Artist and craftsman Nelle Morris Freeman Peterson was the first president of the Louisville Craftsman’s Guild and served as director of the Art Center Association School from 1959 to 1966.

She was born on an Oldham County, Kentucky, farm and won prizes for canning and sewing in 4-H. She commuted to Louisville by rail to attend the University of Louisville. Her art training began with Fayette Barnum in 1929, the year the Art Center school was founded. After graduating from the university, she studied with the legendary Lucy Calista Morgan at the Penland School of Handicrafts in North Carolina and at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, and in New York City.

From 1936 to 1943 she worked for the National Youth Association, a New Deal agency providing work and education for young Americans, becoming Kentucky supervisor of arts and crafts. One of her co-workers was a Campbellsville, Kentucky, native, named Daniel Peterson (1910-1967). They were married in 1939.

Nelle Peterson began her career at the Art Center in 1945, teaching metalsmithing, including jewelry making, and weaving (her mother, Julia Ann Freeman, was an accomplished weaver). Daniel Peterson served as school registrar and business manager after a World War II stint as supervisor in a munitions plant.

In 1959, two years after receiving her master’s degree in painting, studying under Ulfert Wilke, Nelle was appointed director of the center school. It was a challenging time. By 1964, the U of L had established its own studio-art courses, but the Art Center’s traditional community-service role, offering free art classes to more than 700 children, remained, with the never-ending need to raise money.

Daniel Peterson became an accomplished craftsman after he was “beguiled,” as The Courier-Journal phrased it, into metalsmithing by his wife. The couple jointly won the Maud Ainslie metalsmithing award at the Art Center Annual in 1956. He was active in the Kentucky Craftsmen organization working with wood turner Rude Osolnik and serving on the group’s national council.

Nelle Peterson took a leave of absence from her job several months before her death in July 1966. A Louisville Times letter to the editor noted that Mary Alice Hadley had died the previous December. “These losses are irreparable,” the letter writer concluded. Daniel Peterson died less than seven months later.