Hopen, remembers the nearly one thousand workers who died of silica dust digging the Hawk’s Nest Tunnel in the 1930s, about 30 miles from here. It’s a heavy piece sitting in the middle of all that color, and it belongs there.
Tamarack was Governor Gaston Caperton‘s idea, funded through the Parkways Authority’s concession revenues rather than tolls or taxes, and it opened in 1996. It’s open daily 9 AM to 7 PM, admission is free, it’s dog friendly, and yes, the bathrooms are clean.
If you’re anywhere near Beckley, take the exit. Budget an hour. Or three.
