#30
September 1, 2026#32
September 1, 2026
Searchable issue transcript
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foothills foothills Digest Digest Spring 2026 Display until 8/26 $10.95
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TO SUBSCRIBE, SCAN CODE OR MAIL A CHECK FOR $37 TO Foothills Digest 1070 26th Ave NE Hickory NC 28601 Name: Address: Phone: Or, we accept credit cards. Card Number: Expiration: CVV Code: Subscribe to Foothills Digest by scanning here: or go to foothillsdigest.com.
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4 foothills Digest 3838 Cleary Rd Laurel Springs, NC 28644 Issue #30 2025 Phone: 828.475.1323 E-mail editor@foothillsdigest.com Website foothillsdigest.com Stock by Adobe Stock Created using Adobe Suite Edited with the assistance of Open AI PRINTED IN USA PARTNER COMPANY: ECKARD PHOTOGRAPHIC CARMEN ECKARD Editor-in-Chief Author JON ECKARD Photographer JOEY OSBORNE Partner SPECIAL THANKS Matt Ledbetter CONTRIBUTOR Anna Fariello Ben Sullivan " Put it before them briefly so they will read it, clearly so they will appreciate it, picturesquely so they will remember it and, above all, accurately so they will be guided by its light." -Joseph Pulitzer Popcorn Sutton Art by Eric Cinningham, sold by Ledbetter Auctions
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5 Dear Readers, There are certain issues of Foothills Digest that feel especially alive while they’re coming together, and this one is certainly among them. Over the past few weeks, I’ve had the rare privilege of spending time in the presence of people making things with their hands. Real things. Clay turning on a wheel, wire bending into form, chainsaws shaping wood, baskets slowly growing row by row. Watching artists work is one of the quiet joys of this job. There is a rhythm to it — a patience and focus — that feels deeply rooted in this region. The traditions of Appalachian craft are not just about objects. They are about knowledge passed from one set of hands to another. At the same time, I also found myself in a very different kind of place: standing in a warehouse surrounded by thousands of pieces of folk art. Pottery, carvings, paintings, baskets, signs — each one carrying a story, a personality, a moment of inspiration from the person who made it. Being in a space like that is almost overwhelming in the best way. You realize quickly that folk art isn’t a small corner of Southern culture. It is a vast and living landscape. What struck me most throughout the making of this issue is the incredible range of expression that exists under the umbrella of “folk art.” Some pieces are deeply traditional, rooted in generations of technique. Others are wildly imaginative, personal, even strange in the most wonderful way. Yet all of it grows from the same place: people making things because they feel compelled to create. And now, as this issue reaches your hands, we’re stepping into one of the most exciting times of the year for anyone who loves this world — festival season. In the coming weeks, fields, town squares, and mountain venues across our region will fill with artists, musicians, collectors, and curious wanderers. We hope you’ll join us out there. If you find yourself at MerleFest, stop by and say hello — we’ll be there sharing magazines and celebrating the music that connects so deeply with the traditions of this place. And not long after, we hope to see many of you at the Foothills Folk Art Festival, where the makers themselves take center stage and the creativity of our region is on full display. Until then, we hope this issue gives you a glimpse into the beauty, humor, imagination, and deep cultural roots that make Appalachian folk art so extraordinary. As always, thank you for reading Foothills Digest and for supporting the artists and traditions that keep this region vibrant. With gratitude, Carmen Eckard Editor-in-Chief
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5 5 Letter from the Editor 8 8 What is Folk Art? 12 12 John C Campbell Folk School 26 26 Let It Breathe: Matt Ledbetter 42 42 Sam the Dot Man & Mitchell Gold 46 46 Charlie and Susan Frye 48 48 Drawing In Air: Josh Cote 50 50 Foothills Folk Art Festival 58 58 Theresa Gloster 62 62 Folk Art Center 66 66 Clay that Tells a Story: Crystal King 68 68 The Bascom 70 70 Ali Givens 74 74 Whirligigs 76 76 Allen Eaton Among the Folk 80 80 Barry Huffman 82 82 Missy Cleveland 84 84 Modern Tools, Mountain Traditions 88 88 The Tin Art of Thomas Graham 90 90 Family Traditions 92 92 Blue Ridge Craft Trails 100 100 Baskets 102 102 Art of Quilting 105 105 Eric Cunningham 106 106 Where the Old Things Are 108 108 MerleFest 124 124 Ben Sullivan's Appalachian Kitchen Table Table y y Contents Contents Scan for information about our Advertisers. Foothills Digest is a proud sponsor of MerleFest, the Catawba Valley Pottery Festival, and the Foothills Folk Art Festival.
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It seemed like a simple question when we first asked it. What is folk art? The phrase shows up everywhere across Appalachia—on museum signs, festival banners, gallery walls, and roadside attractions. Entire institutions are built around it, from the Folk Art Center on the Blue Ridge Parkway to the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown. But when we started asking people to define it, the answer turned out to be anything but simple. Every artist we spoke to had a slightly different explanation. Collectors described it one way. Scholars described it another. Even people who have spent their lives studying folk traditions don’t always agree on exactly where the boundaries fall. At the John C. Campbell Folk School, Executive Director Bethany Chaney explained that for her, folk art begins not with objects, but with people and place. “For us, folk art is any means of making— whether that’s making a product or sound or beauty—that is grounded in the tradition and culture of a place,” she said. “There’s a cultural thread or a historical thread that’s anchored to some time and place.” What is Folk Art? What is Folk Art? Burlon Craig throws a pot
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That thread may stretch across generations. An art form might look very different today than it did fifty or even a hundred years ago, but it still carries the memory of where it came from. As Bethany put it simply: “Folk means people.” Much of what we now call Appalachian folk art began not as decoration, but as necessity. Potters shaped clay vessels to store food. Basket makers split white oak into strong strips to carry harvests. Blacksmiths forged tools and hinges in small mountain shops. Quilters stitched blankets meant to keep families warm through long winters. Beauty wasn’t always the first goal. Often, it appeared along the way. Traditional musician and folklorist David Holt has described the process this way: “Folk art comes from everyday life. It grows out of people making what they need, and along the way they make it beautiful.” And many of the people who created these objects never thought of themselves as artists at all. Legendary Catawba Valley potter Burlon Craig once said: “We just made pots for folks to use. It wasn’t art to us—it was work.” Quilt sold by Ledbetter Auction
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Over time, those everyday objects began to take on new meaning. A storage jug becomes a collector’s item. A hand-carved sign becomes a museum piece. A handmade instrument becomes part of a musical tradition passed through generations. Sometimes the difference between an ordinary object and a work of folk art only becomes clear decades later. Matt Ledbetter shared a story that captures this idea perfectly. Imagine a man selling apples along a country road in 1940. He wants people driving by to know he has apples for sale, so he goes into his workshop, cuts a board into the shape of an apple, paints it red, and hangs it from two chains beside the road.
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The sign hangs there for decades, weathering under the Carolina sun and rain. Eventually the fruit stand disappears and the sign ends up stored away in a shed. Years later, a picker comes along and buys it for ten dollars. That handmade apple sign—built by a man simply trying to sell apples—has become a piece of folk art. Because folk art rarely begins with the intention of being art. It begins with people making something useful, something beautiful, or something necessary with the skills they have in their hands. Across Appalachia, those traditions have taken countless forms: the alkaline-glaze pottery of the Catawba Valley, handwoven baskets and split-oak chair seats, whirligigs that spin in the wind, carved walking sticks, handmade guitars and banjos, iron forged in small blacksmith shops, quilts stitched from family scraps, and paintings and sculptures that capture everyday mountain life. Each tradition has its own techniques and history. But they all share the same foundation. They come from communities. They grow through practice. And they are shaped by the places people live. If there’s one thing we learned while trying to define folk art, it’s this: Folk art isn’t something people set out to make. It’s what happens when tradition, necessity, and creativity meet in the same set of hands.
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John C. Campbell Folk School You can tell when a place expects you to slow down. Not because anyone tells you to—but because your body does it on its own. Your voice drops. Your steps soften on gravel. You start to notice small sounds: the tap of a hammer on iron, the low hum of a wheel turning clay, the whisper of reeds sliding into place under someone’s fingers. Even the laughter here carries differently. It doesn’t echo. It settles. The John C. Campbell Folk School sits tucked into a fold of southern Appalachia, surrounded by woods and quiet and the kind of green that feels like it’s always been there. People arrive with packed schedules still buzzing in their heads. They leave a few days later with red clay under their nails, a new object cooling on a table, and the faint disorientation that comes from remembering how it feels to work with your hands for hours at a time. This is not a museum of old ways. It is not a retreat center in disguise. It is a working campus— alive with motion, mistakes, laughter, sweat, and the steady practice of learning for the sake of learning.
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Across roughly 270 acres, studios are scattered among historic buildings, gardens, and footpaths that seem to gently encourage wandering. There is no straight line from one place to another here. People drift between the blacksmithing shop and the pottery studio. They linger on porches. They pause to watch someone else work. They eat together. They get pulled into a dance they didn’t plan to attend. Time loosens its grip in places like this. You might begin the morning with coffee in the dining hall, tools waiting on your workbench across campus. By afternoon, you’ve lost track of the clock entirely—measuring your day not in hours, but in how many times you reshaped the same curve of wood before it finally made sense in your hands. At the center of campus, the Olive Dame Campbell Dining Hall holds more than meals and a craft shop. It holds the daily rhythm of the place. People gather here between classes, muddy boots under tables, project ideas sketched on napkins, strangers becoming familiar faces over soup and bread. Nearby, the History Center quietly tells the story of how this place came to be—not as a monument, but as context. A reminder that the Folk School did not appear fully formed. It grew, adapted, endured. Keith House anchors the administrative heart of the campus, but the true pulse of the Folk School lives in the studios: spaces shaped by use. The blacksmithing shop, shown above and to the right, carries the heat of constant fire. The pottery studio smells faintly of wet earth. Basketry rooms hold the dry sweetness of plant fibers. Woodturning hums with motion and patience. Each building holds a different texture of attention. The campus itself is designed to make community unavoidable. Paths cross. Doors stay open. Meals are shared. Music drifts through open windows. Even when you come here intending to keep to yourself, the place has a way of gently undoing that plan. The Clay Spencer Blacksmith Shop is exceptional, and many instructors and students come back year after year.
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Why This Place Matters Right Now This year marks the John C. Campbell Folk School’s 100th anniversary—one hundred years of continuing to exist in a rural corner of southern Appalachia where things do not survive by accident. The longevity itself is a quiet statement. Weather takes its toll here. Time takes its toll. Economies rise and fall. Roads change how people move through a place. Generations leave. Generations return, or don’t. Reaching a century is not just something to celebrate. It comes with the weight of stewardship—of asking how a place like this continues to matter in a world that no longer moves at the pace it was built for. Today, many of the people who arrive on campus are not here to master a craft for a career. They come because their lives are crowded with screens and speed, with work that rarely leaves anything tangible behind at the end of the day. They come because they want to feel capable in their bodies again. Because they want to make something that cannot be emailed, copied, automated, or optimized. There is a quiet rebellion in choosing to spend a week learning how to shape clay, weave willow, turn wood, or coax iron into form. These are not efficient skills in the modern sense. They require attention. They require failure. They require the slow alignment of mind, muscle, and intention.
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The Willard Baxter Wood Turning Studio provides an exceptional learning environment.
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At the Folk School, that alignment is not treated as quaint nostalgia. It is treated as necessary. The model here has never been about competition or credentials. There are no grades, no certificates, no pressure to “produce” in any marketable sense. Learning happens for the joy of learning. People come with different skill levels, different backgrounds, different reasons for being here. The only real expectation is presence—showing up to the studio, to the table, to each other. That presence takes on a particular resonance in a moment when so much creative work is becoming increasingly abstracted—typed, generated, filtered through machines. At the Folk School, the work resists that flattening. The bowl holds the marks of the hand that shaped it. The basket remembers the tension of each reed. The forged hook carries the memory of heat and strain. What people leave with is not just an object. It is the recalibration of attention. They return home with a quieter nervous system, a renewed sense of agency, and the embodied reminder that their hands still know how to learn. Inside the Studios In the woodturning studio, time announces itself in rings. Each bowl begins with a block of wood that once stood somewhere else— on a hillside, at the edge of a field, in a yard where someone once sat in its shade. When it’s mounted on the lathe, that former life becomes visible again. Grain tightens and loosens in slow
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spirals. Knots interrupt the smoothness of the cut. The wood remembers weather. The students learn to listen for that memory. A tool catches if rushed. The lathe hum deepens when pressure shifts. Fine dust lifts into the light and settles on sleeves and eyelashes. The work demands attention—not just to the form you want to make, but to the material you are working with. The tree has opinions. You adjust. There is a particular quiet that settles over a room when people are turning wood. Not silence— movement and sound fill the space—but a shared focus. Bodies lean forward in the same posture. Breath syncs to the rhythm of the machine. People who arrived as strangers end up standing shoulder to shoulder, watching one another’s progress, offering small advice, sharing the strange joy of discovering that something useful can come from something raw. In the pottery studio, the pace shifts but the listening remains. Clay wobbles under hands still learning its temperament. Bowls collapse. Rims go soft. Someone laughs at the mess of it and starts again. The wheel becomes a teacher of humility—nothing holds its shape until you learn how to hold yourself steady first. Basketry carries a different rhythm—slow, patient, almost conversational. Reeds slide into place with a dry whisper. Patterns emerge one repetition at a time. The basket does not hurry. It becomes what the hands allow it to become. In the blacksmithing shop, the language is heat and sound. Fire breathes. Metal rings. Sweat runs. What begins as brute force refines into precision. The hammer learns restraint. Power learns patience. Even in the kaleidoscope studio—where small pieces of glass are arranged into repeating worlds—the work is about attention. Tiny adjustments alter the whole pattern. The lesson repeats across every studio: nothing meaningful appears fully formed. Everything worth making requires your presence. Across disciplines, the studios hold a shared truth: these are not tasks you can multitask your way through. The work claims the body. The mind follows.
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19 People leave the studios marked by their labor—dust on their clothes, clay in their cuticles, the faint ache of muscles rediscovering themselves. The objects they carry away matter. But what stays with them longer is the feeling of being wholly inside a process again. A Folk School at 100: How This Place Came to Be The John C. Campbell Folk School did not begin as a destination. It began as an idea about how people might live and learn together. When Olive Dame Campbell and her colleague Marguerite Butler helped establish the school in 1925, they were not imagining a campus full of studios and visiting artists from across the country. They were responding to a very real concern in the mountains of southern Appalachia: young people were leaving, farms were struggling, and traditional knowledge—how to grow food, make what you needed, care for a place—was slipping away. Olive, whose late husband John C. Campbell had spent years studying social and educational conditions in the region, believed that learning should be rooted in community and daily life. Along with Butler, she looked to Scandinavian folk school models—schools built not around credentials, but around adult learning, shared work, shared meals, and shared culture. The goal was not to create specialists. It was to strengthen people where they lived. In its earliest years, the Folk School functioned as a working farm. Students learned agricultural techniques, dairying, homesteading skills. Weaving, sewing, and other handcrafts were part of the picture, but they were not yet the center. The center was survival—how to make a sustainable life in a rural place. Over time, the needs of the community changed. Government agricultural programs took on much of the technical training the Folk School had once provided. Roads came. Work shifted. The region opened to the outside world in ways that were both promising and destabilizing. What the Folk School became, slowly and deliberately, was something else: a place for people— local and visiting—to come together around making, music, dance, and shared cultural life. Craft moved to the center not because tradition needed to be preserved behind glass, but because it remained useful as a way of learning how to be in relationship—with materials, with place, with one another. Music and dance stayed because they have always been how people build community in these mountains. The school evolved into a kind of cultural hearth, warming generations of visitors who came to learn skills, but left with something harder to name.
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A century later, that hearth is still burning. The buildings have been repaired and reimagined, but they are not precious in the way museum spaces often are. They bear the marks of use. The studios smell like what happens inside them. The dining hall holds the residue of thousands of conversations. The paths across campus have been walked into being by people who came here looking for something they could not find at home. What has endured is not a single curriculum, but a philosophy: learning happens best when people live alongside one another, when knowledge is shared across skill levels and generations, and when making is treated not as product, but as practice. That philosophy has carried this place through a hundred years of change. From Ground to Hand: Where the Materials Begin One of the quiet shifts happening at the Folk School right now is a return to origin. Not just where techniques come from, but where materials come from. It’s easy, in modern craft spaces, to begin with a bundle of purchased supplies: reeds already dried, yarn already dyed, wood already milled, clay already bagged and uniform. The Folk School is leaning into something slower and more honest—inviting students to consider what exists before the studio. In the gardens, willow grows in dense stands. Students harvest it, strip it, sort it by thickness, learn how different varieties bend or resist. The basket you see taking shape in a studio once stood rooted in soil nearby. The curve of a handle carries the memory of weather. Nearby, dye plants push their way up through the ground. Leaves, flowers, and roots become color—extracted slowly, coaxed into vats, transformed into ink or dye. Yarn passes through those
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22 colors, deepening into blues, rusts, golds. When a woven piece dries on a line, the color it holds is not just pigment. It is place. Broom corn dries in bundles, waiting to be bound into something both useful and ornamental. Herbs find their way into soaps and kitchens. Even decorative corn grown for seasonal gatherings becomes part of the visual language of the campus—proof that what grows here shapes how the place looks and feels. There is a growing effort, too, to steward materials that carry deep cultural meaning in this region. River cane, once abundant along creeks and rivers, has been reduced by development, floods, and environmental change. The Folk School is working to let patches of it recover along their own waterways—learning how to care for it so that it can be harvested responsibly and shared in partnership with Cherokee artists and cultural institutions. Basketry made from river cane is not just craft. It is continuity. Clay, too, has been brought back into the conversation. In recent years, students and instructors have dug local clay, tested it, prepared it by hand, and learned the subtle differences among soils across North Carolina. When a bowl is thrown from earth that came from nearby ground, the object carries a different weight. It becomes less anonymous. The land becomes part of the lineage of the work. Tracing materials back to their source changes how people touch them. When you know where something comes from, you tend to waste less of it. You work more slowly. You listen to what the material can offer instead of forcing it into a shape it resists. In a culture that often treats resources as endless and interchangeable, this attention to origin feels quietly radical. It reminds people that making is not just about skill. It is about relationship—with land, with history, Clay from different parts of North Carolina
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23 with the people who carried these practices forward long before this campus existed. Who Comes Here (And Why They Stay) The people who arrive at the Folk School do not arrive with a single story. Some come newly retired, carrying decades of responsibility that have finally loosened their grip. They arrive with lists of classes they’ve wanted to take for years but never had time for. They stay late in the studios, unbothered by the slow pace, relieved to be bad at something again without consequence. Some come burned out from careers that once promised meaning and now offer mostly noise. They arrive wired, shoulders high, phones still lighting up in their pockets. By midweek, those phones are forgotten in drawers. Hands take over where keyboards used to be. The nervous system relearns what sustained attention feels like. Some come younger than expected. They arrive with a practiced fluency in screens and a hunger for something that resists them a little. They want to touch the real world again—to feel weight and resistance, to fail in visible ways, to leave with proof that they were here in their bodies. Some come local. They fit the Folk School into their working lives through shorter classes at Olive’s Porch in downtown Murphy—half-day introductions to basketry or knitting, cooking or foraging. They test the water first. Later, some of them take the longer leap onto campus, discovering that the place they’ve driven past for years can hold them, too. And then there are the people who come back. They know where the best light hits the paths
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24 in late afternoon. They know which porch catches the breeze. They greet instructors by name. They recognize the sound of the dinner bell. For them, the Folk School is not a novelty. It is a return. Staying on campus folds people into a temporary village. Meals are shared. Conversations extend past class hours. Someone you met over breakfast ends up beside you at a lathe that afternoon. You borrow sandpaper from a stranger. You sit next to the same person at dinner three nights in a row and learn the shape of their life without trying to. Community forms not through grand gestures, but through repetition: walking the same paths, eating the same soup, working through the same small frustrations of learning something new. The Folk School does not promise transformation. It offers conditions where transformation becomes possible. People leave with objects tucked into boxes and bags. But what they carry longer is the memory of having belonged, briefly but genuinely, to a place shaped by shared effort. A Century of Staying Human A hundred years is a long time for any institution to remain intact. It is especially long in a rural place that has weathered economic shifts, cultural change, and the slow erosion of traditions that once defined daily life. The John C. Campbell Folk School has not survived by refusing to change. It has survived by changing carefully—by holding fast to a set of values even as the world around it accelerated. Joy. Kindness. Stewardship. Non-competitiveness. These are not slogans here. They are practiced in small, daily ways: in how classes are taught, in how people are welcomed, in how land and materials are tended, in how difference is held without turning into spectacle. At one hundred years old, the Folk School stands as proof that continuity does not require stagnation. Tradition is not a fixed shape. It is a current that carries forward, altered by each set of hands that enters the water. In a time when speed is rewarded and attention is fractured, the Folk School’s insistence on slowness reads less like nostalgia and more like resistance. The campus offers no shortcuts. You cannot rush a bowl into roundness. You cannot hurry a basket into balance. You cannot compress community into an app. What endures here is not just
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25 craft. It is the practice of staying human in the presence of others. On the last day of class, the studios empty slowly. Projects are wrapped. Tools are returned. Dust is brushed from sleeves. Projects are shown off. Someone takes a final photo of their work before placing it carefully into a box. Goodbyes stretch longer than planned. Plans to return are spoken aloud, half in hope, half in promise. People leave with objects that will find places in their homes—a bowl on a shelf, a broom by the door, a basket that holds something small and useful. Those objects will age. They will gather stories. They will remind their makers of a week when their hands were occupied with something simple and true. But the deeper thing they carry home is harder to display. It is the memory of attention. The memory of learning without urgency. The memory of being part of a place that asked them to show up—fully, imperfectly— and offered them space to do so. Long after the clay dust is washed from their hands, that memory stays.
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26 There are 5,000 pieces of Appalachian and Southern self-taught art stacked in a warehouse waiting to move. They represent lifetimes. They are tucked inside an unassuming building in Gibsonville, a small Piedmont town near Burlington — far enough from the mountains that the Blue Ridge feels distant, but close enough that their cultural gravity still pulls here. When you first walk in, the scale of it is disorienting. Tables are crowded with pottery, carved figures, paintings, baskets, hand-lettered signs, and boxes of old buttons waiting to be sorted. Every surface holds something worth studying. Near the front of the room stands a raised auction podium, its front panel decorated with several striking examples of folk art painting. When we arrive it sits quiet and empty, almost ghostly against the busy tables surrounding it. At my request, Matt Ledbetter climbs up behind it. Looking out across the warehouse, it becomes easy to imagine the scene during a live auction — the crowd gathered below, the rhythm of the chant, hands rising from the crowd. For a moment the image calls to mind an old Southern preacher addressing a congregation. The cadence may be different, but the feeling is similar: a voice rising, a room responding. For someone who loves the material culture of Appalachia, the room borders on overwhelming. Every direction offers another discovery: intricate Matt Ledbetter Keeps the Art Moving Let it Let it Breathe Breathe
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27 baskets, enormous paintings leaning against the wall, Catawba Valley pottery in quiet clusters on tables. It is the kind of place that makes you stop and take a breath before moving deeper inside. But nothing here is meant to stay. At one point, Ledbetter sweeps his hand across the tables and shelves filling most of the warehouse. “If any of this is still here in three months,” he says, “I’m not doing my job.” The room may feel like a museum at first glance, but it operates more like a crossroads. Objects arrive from estates, collections, and forgotten corners of the region. They pause briefly — cataloged, photographed, researched — before moving on again. Some of these objects were loved. Some were stored. Some were forgotten. All of them are in transition. Carved canes collected one by one at roadside stops. Face jugs bought in Hickory over decades. Painted boards pulled from barns. Signs that once swung over country roads. Baskets that hung in kitchens until someone decided there wasn’t room for one more. Matt Ledbetter is in the middle of that transition. “Let it breathe,” he says. For Ledbetter, folk art is not meant to be sealed in a closet after its first owner is gone. The piece a collector no longer feels attached to may be the object that begins someone else’s devotion. “Your worst piece,” he says, “is going to be somebody’s best piece.” Across Appalachia and the broader South, that idea is no longer theoretical. Collectors who began buying self-taught and insider art in the 1980s and 1990s are now facing estate decisions. Their children often admire the work, but do not want to manage it. Museums cannot absorb
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everything. Storage units quietly fill with carved figures and painted panels. Someone has to move it. But movement requires letting go — and letting go is rarely simple. Ledbetter’s warehouse in the Piedmont has become one of the places where that transition happens. In North Carolina, the shift is already visible. Collectors who have spent decades buying Catawba Valley pottery now face rooms lined floor to ceiling with face jugs and alkaline-glazed vessels. Across the state, self-taught paintings hang in homes where the stories behind them are known intimately — but not always recorded. The region has long celebrated its makers. It is only now beginning to confront what stewardship looks like when collections outlive their first keepers. Ledbetter has built his career inside that reckoning. Raised in the Ring Ledbetter did not arrive in this work through theory. He grew up inside it. By age nine, he was riding alongside his father, Wade Ledbetter, knocking on doors across the Southeast. This was not antique mall browsing or curated shop buying. It was basements, barns, and abandoned country stores. It was getting lost down rural roads and climbing into attics in summer heat. It was learning how to talk to strangers and recognize objects with weight — not just monetary value, but cultural gravity. Every Friday, there was an auction. Forty-eight weeks a year.
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As a child, he watched items bring prices that shaped his understanding early: the auction was not a fire sale. It was price discovery. Done correctly, it was how important material found its value. That distinction still matters to him. “Some people think an auction is just selling Aunt Betsy’s estate quickly for nothing,” he says. “That’s not how I was raised in it. If it’s good material, you get the money for it.” For years, Ledbetter held an auctioneer’s license without opening his own sale. He was picking. Running a gym. Studying the field. Watching the market mature. Then in 2020, the sudden death of Kobe Bryant at age 41 landed differently than he expected. Ledbetter had grown up watching Bryant play — watching the intensity, the discipline, the way he seemed to take life head-on. Seeing him gone so suddenly forced a realization. “I thought about how hard he lived,” Ledbetter says. “And I realized I needed to be living my life at full volume too.” The next day, he launched his first auction. He has not slowed down since. In person, Ledbetter carries the easy confidence of someone accustomed to commanding a room. He moves easily through the warehouse, comfortable among the stacks of objects waiting for their next home.
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Naming the Work Ledbetter is careful with language. “Folk art,” he explains, "is often born of necessity." A farmer in 1940 needs to sell apples. He cuts a three-foot sign in the shape of an apple, paints it, and hangs it from a chain. It weathers for decades. It was not made to be art. It was made to function. That is folk art. Outsider art may emerge without audience or intention — work created outside institutional awareness, sometimes discovered only after the maker’s death. Self-taught artists consciously create but without formal training. The distinctions matter. “When people are paying for something,” he says, “they want to know what they’re buying.” Definitions influence what gets collected, what gets preserved, and who enters the historical record.In Appalachia and across the rural South, necessity shaped much of the tradition. “You didn’t have a sign maker down the road,” he says. “You made your own.”
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The Work Behind the Work What most collectors never see is the labor that follows acquisition. When a family calls about an estate, Ledbetter goes in person. He packs and transports entire collections. Back in his warehouse, he sorts, researches, and photographs each object — five angles, sometimes more. He measures. Notes condition. Writes descriptions. Sets estimates. Lists. Markets. Then ships. “I become a professional shipper,” he says. He runs dozens of auctions a year. He answers his own phone. He makes his own decisions. The margins are real. A single high-value piece can justify months of work. Dozens of low-value objects cannot. Industry standards exist, but the math must work. Stewardship and sustainability must coexist. He does not romanticize it. “This is work,” he says. And yet, he insists on something more than transaction. A collector buys twenty pieces at a festival. Two go on the wall. The rest go into a closet. Five years later, the collection doubles. Then triples. The work becomes part of the home — and then part of the problem. “It’s not that people don’t care,” he says. “It’s that they don’t know what to do with it.” The auction, in his view, is not liquidation. It is circulation. Circulation keeps the field alive.
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32 In Ledbetter’s warehouse, that circulation is constant. Objects arrive from estates and collections across the region, pass through research and photography, and move back out again through auction — sometimes within weeks. @artscatawba facebook.com/ArtsCultureCatawba Our calendar will keep you informed of cultural events, activities, classes, workshops, opportunities, and happenings in the community! VISIT CATAWBA365.com! POWERED BY Sponsored by Cole Setzer
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33 Moving the Conversation Ledbetter’s House of Folk Art podcast extends that circulation beyond objects. It keeps the conversation moving. The show functions less like a formal program and more like an ongoing gathering place — a living, breathing conversation about folk art. Collectors, artists, dealers, and first-time buyers move through the discussion daily, sharing discoveries, questions, and sometimes hard lessons. In a field long shaped by quiet dealers and selective access, the podcast opens the door. Pricing, authenticity, regional distinctions — subjects that once lived behind closed doors — are discussed openly. Younger listeners who may never have stepped into an antique shop encounter carved canes and Catawba Valley pottery through earbuds instead. They hear artists speak about process. They hear collectors talk honestly about mistakes. They learn what questions to ask before they buy. “I can bench press 225,” Ledbetter says with a grin. “I can still play football. And I love baskets.” For many listeners, the podcast becomes an entry point. The next generation of collectors does not necessarily find folk art the same way their parents did. They discover it online. Through digital auctions. Through daily conversations streamed into kitchens and cars. They are as comfortable bidding from a phone as walking into a barn. Without transparency, interest fades. With it, the field expands. Ledbetter operates in both worlds — boots on the ground and catalog online. If the first generation of serious Southern collectors built the field, the next generation will determine how it survives.
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35 Building Permanence Ledbetter’s work is not only about moving objects. It is also about documenting the artists behind them. The publication of his substantial book on the paintings of Benny Carter marks another phase in that effort. Carter’s work had long circulated among collectors, quietly gaining value and admiration, but serious documentation lagged behind. “He was in one book,” Ledbetter says. “One page.” For an artist whose paintings were already bringing thousands of dollars, that absence mattered. In the art world, documentation is more than biography. It is infrastructure. Without it, an artist’s legacy can remain scattered — admired in private collections but missing from the broader historical record. Ledbetter saw the gap clearly. “I was selling a Benny Carter for seven thousand dollars,” he says. “And he’s not in a book.” So he made one. Ledbetter funded and produced the volume himself, assembling photographs, research, and examples of Carter’s work into the first book devoted entirely to the artist. “He needed a book,” he says simply. “So I did it.” At left, Ledbetter sits on Benny Carter's Throne and flips through the book he wrote about Benny
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36 In the warehouse where Ledbetter catalogs and stores thousands of pieces of self-taught and outsider art, one object stands out: a painted wooden throne built by Carter himself. The chair is both sculpture and furniture, the kind of object that feels as though it grew directly from the artist’s imagination. When Ledbetter sits in that throne holding the finished book — Carter’s paintings spread across its pages — the moment feels less like promotion than a quiet correction. An artist who once occupied a single page now fills an entire volume. For Ledbetter, that shift matters as much as the sale price. The Throne Across this spread, the book itself comes into view. On one side, Carter sits proudly in the throne he made — artist and object together. Beside it, the chair stands alone, its painted surfaces and playful structure revealing the same handmade confidence that runs through Carter’s paintings. Seen side by side, the images carry a simple clarity: the maker and the work, inseparable.
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The book itself is an act of careful attention. Rather than offering a brief overview, Ledbetter assembled a deeply researched and visually rich record of Carter’s work, gathering paintings, photographs, and context that had never before been brought together in one place. The result is not simply a catalog of objects but a fuller portrait of the artist — the rhythms of his imagery, the materials he favored, and the unmistakable personality that runs through his work. Page after page reveals the range of Carter’s imagination, allowing viewers to see patterns and developments that would be almost impossible to recognize when the paintings are scattered across private collections. That kind of documentation carries a particular weight in the world of self-taught art. Artists like Carter often worked outside traditional institutions, creating their work without gallery representation, academic training, or formal archives to preserve their legacy. When the work enters collections, the stories can easily fragment. By gathering Carter’s paintings into a single, carefully produced volume, Ledbetter does something larger than publish images — he restores coherence to the artist’s body of work. The book treats Carter not as a curiosity or a footnote, but as a serious American artist whose vision deserves to be preserved, studied, and passed forward.
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38 These pages from the book show Carter’s paintings from the early 1990s, a period when his style was evolving toward the dense cityscapes collectors now recognize instantly. In these works, the New York skyline rises in stacked buildings filled with grids of windows — each one carefully placed, each one part of a larger rhythm across the canvas. The structures press upward and outward at the same time, creating a feeling of crowded energy, as if the city itself is expanding inside the frame. They are ambitious paintings, full of repetition and structure, yet still unmistakably personal. The buildings crowd together, the windows multiply, and the city becomes something almost musical in its pattern. From a distance the compositions feel orderly, almost architectural. Step closer and the surface becomes more animated — tiny variations in color, shape, and spacing revealing the hand of the artist working patiently window by window. What first appears mechanical slowly resolves into something far more human.
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39 Seen together, the paintings reveal Carter working through ideas in real time. The skyline becomes a kind of framework where he experiments with density, color, and rhythm, pushing the image further with each version. Some feel tightly controlled, others more playful and improvisational, but all carry the same unmistakable voice. Taken together, the images on these pages reveal something that collectors already understood but documentation had not yet caught up to: Benny Carter was building a visual language entirely his own. A book makes that visible. It gathers the work, preserves the story, and ensures that what might once have existed only in scattered collections can now be seen clearly — artist, object, and paintings all part of the same enduring record.
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Let It Breathe In his warehouse, the 5,000 objects are temporary residents. They are stacked on shelves, wrapped in paper, tagged and numbered, waiting for the next address. Some will leave next week. Others will sit awhile longer. Eventually, each will pass through his hands and into someone else’s home — onto a wall, into a kitchen, beside a doorway where it will be seen again. “You can only hang so many paintings,” he says. “The rest have to move.” Somewhere else, another wall is waiting. In North Carolina, they are moving now — out of attics and spare rooms, off crowded shelves, into new light. Not disappearing. Just changing walls.
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42 There are some kinds of art that hang quietly on a wall, waiting to be noticed. And then there is the kind that refuses to behave—colorful, insistent, a little unruly, and full of something you can’t quite name but feel immediately. That’s the kind of art that stopped Mitchell Gold in his tracks. Long before it filled his own walls, before it became part of the visual language of his home, it found him in an unexpected place—Chicago, more than thirty years ago. He had gone there for business, staying with a cousin he hadn’t seen in some time. When he walked into her home, he stepped into something else entirely. Every wall was covered. Paintings stacked on the floor, four and five deep. Faces, patterns, stories—layered everywhere you looked. It wasn’t polished or restrained. It was alive. It was outsider art. “I was so intrigued by it,” he remembers. “There was something about it—primitive, colorful—it just spoke to me.” His cousin, as it turned out, was one of the foremost collectors of European outsider art in the country. She knew the artists, their histories, their struggles. Many of them lived on the edges—self-taught, often shaped by mental illness, addiction, or isolation. Their work wasn’t made for galleries. It wasn’t made for approval. It was made because it had to be. Mitchell called Bob Williams and told him, simply, you have got to come see this. And that was the beginning. They started collecting, eventually focusing on American artists—work that felt Sam the Dot Man, Mitchell Gold, and the Art That Refuses to Behave Mitchell Gold holds one of Sam's paintings
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43 closer, more accessible, more rooted in place. Back then, he would stop at antique stores and flea markets, following instinct more than anything else. If something spoke to him, he brought it home. “I never bought it for value,” he says. “I bought it because I loved it. I think it makes my house feel happy.” That instinct—trusting what feels alive—would eventually lead him back home, to western North Carolina, and to a growing movement that was beginning to take shape. In Hickory, the Hickory Museum of Art began hosting festivals and gatherings centered around its self-taught art holdings, including what is now known as the Huffman Collection. Those early events brought artists and collectors together in a way that felt informal, personal, and immediate— less about institutions, more about connection. It was at one of those festivals that Mitchell met Sam “The Dot Man” McMillan, part of a circle of artists whose work didn’t quite fit into neat categories—and didn’t need to. That same spirit would eventually grow into what we now know as the Foothills Folk Art Festival, carrying forward that work of connecting people to artists who create outside the usual boundaries. If you’ve ever seen Sam’s work, you know it immediately. Figures made of dots—rows and rows of them—marching across boards and surfaces, holding hands, circling the world. There is something childlike in it, but not childish. Something simple, but not simplistic. His work returns again and again to a single idea, written plainly in his own words: If we all hold hands we can’t fight. Sam was self-taught. He lived a life that didn’t follow a straight line. Like many outsider artists, he created from instinct, from experience, from something internal that didn’t ask permission. His work wasn’t concerned with whether it fit into a category. It just existed—fully, honestly. When Mitchell met him, what stayed with him wasn’t just the work. “He was so sweet and funny and nice,” he says. “I just loved his stuff.” That’s often how collections begin—not with strategy, but with connection. With recognizing something real in both the work and the person behind it. Mitchell began collecting Sam’s pieces the same way he had always collected—because they made him feel something. And at one point, that connection became even more personal. He asked Sam if he would make a piece for him—one that said “Lulu,” in honor of his beloved dog. Sam’s answer was immediate. Of course. That piece, like so much of Sam’s work, carries more than just a word. It carries memory, affection, and the quiet understanding between artist and collector. It turns something personal into something you can live with every day. And that, in many ways, is the heart of outsider art. It isn’t polished. It isn’t filtered. It isn’t made to fit neatly into definitions.
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Outsider art is often described as work created outside the formal art world—by self-taught artists, operating beyond institutions, trends, and expectations. It comes from a place that is raw and direct, shaped more by life than by training. Folk art, on the other hand, tends to be rooted in tradition. It grows out of community—skills passed down, objects made for use before they were ever considered art. A carved sign. A handmade pot. A quilt stitched with patterns that mean something to the people who made them. But in practice, the line between the two is rarely clean. A chainsaw carver in Morganton. A sign painter who never trained. A man making figures out of dots because something in him says he should. Where do they belong? The truth is—they often belong to both worlds, and neither. “There’s no absolute,” Mitchell says. “It all overlaps.” And maybe that’s exactly why it matters. Because what draws people to this work isn’t the label. It’s the honesty. The sense that what you’re looking at came directly from someone’s hands, their mind, their life—without being smoothed out or made more acceptable. That’s what Mitchell saw in Chicago all those years ago. And it’s what he still sees now—in rooms filled with color, with story, with pieces that don’t quite behave the way they’re supposed to. Including one small piece that simply says “No one lives on the moon cause there isn't a Lulu”—made by a man who believed, plainly and without apology, that if we all hold hands we can’t fight.
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45 Your perfect mountain home is waiting for you to find it. 828.230.8218 STEPHEN ROBINSON REALTY STEPHEN@ROGPIVOT.COM STEPHEN ROBINSON knows where to look.
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Charlie & Susan Foothills Roots, Coastal Light For years, Charlie Frye’s work felt stitched right into Lenoir itself. His bright colors, playful figures, and unmistakable style showed up in the places people gathered — on walls where art wasn’t separate from daily life, but part of it. Charlie is a self-taught folk artist whose work is instantly recognizable. Owls, musicians, animals, mountain scenes, and familiar characters appear again and again, painted with bold lines and fearless color. There’s a looseness to his work — a sense that it was made with joy rather than hesitation — and that joy has always been part of its appeal. Much of Charlie’s art is created on found or unconventional surfaces: old wood, salvaged materials, pieces that already carry a story before the paint ever touches them. It’s a way of working that feels deeply Appalachian — using what’s close at hand and letting the material help guide the outcome. His wife, Susan, is an artist as well, and her work offers a beautiful balance to Charlie’s. Where his paintings feel spontaneous and energetic, hers often carry a quieter precision. Through layered paper collage and carefully constructed imagery, Susan creates pieces that feel thoughtful and intimate — full of personality, memory, and gentle humor. Though the Fryes now live on the North Carolina coast, their foothills roots remain visible in everything they make. The subjects, the spirit, even the color choices still echo the mountains where their artistic voices took shape. The scenery may have shifted, but the heart of the work has not. Together, Charlie and Susan continue to create art that feels accessible, honest, and deeply human — the kind of work that doesn’t ask to be decoded, only felt. Their story is a reminder that folk art isn’t bound to a single place. Once it’s rooted, it travels with you.
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48 Drawing in Air: Drawing in Air: The Folk Art of Josh Coté The Folk Art of Josh Coté
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49 You don’t have to step into Josh Coté’s studio to feel what his work is doing. His wire sculptures have a way of stopping you mid-stride — in a gallery, a sculpture garden, or even in a photograph. At first glance they look like drawings that have stepped off the page and into the air. Then you notice the shadows, the negative space, the way a rabbit seems poised to leap or a crow leans forward as if listening to the wind. Coté’s work exists in that delicate space between drawing and sculpture, where a single line becomes a living form. Working primarily in wire and mixed media, Coté transforms simple materials into pieces that feel light, expressive, and alive. The sculptures are often airy and gestural, capturing movement with remarkable economy — a curve of metal suggesting fur, feathers, or motion. As Coté explains: “Wire provides a freedom and flexibility that allows me to create a 3-dimensional form with just a few movements of my pliers. It allows me to capture the gesture and essence of my subject matter almost instantaneously. As an artist, I appreciate the ability of such a mundane material to transform into emotive, soulful forms.” Animals appear frequently in Coté’s work — particularly rabbits and birds — and they are never merely decorative. They feel like characters emerging from a story, carrying a sense of intelligence and presence. Coté’s imagination was shaped both by literature and by life outdoors. “I look at animals as soulful creatures with specific individual feelings. They occupy my imagination through the lens of childhood books, like those by Beatrix Potter, Lewis Carroll, and Dr. Seuss. I try to infuse the magical realism from my interpretation of the reading I did as a child to give my work a sense of whimsy. Growing up on Northern Michigan farmland, I also made a lot of natural observations of animals in the wild. When I create my sculptures in the 3-dimensional space, I’m attempting to trace the liminal space of dream and myth in my imagination, and I hope that the observer can get a sense of what I feel.” That blend of observation and imagination gives Coté’s work its distinctive feeling. His sculptures seem to exist somewhere between the natural world and the dream world — creatures that feel familiar, yet slightly enchanted. There is also a strong kinship between Coté’s work and the broader traditions of folk art. His sculptures are handmade, intuitive, and rooted in personal vision rather than formal rules. Living and working in Western North Carolina places him within one of the country’s most vibrant folk art traditions, a region where creative expression often grows directly from the land and the people who live there. Coté feels that connection deeply. “Being connected to the mountains, nature, and the creative spirit of this place fuels me. I see folk art as being made from an undeniable compulsion to create, and that’s the way I connect to it. In WNC, so many people express how they see the world or what they find beautiful in a joyously unrestrained way you don’t often find anywhere else.” That spirit — joyful, intuitive, and deeply personal — runs through Coté’s work. With nothing more than wire, pliers, and imagination, he creates sculptures that feel both delicate and powerful. Each piece invites the viewer to slow down, look closely, and discover the life contained within a single line.
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50 F o o t h i l l s F o l k A r t F e s t i va l There’s a particular kind of joy in watching a place grow into itself. Not by trying to become something it isn’t, but by deciding—again and again—that what it already has is worth tending. That’s what’s happening in Newton. And that’s what the Folk Art Festival has become: not just an event that lands on the calendar once a year, but something the town has chosen to carry forward. I remember when this festival felt smaller and more tucked-away, like something you found if you were already part of the art world. It didn’t feel like a “town- wide” thing yet. It felt like a little secret. And when I mentioned that memory, the organizers smiled, because it lined up with the festival’s beginnings. “When it originally started in 2006,” Mary Yount told me, “it was down in the Denver, Lake Norman area. And it was literally out in a field.” An actual field. Dirt underfoot. Weather deciding whether the day would be kind or not. Thirty or so vendors. The kind of early-stage gathering that feels intimate and hopeful—but also fragile. The kind of thing that can disappear quietly if the wrong combination of fatigue, logistics, and life changes stack up. And for a while, it nearly did.
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51 The people who first built it were older, part of a collaborative. The art museum and volunteers were involved. Over time, attrition set in. Folks got tired. The labor got heavier. The joy got harder to sustain. “We just can’t do this anymore,” was the point it reached. Originally, the festival lived in the fall. After COVID reshaped everything about how communities move through time and events, there was talk about shifting it to spring. The museum participated in that transition once—and then stepped back. As they explained, the museum was in the middle of big changes: renovations, expansion, strategic decisions about where their energy needed to be centered. Charlie Frye sits with his paintings Terry Ratchford enjoys the day
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Since 1990 2613 N Center St, Hickory (828) 323-8477 kellyandcompanysalon.com Use this QR code to book your appointment! If your hair’s not ready, you’re not ready. Let Kelly’s finish the look. If the festival wasn’t on their property and wasn’t centered in Hickory, they couldn’t keep carrying it the same way. Their board wanted those resources focused inward. What happened next is the part that matters most to me. Newton didn’t let the festival disappear. “The city said, we can’t lose it,” she told me. And downtown businesses agreed. They know what it means when people come into town because something good is happening in the street. They know what it means for a place to feel alive for a day. They stepped up alongside the city to make sure this didn’t quietly fade out of existence. That’s how this became a Newton thing— not by default, but by decision. Now, in 2026, they’re calling this the 10th anniversary year in Newton, since the festival came here in 2016. The timeline is a little strange because of the COVID years, and she laughed about how communities everywhere are still trying to explain to future generations why anniversaries feel “off” by a couple of years. The truth is, those gaps are part of the story now, too. What’s changed over time isn’t just the location—it’s the philosophy. The festival has always been juried, but the energy around that has shifted. The goal isn’t to be precious about what counts as “real” folk art. The goal is quality, sustainability, and experience. “We have plenty of capacity for more artists,” she said, “but our goal is quality, not quantity. Our sweet spot is somewhere around 100 to 120 vendors of good quality folk art.” They’ve also gotten more thoughtful about what folk art even means in a living, breathing culture. The definitions they
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share with artists and jurors reflect that wider understanding. Heritage folk art focuses on the preservation of traditional methods and styles—skills carried forward through generations. Traditional folk art reflects adaptations made for function or community purpose, where techniques evolve naturally as people continue to use them in everyday life. Contemporary folk art represents the modern evolution of those traditions—work that maintains its roots while allowing room for individual expression. The changes are often subtle, sometimes driven simply by the need to make something function better in the present day. Andrew Massey playing in 2025
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And the throughline is simple: it’s not about credentials. It’s about the work. “Nobody sat and taught him how to do that,” she said about one of their wood carvers. “He just started doing it. And now you can look at it and say, ‘Oh yeah—that’s a bear.’” That’s folk art. That’s the spirit of it. They’ve widened the lens just enough to stay alive—opening space for certain fine artists when the work fits the feel of folk art, expanding mediums to include fiber, glass, iron forging, wood carving, and repurposed materials. They’ve also had to reckon with the reality that many artists are aging, and hauling tents and tables weekend after weekend takes a toll. “They don’t want to come and sit for four hours and lug stuff and put it up and take it down and take it somewhere else and do it all over again the next weekend.” So sustainability isn’t just about the festival surviving—it’s about the artists being able to keep showing up. This year, they’re making changes that reflect that care. Booths are arranged back-to-back in the middle of the street to protect the work and improve flow. Food vendors are curated so downtown restaurants aren’t undercut. Restaurants are offering delivery to vendors, because nobody should have to choose between eating and keeping their booth open. And then there’s the youth art feature.
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They’re inviting 7th and 8th graders to create small 3x3 canvases that will be displayed during the festival. When they started talking about the numbers of students involved, she laughed and admitted, “My mouth hit the floor.” The scale is bigger than they expected. But they’re doing it anyway, because they understand what it brings with it: families. Grandparents. First-time visitors. A generation seeing their work treated as something worth displaying in public. That’s not just cute. That’s cultural continuity. From what they can tell, this is the largest folk art festival in western North Carolina. There are others—smaller, more elite, more niche. But this one has become expansive. Rooted. A street-level experience of what art looks like when it belongs to a town, not just to a gallery. And Newton itself is changing in ways that feel aligned with that spirit. There’s a creative energy here right now— new art spaces, collaboration between businesses, people choosing to build something together instead of competing for the same sliver of attention. It doesn’t feel like Newton is trying to become Asheville or anything else. It feels like it’s becoming Newton on purpose. Mary Yount said it best: the attitude here is that everybody is welcome, and there’s enough for everybody. If we all pull from our own circles, there’s room for the whole thing to grow. That’s what this festival represents to me now. Not nostalgia for what folk art used to be— but continuity. A living practice. A town deciding that handmade things, shared space, and creative work in public still matter. And in a world that moves fast and forgets faster, that choice feels quietly radical. Mug by Ashley Gaylord Snake jug by Ed Lane
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58 Theresa Gloster: Painting Memory Into Place The road into Lenoir softens as it climbs—curves loosening, trees leaning in like they’ve got something to say. You don’t come here by accident. You come because someone told you there’s a woman who paints her memories into the walls of her life. You come because you’ve heard there’s a place where stories live on doors, on chairs, on fences, on the bones of old things. You come because you’ve heard of Theresa Gloster. Her home, known to many as Gin’s Knob Folk Art, doesn’t announce itself with a sign. It announces itself with feeling. Color spills outward. Shapes hold stories. Objects refuse to be quiet. You get the sense that everything here has been touched not just by paint, but by remembrance. Theresa Gloster calls herself a “memory artist,” and the phrase fits her work better than any formal label ever could. She paints the past—not as nostalgia, not as fantasy, but as lived truth. Her paintings tell stories of growing up in a close-knit Black community in the foothills of North Carolina. They hold church scenes, children in motion, kitchens, porches, everyday life. The moments are small, but the meaning is large. These are the details that form a life. These are the details that get lost when history is written only by the powerful.
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59 Her art does not smooth over hardship. It does not prettify struggle. It remembers joy alongside survival. It remembers laughter inside limitation. It remembers community as both shelter and witness. Theresa did not come to art through formal schooling. She came to it through need. Through the quiet insistence of memory asking not to be forgotten. She worked for many years as a beautician, a trade that trained her eye in color, in tone, in transformation. But painting called her differently. It wasn’t about surface beauty. It was about preservation. About witness. When she began to paint, she didn’t stop at canvas. Chairs, doors, frames, walls, furniture—anything old enough to carry story became fair ground. The act itself is a kind of reclamation: what was once discarded becomes a bearer of memory. What was overlooked becomes seen. Even the frames of her paintings are painted, because for Theresa, the border matters. The container matters. The space around the story is still part of the story. Walking through her space feels less like viewing art and more like stepping into someone’s living memory. There is no neutral room. Every surface participates. The house becomes an archive, but not a quiet one. This archive speaks. It laughs. It remembers out loud. There is something radical about choosing to tell your own story in a world that often ignores rural Black narratives. Theresa’s paintings insist on presence. They insist that ordinary lives are worthy of being recorded. They insist that beauty does not belong only to galleries, but to kitchens, backyards, front steps, and community rooms. Her recognition in folk and traditional arts circles has brought new eyes to her work, but the work itself has never shifted to meet an audience. It remains rooted in her voice. Rooted in the memories that shaped her. Rooted in the belief that stories don’t need polish to be powerful—they need honesty. Theresa’s paintings feel alive because they are not trying to impress. They are trying to remember. They carry the weight of lived experience, of growing up in a world shaped by both care and constraint. Her figures Where History Comes to Life! Celebrate our nation’s upcoming 250th anniversary at the Catawba County Museum of History. The new America 250 Exhibit highlights the people, stories, and moments that shaped our country—all inside the beautifully preserved 1924 historic courthouse. Open Tuesday–Friday from 9 AM to 4 PM.
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61 often move together—children gathered, families clustered, people in motion. The sense of togetherness is not sentimental; it’s structural. Community was not an aesthetic choice. It was a way of surviving. There is also play in her work. Humor. Color that refuses to be muted. Even when depicting struggle, her palette stays vibrant, as if to say: we were still alive inside it. We were still full of motion and noise and laughter. In a region where folk art is often associated with white Appalachian tradition, Theresa Gloster’s work expands the story of what Appalachian folk art looks like—and who it belongs to. Her paintings remind us that Black Appalachian communities have always been here, have always been making culture, have always been holding memory. Her work is not just personal—it is corrective. It fills in the spaces that history books leave blank. What Theresa offers is not just art, but a model of how to live with memory instead of burying it. She does not sanitize the past, but she also does not let it harden into bitterness. Her work holds complexity. It holds tenderness and truth in the same frame. To stand in her space is to feel the presence of generations. It is to understand that folk art is not about quaintness. It is about survival. It is about marking that you were here. That your people were here. That your stories mattered enough to paint onto the walls of your life. And in that act—painting memory into place—Theresa Gloster gives the foothills another layer of truth. One that cannot be erased.
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A Home for Mountain Making Walking into the Folk Art Center just off the Blue Ridge Parkway feels less like entering a museum and more like stepping into a long conversation — one that has been unfolding in these mountains for generations. Inside, the work speaks softly but confidently. Handwoven baskets, carved wood, pottery, textiles, furniture, and paintings sit not as relics of the past, but as evidence of something still very much alive. These are objects shaped by hands that understand repetition, patience, and purpose. The center itself sits at Milepost 382 of the Blue Ridge Parkway and serves as a cooperative project between the National Park Service and the Southern Highland Craft Guild, one of the most important organizations supporting craft traditions in Southern Appalachia. The Guild’s roots stretch back to 1930, when a group of mountain artisans in Tennessee formed the Southern Mountain Handicraft Guild. The Great Depression was devastating for rural communities across Appalachia, but the Guild helped its members survive by creating opportunities to market their work while preserving the region’s traditional skills. Nearly a century later — and after two name changes — the Southern Highland Craft Guild remains a vital force in the Appalachian arts community. Its mission centers on cultivating the crafts and makers of the Southern Highlands through shared resources, education, marketing opportunities, and the preservation of traditional techniques. Guild membership is drawn from across the Appalachian region, including Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Maryland, and Alabama. Becoming a member is no small accomplishment. The application process is rigorous and juried, with only about ten percent of applicants accepted — a mark of both artistic skill and dedication to craft. Folk Art Center Chelsea Lane Photography
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Quilt by Connie Brown and photo taken by Diana Gates Photography
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The Folk Art Center serves as the public face of this community. Inside, visitors will find a large craft shop featuring the work of Guild members, a library, three exhibition spaces, an auditorium for events, and a National Park Service bookstore and information desk. The center also houses a significant permanent collection of handmade objects and traditional craft forms, with works representing generations of Southern Appalachian makers. Because the collection rotates regularly, each visit offers something new to discover — from traditional woodcarving and pottery to textiles, basketry, furniture, and handmade dolls. Much of this collection traces back to Frances Louisa Goodrich, a remarkable figure in the history of Appalachian craft. Goodrich moved to the Asheville area in 1890 and quickly noticed something many outsiders overlooked: the mountain communities surrounding her possessed extraordinary traditional skills. Woodcarving, weaving, basket making, pottery — these were not hobbies but everyday practices, passed down through families. Goodrich believed there was a wider market for this work. She founded Allanstand Craft Shop, one of the first roadside craft shops devoted to Appalachian handmade goods. Her instinct proved correct. The shop helped introduce the craftsmanship of mountain artisans to audiences far beyond the region. Her work became part of the broader Southern Appalachian Handicraft Revival, a cultural movement spanning the late 1800s through the early twentieth century that sought to preserve traditional craft skills while providing economic opportunities for rural communities. That same movement helped inspire institutions like Penland School of Craft and the John C. Campbell Folk School. When the Southern Highland Craft Guild was formally established, Goodrich was already 75 years old. Confident in the Guild’s mission, she donated both her Allanstand Cottage Industries business and a large collection of traditional crafts to help form its foundation. Today, that legacy continues inside the Folk Art Center. Visitors move slowly through the building, often lingering longer than they expected. It’s easy to find yourself leaning closer to examine tool marks in a carved bowl or the subtle rhythm of a handwoven basket. The work rewards attention. The Guild’s mission has always extended beyond preservation. Connecting artists with the marketplace remains one of its core goals.
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Each year the organization hosts two major Craft Fairs in downtown Asheville at Harrah’s Cherokee Center, held in July and October. These weekend-long events bring together more than 200 makers and attract over 10,000 visitors who come to see — and purchase — some of the finest handmade craft in the region. But even on a quiet weekday, the Folk Art Center carries the same spirit. Visitors drift through the galleries. Conversations happen softly between display cases. The building feels welcoming rather than formal, as if the craft itself is guiding the pace. Live craft demonstrations take place in the lobby daily from March through December, with educational events offered throughout the year — reminders that this is a living tradition, not a static display. For readers across the foothills, the Folk Art Center is also remarkably accessible — an easy day trip along the Blue Ridge Parkway that rewards curiosity. You might stop in for an hour or spend an entire afternoon wandering through the galleries. Either way, you leave reminded of something important. Appalachian craft was never just about objects. It was about skill, usefulness, beauty, and pride — values that have lived in these mountains for generations. Inside the Folk Art Center, those values are still being practiced every day. NoCo ARTS presents Minnie Evans: Draw or Die in Newton, NC, on the eve of the Foothills Folk Art Festival. In collaboration with filmmaker Linda Royal and The New State Cinema, this special event features two screenings of the film, each followed by a Q+A, plus a reception at NoCo ARTS. Friday, May 8, 2026 Showtimes: 4 PM & 7 PM (Q+A after each) Reception (NoCo ARTS): 5:30–7 PM Live Music: Fred Royal & Dean Snyder www.minnieevansfilm.com Presented in partnership with The New State Cinema and the Downtown Newton Development Association.
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Clay That Tells a Story Clay That Tells a Story Crystal King and the Spirit of Folk Pottery
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67 In North Carolina, pottery has always been more than a craft. It is part of a living tradition—one shaped by the region’s clay-rich soil, long lines of potters, and a deep cultural appreciation for objects made by hand. Within that tradition, Seagrove potter Crystal King has developed a voice that feels both rooted in history and unmistakably her own. King’s work lives comfortably within the broad family of Southern folk art pottery, but it also carries a sense of play. Many of her pieces seem to have personalities of their own—expressive forms, lively surfaces, and unexpected details that invite a second look. They are the kinds of pots that make people pause, lean in, and smile before they even realize why. That sense of character places her work in conversation with the expressive traditions of Southern folk pottery. Across the region, potters have long created pieces that move beyond pure function. The famous face jugs of the Carolinas and Georgia, animal figures, and other sculptural vessels all show how clay can become a storytelling medium as much as a practical one. King’s pottery nods to that lineage while remaining distinctly contemporary. Her pieces feel spontaneous and personal, shaped as much by intuition as by tradition. Folk pottery often exists in that interesting space between usefulness and personality. A jug may still hold something. A bowl can still serve a table. But the object also carries a sense of humor, curiosity, or spirit that makes it feel almost alive. King understands that instinctively. Her work feels animated—sometimes playful, sometimes a little mischievous, always unmistakably human. Collectors of Southern self-taught and folk art have taken notice. King regularly exhibits at the Fearrington Folk Art Show, a respected gathering of artists working within the rich tradition of contemporary Southern folk art. And closer to home for many collectors of North Carolina pottery, she is also a familiar presence at the Catawba Valley Pottery and Antiques Festival, where visitors can find her work among the region’s celebrated traditional potters and folk artists. In both settings, her pottery feels perfectly at home—surrounded by objects that share the same essential quality: they speak with the voice of the person who made them. And perhaps that is the enduring power of folk pottery. It refuses to be anonymous. It carries fingerprints, humor, and the quiet marks of the maker’s hand. In Crystal King’s work, clay becomes what it has always been in North Carolina—a material capable of holding both tradition and personality at the same time.
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e Bascom: Where Art Meets the plateau Tucked into the Highlands-Cashiers Plateau, The Bascom: A Center for the Visual Arts feels less like a traditional art center and more like something that grew naturally out of the land around it. It didn’t start big. Back in 1985, it was just a single room inside the Hudson Library. Today, it stretches across six acres of what used to be a horse farm—now home to galleries, working studios, gathering spaces, and quiet corners where people come to sit, think, and make things with their hands. Each year, more than 20,000 people pass through, though it never quite loses that sense of being a local place. At its core, The Bascom is about participation. Not just looking at art, but stepping into it. Their mission—helping people see, think, and do—shows up in the rhythm of the campus: exhibitions rotating through three gallery spaces, classes in everything from ceramics to fiber arts, visiting artists sharing their work, and programs that reach well beyond the campus itself. You’ll find their footprint in libraries, senior centers, and schools across the Plateau, where art shows up not as something distant, but something you can try. Something you can learn. Something you can carry with you. That idea—art as something for everyone—is built into how The Bascom operates. Admission to the galleries is free. Scholarships help people take classes who otherwise couldn’t. Community events bring folks together without a barrier at the door. It’s all part of making sure the arts don’t belong to just a few—but to the whole community. And you can see that most clearly in the work itself. Exhibitions often reflect the people of the Plateau—like Drawn to the Plateau , where young artists from the Boys & Girls Club step into the gallery and see their work on the walls. For many, it’s the first time they’ve seen themselves that way. Clay, Fire, and the Long Tradition of Making If there’s a heartbeat at The Bascom, it might be the ceramics studio. The Dave Drake Studio stays active nearly every day of the week, with potters working, teaching, and experimenting in a space that feels alive with motion. It’s where you’ll find seasonal pottery shows, visiting artists, and the kind of quiet focus that comes from learning something with your hands. In 2025, that work expanded with the addition of a new soda kiln—an outdoor firing space that brings a more atmospheric, unpredictable element into the process. Soda firing leaves its mark in ways you can’t fully control, creating surfaces shaped as much by fire and air as by the artist themselves. It’s the kind of process that feels right at home in the mountains—part craft, part collaboration with the elements. A Summer That Tells a Larger Story This season, The Bascom is leaning into something deeper: the idea that craft isn’t just about objects—it’s about passing knowledge from one set of hands to another.
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I Sing Behind the Plow Bunzl Gallery | May 9 – August 8, 2026 Created in partnership with John C. Campbell Folk School, this exhibition marks 100 years of teaching traditional craft in the mountains of North Carolina. For a century, the Folk School has quietly kept these traditions alive—blacksmithing, weaving, carving, pottery, music, and more—by teaching them, one person at a time. The exhibition brings together 50 pieces that reflect that history, but the real focus isn’t just the finished work. It’s the relationship behind it. A teacher passing on what they know. A student learning by doing. A tradition continuing not because it’s preserved behind glass, but because it’s practiced. Connecting to Place: Blue Ridge Craft Trails Invitational 2026 Thompson Gallery | May 16 – July 25, 2026 Across Western North Carolina, craft has always been tied to the land—clay pulled from the ground, wood shaped from the forest, fibers gathered and woven into something lasting. This exhibition, inspired by the Blue Ridge Craft Trails, brings together artists whose work is rooted in that relationship to place. It’s a snapshot of a region where traditional and contemporary practices sit side by side, each shaped by the same mountains. More than anything, it’s a reminder: the reputation of this region wasn’t built overnight. It grew slowly, through generations of people who knew how to make something well—and cared enough to keep doing it. Why It Matters (And Why You Should Go) There’s a quiet shift that happens when you spend time at The Bascom: A Center for the Visual Arts. You might come for an exhibition, or to see what all the fuss is about, or just because you found yourself in Highlands with a little time to spare. But somewhere between the galleries and the studios, something settles in. You start to notice the way people are working—not rushing, not performing, just making. You see a child standing a little taller in front of their own piece on the wall. You catch the smell of clay or wood or paint and remember, maybe, that you used to like doing something like this too. And that’s really what The Bascom is doing here. It’s not just showing art—it’s reminding people that they’re allowed to be part of it. In a region where so much of life has always been built by hand, that matters. It connects the past to the present in a way that doesn’t feel forced or curated—it just feels true. Like something that’s been here all along, waiting for you to notice. So if you find yourself up on the Plateau—whether you’re chasing cooler air in the summer, driving the back roads, or just looking for something that feels a little more real—take the turn. Walk the grounds. Step into a gallery. Sit for a minute. I reckon you’ll leave with more than you came for. Photos provided by The Bascom: A Center for the Visual Arts
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70 Ali Givens The Fabric of a Life In her early adult years, Ali lived in New York City, working in a museum dedicated to medieval art. It was a place where time felt slow, sacred, contemplative. In the midst of the city’s chaotic energy, this sanctuary taught her that art could carry histories, stories, and quiet contemplation all at once. That, in folk traditions, the slow work of hands—stitching, piecing, layering—can be as profound as any grand gesture. Then, almost two decades ago, Ali discovered quilting in North Carolina. It wasn’t just a technique—it was a community. Quilting circles and textile gatherings here are often the heartbeats of local creative life, spaces where hands work together, stories ripple around shared light, and the mundane becomes sacred. Ali embraced this tradition not as an academic pursuit, but as a folk practice rooted in making, sharing, and belonging. That communal pulse helped her find her artistic voice. A Story in Thread, Color, and Home If you follow the thread of folk art—the kind that’s sewn into quilts, stitched around kitchen tables, passed hand to hand in community gatherings—you’ll find a story in Ali Givens’s work that feels both personal and universal. Her textile collages aren’t just pictures made of fabric; they are quiet folk tales told in color, texture, and memory. Ali’s journey began far from the piedmont hills of North Carolina. She grew up on island soil, surrounded by sea grapes, palm trees, and tropical houses that seemed to glow with light and color. Those early impressions—the teasing shimmer of sun on water, the deep greens and brilliant blues of a seaside landscape—stayed with her like an ancestral palette. Even now, when she paints and dyes her fabrics, you can sense that innate affinity for vibrant, playful hues that seem to hum with sunlight.
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Cloth as Memory and Place In her studio, Ali paints and dyes cottons, silks, and linens to build a palette that feels homegrown and lived-in. Then she cuts and layers them with a deliberate but intuitive rhythm, s e w i n g t h e m together so that the thread itself becomes drawing. I n h e r w o r k , stitches don’t just bind fabric—they draw edges, mark time, and carry shape like lines in a sketchbook. In pieces that explore interiors, cityscapes, and moments of quiet reflection, cloth b e c o m e s s k y , building, or chair; a fold can become a horizon; a seam becomes a thought line. Her work captures the hard- to-name feeling of being somewhere— of memory settling into a place as naturally as moss grows on stone.
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72 A Folk Artist in a Modern World Ali’s practice reminds us that folk art isn’t just antique patterns or historic quilts locked in museums. It’s living, breathing, and evolving. She teaches workshops where beginners learn to sketch with fabric and stitch with joy. In these settings, Ali doesn’t just show technique—she invites people into a folk way of making where mistakes become texture, colors sing, and every stitch is a story. Her work also travels beyond the home. She creates commissioned pieces for businesses, schools, and individuals, capturing meaningful places through the same language she uses for her personal work. Whether it’s a small textile vignette or a large wall piece, her art always carries that sense of human presence embedded in everyday life. Ali’s work embodies a truth central to folk traditions: anything familiar can become beautiful when seen with attentive, knowing eyes. A chair, a window, a memory of color on pavement—these are dignified subjects in her work because they contain life. They are stitched down not just with thread, but with attention and care. Color, Community, and Continuity What makes Ali’s work special from a folk-art perspective isn’t just her skill with needle and cloth—it’s her relationship to the thread that binds people to place and memory. Her quilts are not retrospective artifacts but living works that speak to where she’s been, who she knows, and what she feels. Each piece feels like a doorway into a story that’s both personal and communal. In a world where art is often quantified by trends, Ali’s textile work champions something more elemental: the joy of making by hand, the pleasure of color, and the deep human need to turn fragments of lived experience into something visible, warm, and connective. It’s this spirit—rooted in folk lineage but entirely her own—that makes Ali Givens’s work resonate as much with heart as with eye.
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73 Don't miss the biannual Carolina Crafted, Carolina Crafted, where artisans from across the foothills come together to sell their work twice a year, each Spring and Fall.
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W W hirli hirli g g igs igs A A W W ind ind A A rt: rt: When Motion Becomes Joy Long before anyone called it art, people in North Carolina were making things move. Tin cut into blades. Bicycle parts repurposed. Old fans, spoons, and scraps wired together until they caught the breeze and came alive. What couldn’t be thrown away could still spin. In eastern North Carolina, one man helped turn that impulse into something unforgettable. Using salvaged metal, road signs, and machinery parts, Vollis Simpson began building massive wind-powered sculptures that towered above the fields around Lucama. They weren’t made for galleries or audiences — they were made because he liked to see things move. His son once described the simplicity behind it all: “If he goes to the junkyard and finds 25 fans, he comes home and makes 25 whirligigs,” Leonard Simpson said. “He just did it for enjoyment. People would come from Wilson and stop and point. He came to enjoy the social aspect of it, and people started coming from further and further away. Next thing you knew, people were coming from Atlanta and Richmond.” What began as mechanical curiosity became something joyful, mesmerizing, and impossible to ignore.
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His whirligigs reminded people of something they already knew deep down: motion can be art. That idea traveled. Across North Carolina, makers took the spirit — not the scale — and made it their own. Smaller pieces appeared in yards and gardens. Wind spinners along fence lines. Hand-built sculptures that responded to the breeze with color and sound. These works aren’t meant to dominate a landscape. They’re meant to live inside it. What makes wind art so deeply folk is its refusal to stay still. It isn’t precious. It isn’t permanent. It depends on the world to complete it. Each spin is a collaboration between maker and breeze — between intention and chance. On still days, the sculptures wait patiently. When the wind arrives, they answer back. There is something hopeful in that. In a region shaped by labor and repetition, wind art offers a rare kind of relief — beauty without obligation. Play without productivity. Joy for its own sake. And if you’d like to see that joy up close, you don’t have to travel far. Three original whirligigs by Vollis Simpson stand in the main parking lot at the Hickory Museum of Art, where they spin and shimmer in the open air. In the foothills, when the wind moves through a yard or along a ridge, it doesn’t just pass through. Sometimes, it dances. design - installations- gallery 215a 1st Avenue SW Hickory NC 28602 wednesday thursday friday 10 - 5 fanjoylabrenz.com
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Allen Eaton Among the Folk By Anna Fariello It’s a shame more people don’t know about Allen Eaton. He was an author, speaker, and curator, as well as a champion, partner, and connector. He was a pivot point for creative activity and discussions that took place in Western North Carolina and other Appalachian states. Early in the 20th century, Eaton did as much to explain and promote folk art as anyone in the Southern Appalachians. Influenced by English cultural critics John Ruskin and William Morris, Eaton’s interest in art and making was decidedly democratic. He did not hold to a hierarchy of forms within visual culture but, instead, placed all creative activity on a level field. All three theorists sought a people’s art, a more widespread and diffused sense of creative expression, what others have called folk art, art made by the people and for the people. Raised in the Blue Mountains of Oregon, in 1915, he joined the University of Oregon faculty and was elected as the youngest member of the Oregon state legislature. Eaton’s path became fixed when he was presented with an opportunity to curate an exhibition for the 1915 international Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco. In the exhibit catalog, he expressed his philosophy: “No sharp line of definition can be drawn between the finer and the minor arts,” he wrote, “both are…are equally important.” With patriotism running high as the US entered the Great War, Eaton’s attendance at a peace rally in Chicago became hometown news. Following a front-page editorial, the case came close to causing riots in Eugene. When Eaton returned home, he faced dismissal from the university and lost the primary election. Losing his positions on the faculty and the state legislature, he left Oregon the next day. “With family and twenty dollars,” Allen Eaton went to New York City to begin anew. Within a few years, he landed a position with the American Federation of Arts where he organized Arts and Crafts of the Homelands, an exhibition that brought him acclaim. In 1919, when the Homelands opened at the Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo, New York, almost 50,000 people came to see it. In 1920, Eaton accepted a position with the Russell Sage Foundation that would place him on a path intersecting with John C. Campbell Folk School founder Olive Dame Campbell. He recalled their meeting in the magazine Mountain Life and Work. “One afternoon last winter as I stepped from my office,” he wrote, “I met Mrs. Campbell who was hurrying to catch her train for Washington on her way home to the mountains.” A conversation between the two caused Campbell to miss her train. But the time was well spent, as their chance meeting sparked a relationship that lasted the rest of their lives. Through her effort, Western North Carolina became Eaton’s home-away- from-home. In 1928 and 1929, Allen Eaton was one of a handful of people who attended the organizational meetings of the Southern Mountain Handicraft Guild. Along with a core group of craft leaders, Eaton helped articulate the need for cooperative marketing among dozens of schools and centers that produced handcrafted objects for sale. At Campbell’s invitation, Eaton spoke at the 1926 meeting of the Southern Mountain Workers, choosing as his topic “Mountain Handicrafts: What They Mean To Our Home Life And To The Life Of Our Country.” Quoting William Morris—“Art is the Expression of Man’s Joy in Work”—Eaton provided an inclusive definition of art that appealed to mountain workers. “The principles of art may be applied to all man-made things... art is above all else the most appropriate, the most fitting way of doing....[Art] is not so much the thing that is done as the manner of doing it.” He described “the making of an object from first to last, beginning often with native material...and following it to its final form of utility and beauty.”
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Allen Eaten is shown here photographed by Doris Ulman. 58 of her photographs are included in his book Handicrafts of the Southern Highlands. Photo courtesy of John C. Campbell Folk School Fain Archives
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I’ve often wondered why Eaton was not more well placed in the pantheon of art history. His exhibitions were many and pulled in numbers of viewers unheard of today. Likewise, his projects were no small ventures. One of his earliest, the exhibit for the Panama-Pacific Exposition included 613 works by 115 artists. In 1919, his Arts and Crafts of the Homelands exhibition drew 42,961 viewers in two weeks time. Other exhibitions included America’s Making Exposition (1921) at the New York City Armory and Immigrant Gifts to American Life (1932). In the catalog to Immigrant Gifts to American Life , he described immigrant work as “some of the best elements which we need in the building of our national life.” Handicrafts of the Southern Highlands (1937) chronicled material culture in the southern Appalachians. Today, 85 years after its initial publication, this book remains useful to contemporary scholars. One can see from these project titles that Eaton advocated for the democratization of the arts including immigrants and rural neighbors. He curated Rural Arts Exhibition (1937) in connection with the 75th Anniversary of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Handicrafts in the United States (1946). In 1952, he organized B eauty Behind Barbed Wire: The Arts of the Japanese in our War Relocation Camps , for which former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt wrote the introduction to the controversial exhibition catalog and, in 1959, Beauty for the Sighted and Blind , with a foreword by Helen Keller. Always, Eaton attempted to bring art to a wider audience, apart from the “art world” elite. He curated a series of high quality reproductions from paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art that were distributed to school classrooms. Always a champion of art by “the people,” Eaton’s work continued after his retirement from the Russell Sage Foundation in 1946. In 1959, while in his eighties, he organized an exhibit of American craft at the World Agricultural Fair in India.
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WPCC.EDU (828) 448-3500 1001 BURKEMONT AVE, MORGANTON Achieve Success! Experience the pioneering spirit that awaits you. Eaton subscribed to an intangible benefit of working with one’s hands. Both Ruskin and Eaton believed that bringing pleasure back to work would inspire the maker to become self-directed, self-disciplined, and free to pursue a path to self- discovery. He appreciated the meditative quality of the handmade process and the personal perseverance it takes to pursue a daily practice of creative making. My favorite Eaton quote sums up his philosophy and social conscience: “The time will come when every kind of work will be judged by two measurements: one by the product itself...the other by the effect of the work on the producer." Anna Fariello is a curator and author who has written several books on cultural organizations and traditions. She is available for exhibit projects, lectures, and book signings. She can be reached at Curatorial.InSight@gmail.com
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80 Barry Huffman Barry Huffman Tea, Kindred Spirits, and the Stories Behind the Work I’ve always felt like Barry Huffman is a kindred spirit. Not only do we both love folk art and the artistic traditions of North Carolina — we were both born and raised in Lee County, and we both married Catawba County men who encouraged us to settle happily in the valley. I love having tea with her. Barry knows the background of every piece she has, and she has so many. Not just objects — stories, attached to people and places and moments you can practically see when she tells them. Barry and her husband, Dr. Allen Huffman, have spent decades collecting contemporary Southern folk art, following back roads and front-porch introductions across the Southeast — from Florida to Alabama and back home to Hickory — forming real bonds with artists and learning the narratives behind the work. And here’s the part that matters for our community, and for this issue: their collecting didn’t just fill a home — it helped shape institutions. The Foothills Folk Art Festival traces its roots back to 2005, when the Hickory Museum of Art first acquired 153 folk art objects from Barry and Allen Huffman of Hickory. That acquisition sparked a larger movement at HMA: since then, the museum has showcased contemporary Southern folk art through exhibits, public programs, and special events — including an ongoing folk art exhibition on the third floor: Discover Folk Art: Unique Visions by Southern Self-Taught Artists. That’s one of the things Barry carries so naturally — the understanding that folk art doesn’t live only in frames and cases. It lives in relationships. In memory. In the way people tell the truth about their lives through paint, clay, wood, and found materials. It’s also important to say this clearly: Barry and Allen didn’t “give away everything.” They’re still deeply immersed in this world. But they have been generous in ways that ripple outward. A significant gift of work from their collection became the Asheville Art Museum exhibition Huffman Gifts of Contemporary Southern Folk Art, organized by the museum and shown in the Judith S. Moore Gallery. Even the exhibition’s framing reflects the Huffmans’ approach: the guiding principle isn’t status or trend — it’s the story each artist is telling. Barry isn’t only a collector, either. Her own work appears in that Asheville exhibition lineup — a quiet reminder that she’s also a maker with her own visual voice. And then there’s the clay — because you can’t talk about folk art in the Catawba Valley for long without pottery rising to the surface. Barry has been part of the documentation and celebration of Southern face jugs and Catawba Valley traditions for years, including authorship and scholarship that’s been cited in serious ceramics writing on the subject. It makes perfect sense that she’d be integral to the wider pottery conversation here, too — not as a distant observer, but as someone who knows the hands behind the work and the lineage behind the forms. To sit with Barry — over tea, over a story, over a piece she can place in time and name — is to be reminded of what folk art really is: not a category. Not a label. A way of seeing. A way of keeping. A way of honoring the people who made something because they needed to say it with their hands.
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Missy Cleveland The Art of Transformation In a light-filled studio in Newton, Missy Cleveland sits surrounded by color— layers of it, really—paint, fabric, texture, and the quiet hum of things being remade. Her work doesn’t stay still. It grows, shifts, and builds, much like the materials she’s drawn to: acrylics that move easily across canvas, and found objects that carry a past into something entirely new. Cleveland’s paintings feel rooted in the natural world but pushed just beyond it—flowers that pulse with unexpected color, leaves that lean toward pattern, compositions that feel both playful and deeply intentional. There’s a rhythm to her work, a kind of visual music made from bold palettes and repeated forms, where every mark feels like it belongs to something larger. You can see the hand in it—the layering, the decisions, the willingness to let a piece evolve instead of forcing it to behave. That openness is part of what defines her. She doesn’t limit herself to canvas. For years, she has painted directly onto leather hides for Old Hickory Tannery, creating one-of-a-kind furniture pieces that carry her unmistakable sense of color and movement into people’s homes. It’s a different kind of surface, one that asks for flexibility and trust, and she meets it with the same curiosity that drives all of her work. “Painting is a love! But the act of ‘creating’ is more powerful and makes my soul sing,” she says. “I get intrigued by different materials beyond paint and canvas. Fabric, wood, metal and other people’s discarded ‘trash’ can really get my wheels turning. The transformation from plain and uninteresting to something that cultivates inspiration and joy in myself and others is a very satisfying successful day for me.” That idea of transformation runs through everything she does. Nothing is wasted. What might be overlooked—a scrap, a surface, a forgotten piece—becomes the starting point for something vibrant and alive. There’s a generosity in that way of working, a belief that beauty isn’t rare or precious so much as it is waiting to be recognized. And that belief doesn’t stop at the studio door. Through her work with the Newton Arts Commission and the Downtown Newton Development and Design Committee, Cleveland is helping shape a community where creativity is visible, accessible, and woven into everyday life. She advocates for public art, for spaces that invite people in, and for the kind of environment where making things still matters. Her work—whether on canvas, leather, or something rescued and reimagined—carries that same spirit. It’s bright, yes. Bold, certainly. But underneath it all is something steadier: a deep, lived understanding that creating isn’t just about making something beautiful. It’s about giving something new a chance to exist at all. To learn more about Missy Cleveland’s work or inquire about commissions, you can reach her at MissyClevelandPaint@live.com. Follow along on Instagram at @_missycleveland_ and on Facebook at missy.cleveland.56, or visit www.missyclevelandart.com. Her work is also available locally at NoCo Arts, located at 118 N College Avenue in Newton.
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Jesse Onekhena, DMD, MD Alex Krisko, DMD, MD Bishal Johal, DDS, MD Hickory 3452 Graystone Place SE (828) 322-1667 Lincolnton 701 S. Laurel St Ste 2 (704) 732-7477 Statesville 1306 Davie Ave (704) 873-6988 Sherrills Ford 3489 Terrell Park Dr (828) 322-1667
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Modern Tools, Modern Tools, Mountain Traditions Mountain Traditions
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85 Chainsaw carving is loud, fast, and unapologetically modern — but in the foothills and mountains of western North Carolina, it sits inside a much older story of making. Wood carving itself is ancient here. Long before chainsaws, Appalachian craftspeople carved what they needed by hand, shaped furniture, turned bowls, and learned to make useful things with simple tools. What changes over time isn’t the impulse to make — it’s the tool in the maker’s hand. For Chris Markey Jr., owner of Markey and Son Woodcraft and Carving, chainsaw carving isn’t separate from that tradition. It’s simply the newest chapter. “Wood carving is ancient,” Markey says. “Chainsaw carving isn’t. But the principles are the same.” Markey came to chainsaw carving through traditional methods first — whittling, relief carving, chip carving, and Scandinavian flat-plane carving — learning to shape form by hand before ever picking up a saw. That foundation still shows in his work. His carvings carry visible facets and intentional saw marks, a choice that echoes the knife marks left in traditional Appalachian whittling. “Those marks are part of the language of folk art,” he explains. “They let you see how the piece was made. We leave planes and marks on purpose — it keeps the work honest.” That visual language connects chainsaw carving to Appalachian folk traditions in ways that might surprise people who see the medium only as spectacle. While chainsaw carving uses modern tools, it often shares the same priorities as
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whittling: strong shapes, visible process, and forms that feel carved rather than manufactured. Western North Carolina — and the foothills around Hickory, long known as the fine furniture capital of the world — add another layer of influence. The region’s culture of woodworking precision shapes how many local carvers think about finish, proportion, and form. “I see the chainsaw carving culture in eastern Tennessee,” Markey says, “and I see the fine furniture tradition here in the foothills. I wanted my work to honor both — to keep the folk character of carving, but with the dignity of fine craftsmanship.” Mentorship and community have also played an important role in his development. Markey points to Appalachian master carvers who continue to teach traditional methods and pass along knowledge of flat-plane whittling and caricature carving. Sitting in on advanced carving classes with master whittler Mitch Cartlidge gave him the opportunity to study those techniques more closely. “These guys are masters of their craft,” Markey says. “You sit with them, watch their hands, learn how they think about planes and facets. That changes how you carve — even with a chainsaw.” Markey also credits longtime Gatlinburg carver Michael Kopis, who has been carving professionally since the 1970s, as a major influence. 38 8Clear yar RdLur SCaCuyRLea pyuiCu8n RdC gyis,CNN pyiLN2 dy8 ,CCa Sue6LaS La 4yuiea2n IeuRd gyueNLay peu rClyrC8# 0dyR 8RyuRCr La RdC 8eLN ep eaC SCaCuyRLea leaRLa5C8 Rery2 P 6LRd RdC 8yiC lyuCn hae6NCrSCn yar leaaClRLea Re RdC Nyar# 3R gyis,CNN oyiLN2 I5u8Cu2n C:Cu2 sNyaR lyuuLC8 RdyR NCSyl2 peu6yur# 3613 Harmony Highway Harmony, NC 3613 Harmony Highway Harmony, NC (704) 775-2425 (704) 775-2425
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87 Kopis is known for bridging the worlds of traditional wood carving and chainsaw carving — a connection Markey continues to pursue in his own work. For him, chainsaw carving isn’t about novelty. It’s about lineage. The saw becomes another way to participate in a long Appalachian tradition of shaping wood into something that carries both utility and story. It’s less about what tool is used and more about what is carried forward — an understanding of form, a respect for material, and a willingness to let the process remain visible. In that way, each piece becomes part of an ongoing conversation, linking past makers to present ones through the marks they choose to leave behind. Folk art survives by adapting. It moves when tools change. It evolves when new generations learn old skills and apply them in new ways. In the foothills of North Carolina, chainsaw carving is one more way that tradition continues to grow — cut forward into new forms, while still carrying the marks of the hands that made it.
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The Tin Art of Thomas W. Graham: Tin, Memory, and Meaning At a time when the art world often prizes slick gallery finishes and conceptual abstraction, the work of Thomas W. Graham stands as a heartfelt counterpoint — a grounded testament to craft, materiality, and the deep human instinct to transform everyday objects into images that resonate. Based in North Carolina, Graham has become known for his richly colored tin can collages, works created from discarded metal containers that reflect both an appreciation for humble materials and a strong visual memory of objects from everyday life. His work has appeared in exhibitions across the country, from North Carolina to California. Graham’s artistic path did not begin with formal training in painting or sculpture. Instead, a mix of curiosity and circumstance led him toward tin as an artistic medium. A childhood memory — eyeing his mother’s typewriter ribbon tin because of its color and shape — stayed with him into adulthood. That early fascination with small metal containers foreshadowed what would eventually become a defining element of his artistic practice. The catalyst for his current work arrived in 1994 after Hurricane Fran passed through North Carolina and damaged his roof. While repairing it, Graham found himself working with scraps of sheet metal and galvanized metal, discovering a tactile satisfaction in cutting, bending, and shaping the material. What began as a practical task gradually revealed expressive possibilities. Over time he deepened his skills through workshops, including classes at the John C. Campbell Folk School, where he studied tinsmithing and encountered the practice of tin can art through mentors such as Bobby Hansson, author of The Fine Art of the Tin Can. Graham’s tin can collages sit comfortably within the lineage of American folk and outsider art — traditions that often emphasize resourcefulness, personal narrative, and an intuitive handling of materials over academic training. Rather than painting on canvas, Graham assembles a mosaic of existing imagery: the printed colors, labels, and graphics from tobacco tins, cookie tins, olive oil cans, spice tins, and other household metal containers. The process itself is careful and deliberate. Starting with a sketch or idea of an image — often birds, natural scenes, or abstract color compositions — Graham searches for cans that contain the exact hues or printed elements he needs. Each tin is flattened, cut into small shapes, and arranged before the pieces are secured to a wooden backing. The finished image is not simply a collage but a recomposition of printed fragments, creating pictures that are both lively and textured.
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In a field where the term folk art can sometimes be used loosely, Graham’s work embodies its essential spirit: artistic expression grounded in personal history and an imaginative re-envisioning of everyday materials. The typography, colors, and pictorial elements of the original packaging remain visible, giving each piece layers of visual history. A bird might emerge with wings formed from curved lettering; a landscape may be built from metallic fragments that catch the light in shifting ways. Graham’s work has found enthusiastic audiences in regional folk art circles. He regularly exhibits his collages at gatherings such as the Fearrington Folk Art Show and the Saxapahaw Holiday Market — events that celebrate self-taught artists and the vibrant traditions of Southern folk art. These shows bring together makers working across a wide range of materials, from wood and clay to metal and textiles, united by the power of imagination and craft. Beyond exhibiting, Graham also shares his techniques with others. He teaches tin can collage workshops at arts organizations across North Carolina, including Pocosin Arts in Columbia on the eastern side of the state and the Hiddenite Arts Center in the western foothills. These classes introduce participants to the careful process of working with salvaged metal and building images from fragments of everyday materials. What ultimately gives Thomas W. Graham’s work its resonance is not simply the reuse of materials, but the stories embedded in them. Each tin carries the memory of its original purpose; when reassembled, those fragments form new images and meanings. In that transformation, Graham’s collages celebrate a central idea of American folk art — the enduring ability to see beauty and possibility in ordinary things.
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I met Arie Taylor and her daughter Audrey at a family reunion, long before I ever decided to make a magazine about the region. They are cousins of my mother-in-law, and they grew up as friends. Arie is now 104 years old, and Audrey is still painting and still preserving the family’s work and heritage. At the time, I didn’t fully understand that I was sitting beside a small but remarkable piece of North Carolina folk art history. Arie Taylor is the daughter of painter Minnie Reinhardt, a self-taught artist from Vale who became known for her lively “memory paintings” of rural life in Catawba County. Minnie didn’t begin painting seriously until late in life, after cataract surgery restored her sight. Using oil paints her daughter Arie encouraged her to try, she began creating colorful scenes drawn from the world she had known as a young woman — farms, gardens, neighbors talking across fences, church gatherings, and children playing in dusty yards. Those paintings captured a way of life that was already fading, and today they serve almost like visual storytelling of early twentieth-century Appalachian communities. Arie grew up surrounded by those stories and scenes, and she began painting her own versions of the life she remembered from childhood in the foothills. Over the years she Family Tradition: The Paintings of Minnie Reinhardt, Arie Taylor and Audrey Sherrill Arie Taylor Audrey Sherrill Minnie Reinhardt
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produced hundreds of paintings filled with farmhouses, animals, gardens, and the rhythms of country living. Her work carries the same warmth and humor that made her mother’s paintings so beloved. The tradition didn’t stop there. Arie’s daughter Audrey Sherrill continues the family’s artistic legacy today. She paints in the same spirit of Appalachian folk art while also working to preserve and share the paintings of both her mother and grandmother. Like the generations before her, her work reflects a deep affection for the landscapes and small moments of everyday life that shaped their family’s story. Just as importantly, Audrey has helped ensure that the paintings themselves continue to live on. Through her efforts, prints and original works from the family’s collection still circulate, allowing new audiences to encounter these scenes of everyday mountain life — front porches, gardens, farm animals, and neighbors gathered together in the rhythms of rural community. Taken together, the paintings of Minnie Reinhardt, Arie Taylor, and Audrey Sherrill form a rare three- generation thread in North Carolina folk art. Each woman painted the world she knew, preserving pieces of Appalachian life that might otherwise have faded quietly from memory. Looking back now, I realize that reunion table held more than cousins catching up. It held a living link to a tradition of storytelling through paint, passed carefully from grandmother to daughter to granddaughter — and still going strong today.
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Following the makers Blue Ridge Craft Trails Across the mountains of Western North Carolina, there is a quiet map that doesn’t appear on most road signs. It winds through valleys and small towns, across ridgelines and back roads, and into studios, barns, workshops, and galleries where artists are still making things by hand. This is the Blue Ridge Craft Trails, a network that connects hundreds of artisans, craft schools, galleries, and heritage sites across the mountains. For travelers, it’s an invitation to explore the region through its makers. For artists, it’s a way to connect their work to the larger story of Appalachian craft. The trail was created by the Blue Ridge National Heritage Area, a federally designated region that works to preserve and celebrate the cultural traditions of the Southern Appalachians — music, agriculture, Cherokee heritage, nature, and craft. The idea behind the trail is simple: make it easier for people to find the artists who are still carrying these traditions forward. But what the trail represents is something much deeper. In the mountains, craft has never been separate from everyday life. People wove baskets because they needed containers. They carved tools and furniture because they needed them to work. Pottery held food, quilts kept families warm, and musical instruments filled evenings with sound. Over time, those practical skills became art. Today, Western North Carolina is considered one of the most important craft regions in the United States. The mountains are home to potters, blacksmiths, woodcarvers, basketmakers, instrument builders, textile artists, glassworkers, and sculptors whose work draws collectors and visitors from around the world. The Blue Ridge Craft Trails help people find them.
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93 A Map of Makers Unlike a hiking trail, the Blue Ridge Craft Trails are not a single route. Instead, they form a network of more than 300 stops spread across 25 counties in Western North Carolina, as well as the Qualla Boundary of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. Each stop represents a place where craft is happening. Some are working artist studios, where visitors can see artists shaping clay, forging metal, carving wood, or weaving textiles. Others are craft schools, where generations of knowledge are passed down through classes and workshops. There are galleries and cooperative shops where handmade work is displayed, and museums and heritage sites that preserve the history of Appalachian craft traditions. Together, they create a living map of the region’s creative culture. Travelers might visit a potter in a quiet rural valley in the morning, stop at a fiber arts studio in the afternoon, and end the day in a gallery filled with handcrafted objects. Along the way they meet the artists themselves — people who are deeply connected to their materials, their communities, and the mountains that shape their work. Craft in the Blue Ridge The traditions represented along the trail stretch back generations. Cherokee artisans have practiced basketry, pottery, beadwork, and carving in this region for centuries. Later, European settlers and African Americans blended their craft traditions with local materials and mountain life. Out of that mixture grew the distinctive craft culture of Appalachia.
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Pottery traditions developed in places like the Catawba Valley, where clay, wood-fired kilns, and family knowledge passed from one generation to the next created some of the most recognizable forms in American folk pottery. Woodworkers carved spoons, toys, and furniture. Basketmakers gathered river cane and white oak splints. Instrument makers built dulcimers, banjos, and fiddles that became the soundtrack of mountain music. These traditions are not relics of the past. They are still alive — often evolving in surprising ways — in the studios and workshops along the Blue Ridge Craft Trails. One of the best things about the Blue Ridge Craft Trails is that they are easy to explore, whether you’re planning a weekend trip or simply looking for an artist nearby. Visitors can start by exploring the trail online at BlueRidgeHeritage.com, where an interactive map allows you to search by: • location • craft type • artist studio • galleries • museums • craft schools You can build your own route and create a personalized itinerary that links together stops across the region. Some travelers focus on a particular craft — visiting several potters in one day, for example. Others explore by geography, following scenic mountain roads through a single county or region. The trail often leads to places you might never have found otherwise: studios tucked behind old farmhouses, galleries inside historic buildings, or workshops where artists are still working with tools passed down through generations.
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And when you visit, you’re not just looking at art. You’re meeting the people who made it. For the artists themselves, the Blue Ridge Craft Trails help bring visitors directly to their doors. That connection is important, because many of these makers live and work in small communities where traditional crafts are still part of everyday life. When visitors stop at a studio, take a class, or purchase a handmade object, they’re helping sustain those traditions. They’re also taking home something very different from what they would find in a typical shop. Every handmade object carries the mark of the person who made it — the turn of a tool, the curve of a handle, the slight variation that reminds you a human hand shaped the piece. That sense of individuality is part of what makes Appalachian craft so powerful. The Blue Ridge Craft Trails offer a way to experience the mountains that goes beyond scenic overlooks and tourist attractions. They invite visitors into the creative heart of the region. Follow the trail long enough and you begin to see a pattern. In barns, garages, old schoolhouses, and modern studios, artists are still doing what people in these mountains have always done — taking the materials around them and turning them into something useful, beautiful, and lasting. The map may lead you down winding mountain roads, but the destination is always the same. A maker. A workshop. And something being created by hand.
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In Tryon, Ben Seymour of Kudzu Patch Productions is part instrument builder, part preservationist, and part storyteller—whether he says that out loud or not. What began as a simple attempt to build a better instrument for his wife turned into decades of work rooted in sound, history, and wood. His shop is filled with instruments that feel both familiar and slightly out of time. Mountain dulcimers, yes—but also older forms that most people have never seen, much less heard played. The German scheitholt. The Norwegian langeleik. The French épinette. Instruments that crossed oceans generations ago and found a home in these mountains, where they slowly evolved into something uniquely Appalachian. Ben didn’t just learn to build them—he went looking for the ones that were almost gone. The Galax dulcimer, once made by a single remaining craftsman, could have easily disappeared. Instead, Ben brought it back into circulation, building them again by hand and placing them into the world where they can still be played. Step into his space and you don’t just see finished instruments—you see parts, pieces, wood waiting its turn. You see time layered into every surface. And if you’re lucky, you might hear one of them played, the sound carrying forward a story that started long before any of us were here. In Robbinsville, Billy Welch of Hunting Boy Wood Carving works in a quieter rhythm. He’s been carving for decades, and you can feel it immediately—not just in the finished pieces, but in the way the work seems to settle into itself. There’s no rush in it. No need to overcomplicate things. Woodcarving in the mountains has always lived somewhere between necessity and expression. At one time, it was spoons, tools, small objects made because they were needed. Over time, those same skills turned toward storytelling—figures, animals, shapes that reflect the world around them. Billy’s work carries that lineage. You get the sense that he understands the material deeply—that he knows when to guide it and when to let it speak for itself. It’s the kind of craft that only comes from years of doing the same thing over and over again, not out of repetition, but out of respect.
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In Murphy, Jo Kilmer’s work at Spirit Tall moves in a different direction—less about holding onto the past, and more about reaching into something harder to define. There’s a presence to the work. Pieces that feel intentional, almost meditative, as if they’re meant to do more than simply exist in a space. They ask something of you. They slow you down. The name itself—Spirit Tall—feels like a clue. These are works that stretch upward, that connect material and meaning in a way that doesn’t always need explanation. You don’t have to understand them completely to feel them. And that’s part of what makes them linger. In Canton, Desmond Suarez of Sabbath Day Woods has built his work around something increasingly rare: stillness. The name alone suggests it—a Sabbath, a pause, a day set aside. And that philosophy runs through what he creates. There’s a deliberate pace to it. A sense that the work isn’t trying to keep up with anything outside itself. You see it in the materials, in the forms, in the restraint. Nothing feels hurried. Nothing feels forced. In a world that often values speed and output above all else, there’s something grounding about work that insists on taking its time. Not far away, also in Canton, Thomas Langan approaches folk art with a different kind of energy—one that leans fully into expression. His work is rooted in the traditions of Appalachian carving, but it doesn’t stay there. It pushes outward. There’s movement in it, personality, a willingness to let the work carry a strong voice.
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That’s the thing about folk art—it isn’t static. It isn’t about perfectly preserving the past. It’s about continuing it. Letting each maker leave their own mark while still being connected to what came before. And that’s exactly what his work does. It feels both grounded and alive at the same time. Spend enough time on the Blue Ridge Craft Trails, and you begin to realize that the map isn’t really the point. It’s the people. Each stop is a doorway into someone’s life’s work. Their materials. Their habits. Their way of seeing the world. And these are just a handful. There are so many wonderful artists along the Blue Ridge Craft Trails— more than you could ever fit into a single story, more than you could visit in a single season. But that’s kind of the beauty of it. We hope you’ll use the resource. Take a drive. Follow the trail. And let it lead you—not just to places—but to the people who are still, every day, making something by hand.
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Long before plastic buckets and cardboard boxes became common, baskets carried the daily life of the Appalachian Mountains. They gathered eggs from henhouses, hauled apples in the fall, carried beans from garden rows, and rested beside the door ready for whatever the day required. Strong, light, and made from materials found close at hand, baskets were once so ordinary in mountain homes that few people stopped to think of them as art. But look closely, and the artistry becomes clear. Basketmaking is among the oldest craft traditions in Appalachia, rooted in both Native American knowledge and the practical ingenuity of early European settlers. The Cherokee people of the Southern Appalachians wove baskets from river cane, a native bamboo- like grass that once grew thick along mountain waterways. Using techniques refined over centuries, Cherokee makers created both everyday containers and beautifully patterned double- weave baskets, a sophisticated method that produces two interlocking layers of weaving in a single piece. When settlers arrived in the eighteenth century, they brought their own basketry traditions from Scotland, Ireland, and England. Over time, those traditions blended with Indigenous knowledge and adapted to the materials that grew most readily in Appalachian forests. The result was a distinctive regional style of basketmaking that relied heavily on white oak. BASKETS BASKETS
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101 White oak proved nearly perfect for basketry. When freshly cut, the wood splits naturally along the grain into long, flexible strips called splints. Basketmakers learned to pound the logs, split the wood by hand, and shave the splints into smooth ribbons ready for weaving. The process required patience and skill, but it transformed a simple tree into something remarkably strong and useful. Different forms of baskets emerged to meet the needs of everyday mountain life. Some were ribbed baskets, built around a curved handle and sturdy ribs that formed the frame. Others were split baskets, woven entirely from flat splints without a rigid structure. Shapes varied depending on their purpose—deep gathering baskets for produce, narrow egg baskets for careful carrying, and sturdy utility baskets for hauling feed, tools, or laundry. Most Appalachian basketmakers did not think of themselves as artists. They were farmers, woodworkers, and craftspeople making objects their families depended on. Yet each maker left subtle signatures in their work. The way a rim was lapped and pegged, the angle of the handle, the rhythm of the weave—these small choices gave each basket its own character. Over time, families and regions developed recognizable styles, passed down through generations much the way a song or story might travel through a community. By the twentieth century, as manufactured goods replaced many handmade tools, basketmaking began to decline. Yet the craft survived through dedicated makers and through the broader Appalachian craft revival, supported by craft schools, guilds, and regional markets that recognized the cultural importance of traditional skills. Today, Appalachian basketmakers continue to split oak logs, gather wild materials, and weave baskets much the same way their predecessors did. The work still begins in the forest and ends in the hands of the maker, each strip of wood crossing another until a useful object takes shape. A finished basket may look simple. But within its weave lies a long story—of forests and rivers, of Cherokee knowledge and settler ingenuity, of families who worked the land and made what they needed from what grew around them. In Appalachia, baskets have always carried more than things. They carry tradition. All baskets shown have been sold recently by Ledbetter Folk Art Auctions.
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102 The Art of Quilting Quilt pictured sold by Ledbetter Folk Art Auctions There’s a particular kind of quiet you find in a room where someone is quilting—not silence, exactly, but something softer and steadier, like the pull of thread through fabric or the rhythm of hands that have done this work long enough that they no longer have to think about it. It’s the kind of quiet that feels like memory, the kind that settles into a space and stays there. In Appalachia, quilting was never meant to be fancy. It was meant to keep you warm. It was made from what you had—worn shirts, feed sacks, scraps too good to throw away—and pieced together at the end of long days by people who still had just enough energy left to make something useful. But over time, something else began to take shape in those quilts. The scraps started telling stories. Patterns became recognizable, almost like signatures. Colors reflected what was on hand, yes, but also what someone was drawn to, what they needed, what they felt without ever saying it out loud. A quilt could hold a life in it. That’s part of what makes Appalachian quilting so enduring—it has always lived in that space between necessity and expression. It is practical, yes, but it has never been only that. Even the simplest quilts carry decisions, and those decisions carry meaning. And as the tradition has continued, generation after generation, it hasn’t stayed frozen in time. It has stretched. It has opened. It has allowed for interpretation while still holding onto its roots. The quilt we’re sharing here, made by Helen Keener, feels like it sits right in that balance. It carries the structure and patience that define traditional quilting, but there’s also a sense of freedom in it—an openness in how the pieces come together, a willingness to let the work move rather than forcing it into something rigid. It feels grounded, but not confined. Familiar, but not predictable. And that, to us, is some of the very best of Appalachian quilting. Because this tradition has never been about perfection. It has never been about following rules for the sake of it. It has always been about making something that matters with what you have in front of you. Something that will be used. Something that will last. Something that, years from now, someone else might unfold and recognize—not just for what it is, but for what it carries. Quilts were never just blankets. They were what you reached for when someone was sick. What you wrapped around your shoulders on a cold morning. What you folded and saved, knowing it might outlast you. They carry warmth, yes, but also care, time, and a kind of quiet knowledge passed from one set of hands to the next. And even now, as the world moves faster and louder and more disposable by the day, quilting asks something different of us. It asks us to slow down. To pay attention. To use what we have. To make something that doesn’t just serve a purpose, but holds onto something deeper. To make something that remembers.
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105 Some artists spend their lives refining a single line. Eric Cunningham goes the other direction entirely—layering, stacking, nailing, painting, and assembling until something louder, messier, and far more honest begins to emerge. Working out of the Bristol area, Cunningham is a self-taught artist whose pieces feel less like they were created in a studio and more like they were pulled straight out of a shed, a roadside pile, or the back corner of a garage. Scrap wood, bottle caps, license plates, and whatever else happens to be within reach become the foundation of his work. Nothing is too worn, too rusted, or too ordinary to be used. In fact, that’s the point. He calls his work Appalachian Disasterpieces, and the name tells you almost everything you need to know. There’s a kind of joyful chaos to what he makes—bright colors, rough textures, crooked lines, and figures that feel half-remembered and half-invented. Snake handlers, moonshiners, musicians, possums, and backroad characters show up again and again, not as polished portraits, but as impressions. They’re exaggerated, sometimes absurd, often funny, and always rooted in something recognizable. But beneath the humor is something steadier. Cunningham’s work taps into a long Appalachian tradition of making do— of using what’s available, of turning scraps into something that holds meaning. Where earlier generations wove, carved, or stitched out of necessity, Cunningham assembles. His materials may be modern, but the instinct behind them isn’t. It’s the same impulse that built baskets from white oak and instruments from whatever could be found close at hand. What sets his work apart is his willingness to lean into the parts of Appalachian life that aren’t always presented with care. He doesn’t smooth the edges. He doesn’t clean it up. Instead, he lets it stay a little wild, a little irreverent, a little uncomfortable at times. Some people see humor. Others see critique. Most see a bit of both. And maybe that’s exactly where his work lives—in that in-between space where pride and parody sit side by side.Because Cunningham isn’t trying to present a perfect version of the region. He’s showing something closer to the truth: layered, complicated, and held together with whatever was available at the time. Appalachian Disasterpieces by Artist Eric Cunningham
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106 Where the Old Things are Stored: The Museum of Cherokee People Images Courtesy of The Museum of the Cherokee People Before these mountains were called Appalachia, they were home. Long before roads cut through the ridges or towns gathered in the valleys, the Cherokee people lived, made, and created here. The land shaped their art, just as it shaped their lives — through river cane gathered by hand, clay pulled from the earth, wood carved with purpose, and symbols carried in story rather than written word. Today, that living history is preserved and shared on the Qualla Boundary in Cherokee, North Carolina — on the sovereign land of the Eastern Ba nd of Cherokee Indians — at the Museum of the Cherokee People, one of the longest-operating tribal museums in the country. Established in 1948, the museum has long existed to preserve and perpetuate Cherokee history and culture. But in recent years, it has done something more: it has reintroduced itself. Last fall, the institution formally embraced its Cherokee name: ᏣᎳᎩ ᎢᏗᏴᏫᏯᎯ ᎢᎦᏤᎵ ᎤᏪᏘ ᎠᏍᏆᏂᎪᏙᏗ “All of us are Cherokee people. It is all of ours, where the old things are stored.” There is something grounding about that phrasing. All of us. Not an archive separated from the community it belongs to. Not a collection interpreted from the outside. But a shared inheritance — stewarded, protected, and spoken for by Cherokee people themselves. Walking through the museum is a different kind of experience. It doesn’t feel like stepping backward in time. It feels like stepping into a conversation that never ended. And that conversation matters deeply to those of us who care about Appalachian folk art.
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107 Much of what we now call “mountain craft” — hand-built pottery, river cane basketry, carved tools, beadwork, woodwork rooted in necessity — has its roots in Cherokee making. Before settlers shaped clay in these valleys, Cherokee potters were coiling vessels by hand, firing them low and slow, impressing paddles into wet earth to leave both texture and story. Before woven forms appeared in mountain cabins, Cherokee artists were splitting river cane, dyeing it with natural pigments, and weaving baskets strong enough to gather, store, and carry life itself. The museum makes this lineage visible. Traditional forms are displayed not as relics, but as foundations. Visitors can trace design, material, and technique — and begin to see how deeply Cherokee art influenced what later became known as Appalachian folk craft. The story of making in these mountains does not begin in the 1800s. It begins much earlier, in hands that understood this land first. And those hands are still working. Many Cherokee artists today continue to create pottery, baskets, carvings, beadwork, and contemporary works that carry forward old knowledge while speaking in modern forms. The museum centers these living makers alongside historical objects, showing clearly that Cherokee art is not frozen behind glass. It is practiced. It is taught. It evolves. It sustains families and community. The museum is also preparing thoughtfully for the future. Plans are underway for a large offsite collections facility to properly steward cultural materials, and a multi-year renovation and reinterpretation of the permanent exhibition — last updated in 1998 — is in motion. Community voices, interdisciplinary perspectives, and scholarship from a new generation of Cherokee historians and Indigenous professionals are shaping what comes next.
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This is not a static institution. It is living, just like the culture it represents. The museum also tells the harder story — one that cannot be separated from the beauty. The forced removal of the Cherokee people from their homeland, known as the Trail of Tears, is acknowledged with honesty and care. Loss is named. Survival is honored. Resilience is not romanticized. The continued presence of the Eastern Band on the Qualla Boundary is itself a testament to sovereignty and endurance. What makes the Museum of the Cherokee People so powerful is its steadiness. It does not ask visitors to perform guilt. It does not soften history for comfort. Instead, it offers understanding — and with it, respect. For readers across Western North Carolina, this is an essential visit — not just for education, but for perspective. The folk art of Appalachia grew from many influences, many hardships, and many hands. But to understand it fully, we must begin with those who were here first — and recognize that their influence is not past tense. In honoring Cherokee art and culture, we are not adding something separate to the story of these mountains. We are acknowledging its beginning — and its continuation. From the collection, Museum of the Cherokee People: 'Bear Carving,' circa 1970s, wood. Amanda Crowe (Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, b. 1928, d. 2004). Hand-built and traditionally fired frog effigy pot, n.d. Maude French Welch (Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, b. 1894, d.1953). Clay. White Oak Easter Basket, Emma Squirrel Taylor (Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians), b. 1920, d. 2002. White oak, walnut dye, Rit dye. Nancy Zachmann
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April 23-26, 2026 WILKESBORO, NC STEEP CANYON RANGERS PETER ROWAN & THE WALLS OF TIME BAND THE JERRY DOUGLAS BAND MOLLY TUTTLE JOY OLADOKUN MAGGIE ROSE SAM BUSH BAND KETCH SECOR THE INFAMOUS STRINGDUSTERS RAILROAD EARTH ALISON KRAUSS & UNION STATION OLD CROW MEDICINE SHOW BLACKBERRY SMOKE C H A R L E S W E S L E Y G O D W I N featuring JERRY DOUGLAS
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112 MerleFest Where Appalachian Music Keeps Breathing
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113 In the foothills of North Carolina, folk art has never lived in silence. It hums. It rings. It carries. Long before anyone framed a painting or labeled a piece of pottery, music was already moving through these mountains the same way stories did—by ear, by memory, and by love. A tune learned from a neighbor. A ballad carried across generations. A fiddle line remembered long after the person who first played it was gone. This music was never meant to sit still. It was played on porches and in kitchens. In church basements and school auditoriums. At family gatherings and community dances. The instruments were simple—fiddle, banjo, guitar, mandolin—but the music they carried held entire histories. Songs told of work and weather, heartbreak and home. Harmonies rose naturally because people had been singing together all their lives. No one thought of it as “folk art.” It was simply the sound of living in Appalachia. Each spring, that living tradition gathers again in Wilkesboro. MerleFest has become one of the most important homes for roots music anywhere in the country—not because it tries to preserve Appalachian music behind glass, but because it gives the music space to breathe. Founded in 1988 in memory of Merle Watson, the festival grew from the legacy of his father, the legendary guitarist and singer Doc Watson. What began as a small tribute has become a four-day gathering that draws musicians and listeners from across the country, all connected by a shared love for the sound that grew from these mountains. But even as MerleFest expanded, its spirit remained grounded in the same values that shaped the music in the first place: community, storytelling, and respect for tradition. Doc Watson himself understood that balance better than almost anyone. Before MerleFest existed, Watson had already carried Appalachian music far beyond the mountains. In the early 1960s, during the American folk revival, he performed at the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island—one of the most influential stages in the folk world. Audiences there heard something they hadn’t quite heard before: the clear voice of an Appalachian singer paired with the precise, fluid guitar playing that would help redefine acoustic music. Watson’s style was rooted in the old ballads and fiddle tunes he had learned growing up in Deep Gap, North Carolina. But he never treated tradition as something frozen in time. Instead, he described his approach as “traditional plus.” That phrase became a quiet philosophy. “Traditional plus” meant honoring the old songs while allowing space for new influences, new musicians, and new interpretations. It meant that a fiddle tune from a century ago could sit comfortably beside a newer song if it carried the same spirit. It meant that tradition wasn’t a museum—it was a living conversation. MerleFest was built around that idea. Walk through the festival grounds and you’ll hear the full range of Appalachian roots music: bluegrass bands blazing through fiddle tunes, old-time string bands keeping dance rhythms alive, gospel harmonies rising from small stages, and young musicians learning the songs that shaped the music long before they were born. Some artists push the music outward, blending traditions and experimenting with new sounds. Others stay closer to the core, playing the songs almost exactly as they were first learned on front porches and in family living rooms. Both belong. That wide musical landscape is exactly what Doc Watson envisioned when he described “traditional plus.” But for this article—and for this moment—we’re leaning a little closer to the traditional side of the mountain. Not because the newer branches of the music aren’t important. They absolutely are. Appalachian music has always grown and shifted as each generation made it its own. But at the heart of MerleFest, there is still a steady current of musicians devoted to the older forms of the music: bluegrass shaped by the sound of Bill Monroe, old-time string band tunes passed down through families, mountain ballads carried forward by singers who understand where the songs came from. These artists are not recreating the past. They are continuing it. Across the festival grounds, dozens of musicians will be playing music rooted in Appalachian tradition this year. Some are legends who helped shape the genre. Others are younger musicians who grew up studying the masters. Together, they form the living lineage of mountain music. What follows are a few of our favorites—artists who represent the enduring heart of Appalachian folk tradition and who continue to carry that sound forward on the stages of MerleFest. Because in the foothills, the music has never stopped moving. And every spring, it finds its way back home.
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Alison Krauss & Union Station Few voices in American music carry the quiet clarity of Alison Krauss. When she sings, there is very little between the listener and the song—no theatrics, no unnecessary ornament, just a tone that feels steady and natural. It’s the kind of voice that seems to belong to the tradition itself, shaped by the same harmony singing that has traveled through Appalachian churches, kitchens, and community gatherings for generations. Krauss first gained attention in bluegrass circles as a teenager, recognized for both her fiddle playing and her voice. But what has defined her career is not simply talent—it is her devotion to the music that shaped her. With Union Station, the band she formed in the late 1980s, Krauss helped bring bluegrass and Appalachian-rooted music to a much wider audience without losing the discipline and musical balance that define the genre. Union Station’s sound reflects the classic structure of bluegrass ensembles. Fiddle, mandolin, guitar, bass, and dobro move together in careful conversation, each instrument supporting the others while leaving space for the story inside the song. Nothing is rushed. Nothing feels forced. The music unfolds naturally, the way mountain music often does when it is played by musicians who trust both the tradition and one another. Their presence at MerleFest feels particularly fitting. The festival itself grew from the musical legacy of Doc Watson, whose work helped introduce Appalachian music to national audiences during the folk revival of the 1960s. Like Watson, Krauss has built a career that honors the past while allowing the music room to grow. At MerleFest, where musicians gather each year to celebrate the traditions of American roots music, Alison Krauss & Union Station stand as a reminder that Appalachian music continues to travel far beyond the mountains while remaining deeply connected to where it began.
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Sam Bush For many listeners, the sound of a mandolin ringing through a bluegrass band is inseparable from the music of Sam Bush. For more than five decades, Bush has been one of the most influential musicians in roots music, known not only for his extraordinary playing but for the joy and energy he brings to every performance. Bush first rose to national prominence in the 1970s as a member of New Grass Revival, a band that helped expand the possibilities of bluegrass at a time when younger musicians were exploring new influences. Their music blended traditional instruments with elements of jazz, folk, and rock, creating a sound that eventually came to be known as “newgrass.” Yet beneath that spirit of innovation, Bush has always remained deeply rooted in the traditions of Appalachian music. His mandolin playing carries the rhythmic drive and melodic clarity that have defined bluegrass since the earliest days of the genre. Even when pushing the boundaries of the music, Bush never abandons the structure that gives bluegrass its unmistakable sound. That balance between tradition and exploration mirrors the philosophy that helped shape MerleFest itself. Doc Watson, whose legacy inspired the festival, often described his own musical approach as “traditional plus.” The phrase reflected a belief that the old songs should always be honored, but that musicians should also feel free to let the music grow naturally with each generation. Sam Bush’s career embodies that idea. On stage, his performances often feel more like celebrations than formal concerts. The band moves quickly through fiddle tunes, improvisations, and classic bluegrass songs, creating an energy that draws the audience directly into the music. The boundary between performer and listener begins to blur, reflecting the communal spirit that has always been part of Appalachian music. Historically, much of this music was played not for spectators but for neighbors—for dances, gatherings, and local celebrations where everyone shared in the experience. Bush’s performances retain that sense of community, reminding audiences that bluegrass was never meant to feel distant or formal. At MerleFest, Bush often serves as a bridge between the music’s past and its future. Younger musicians who grew up studying his work share stages with older players who remember the earliest days of bluegrass. Through those connections, the lineage of Appalachian music becomes visible—and the music itself continues to move forward. Photo by Heidi Holloway
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116 Steep Canyon Rangers In many ways, the Steep Canyon Rangers represent exactly the kind of musical lineage MerleFest was created to celebrate. Formed in North Carolina and shaped by the landscape of the Blue Ridge Mountains, the band carries forward the sound of Appalachian bluegrass while allowing it to grow naturally with each generation. Their music reflects a deep understanding of traditional bluegrass structure. Fiddle, banjo, guitar, mandolin, and bass work together in careful balance, supporting close harmonies and storytelling that feels rooted in lived experience. The Rangers have always been known for the strength of their songwriting, often drawing inspiration from the landscapes and communities that surround them. That connection to place matters in Appalachian music. Historically, many of the region’s songs were shaped by the realities of mountain life—work, family, migration, and the quiet emotional weight of home. Bluegrass and old-time music grew not only from musical traditions but from the stories people carried with them. The Steep Canyon Rangers continue that storytelling tradition in a way that feels authentic rather than nostalgic. Their songs reflect modern lives while remaining grounded in the musical language of the mountains. Photo by Michael Freas
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Old Salem and MESDA Wednesday-Saturday 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Closed in January. Tickets and information at www.oldsalem.org History lives here Over the years, the band has gained national attention, particularly through their collaborations with actor and musician Steve Martin. Yet even as their audience expanded, the Rangers remained firmly connected to the roots of the music that shaped them. At MerleFest, that connection feels especially meaningful. The festival itself sits just a short distance from the mountains where much of this music was first shaped and passed down through families and communities. When the Rangers take the stage, they are not simply performing bluegrass—they are carrying forward the musical culture of the region they call home. Their performances often balance driving instrumental passages with quieter, reflective moments where harmonies take center stage. The result is a sound that feels both powerful and grounded, reminding listeners that Appalachian music has always thrived on sincerity. Like the best folk traditions, the Rangers’ music does not attempt to recreate the past exactly as it was. Instead, it continues the conversation— honoring the forms that came before while allowing new songs and new voices to emerge. In doing so, the Steep Canyon Rangers help ensure that the sound of Appalachian music remains not only remembered, but alive. Big Sound in a Small Town hosting national, regional, and local acts. Great for rental parties! 109 11th Street NW, Hickory NC HICKORYPREMIER.COM
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Photo by Ryan Case
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The Jerry Douglas Band Among the instruments that shape Appalachian string music, the resonator guitar—often called the dobro—holds a distinctive voice. Its sliding, singing tone can weave through a melody or anchor a rhythm with equal ease. For many listeners, that sound is closely associated with one musician: Jerry Douglas. Over the course of his career, Douglas has transformed the role of the dobro within bluegrass and acoustic music. What was once primarily a supporting instrument became, in his hands, one of the most expressive voices in the genre. His playing blends technical precision with deep musical sensitivity, allowing the instrument to move fluidly between accompaniment and lead. Despite these innovations, Douglas remains firmly connected to the Appalachian traditions that shaped his playing. The melodies and rhythms he draws from often echo the same fiddle tunes, ballads, and mountain songs that have traveled through the region for generations. With the Jerry Douglas Band, that heritage becomes a conversation among exceptional musicians. The group blends bluegrass, folk, and acoustic roots music into performances that feel both adventurous and grounded. At MerleFest—where audiences gather to celebrate the many branches of American roots music—Douglas’s presence carries particular meaning. His work helped bring bluegrass to international audiences through decades of touring and recording, yet his playing remains deeply tied to the Appalachian traditions that shaped the genre. Listening to the Jerry Douglas Band at MerleFest is more than simply hearing great musicianship. It is hearing an instrument—and a tradition— continue to grow while remaining rooted in the mountains where it began. Follow the sound of fiddles, banjos, and front porch picking through the mountains and foothills of Western North Carolina with the Blue Ridge Music Trails of North Carolina. This living tradition isn’t tucked away in the past—it’s alive in community halls, coffee shops, festivals, and family gatherings across the region. Whether you’re listening in or joining the circle, the Music Trails guide you to authentic experiences where stories, songs, and generations come together. Discover where the music lives—and be part of it.
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Peter Rowan & The Walls of Time Band Few musicians carry a more direct connection to the origins of bluegrass than Peter Rowan. His career stretches across decades of American roots music, linking the earliest generations of bluegrass musicians to the artists who continue to shape the genre today. Rowan’s musical journey took a defining turn in the 1960s when he joined Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys. Monroe, widely recognized as the father of bluegrass music, led one of the most influential bands in American roots music. For young musicians, playing with Monroe was both an opportunity and an education—a chance to learn the discipline, repertoire, and structure that defined bluegrass at its core. Rowan absorbed those lessons firsthand. Yet while his roots remain firmly planted in Monroe’s tradition, Rowan has never treated the music as something frozen in time. Throughout his career he has explored influences from folk, country, gospel, and international traditions while maintaining deep respect for the bluegrass foundation that shaped him. With The Walls of Time Band, Rowan frequently returns to the traditional songs that helped define the genre. The group takes its name from one of Rowan’s most beloved compositions, a song reflecting on the passage of time and the enduring power of music itself. The performances often feel like living history. Rowan’s voice carries the weight of decades spent inside the tradition, while the musicians around him bring fresh energy to the songs. Together they revisit classic bluegrass material while leaving space for subtle reinvention. This approach reflects something fundamental about Appalachian music. In the mountains, tradition rarely meant exact repetition. Songs evolve slowly as they pass from one musician to another, becoming both old and new at the same time. At MerleFest—where the legacy of Doc Watson still shapes the festival—Rowan’s presence serves as a reminder of the lineage connecting today’s musicians to the earliest days of bluegrass. Through artists like Rowan, the music’s past remains visible—and its future remains open. Photo by Ryan Case
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Blue Highway For more than three decades, Blue Highway has been one of the most respected bands in bluegrass music. Known for thoughtful songwriting, tight harmonies, and exceptional musicianship, the group has built a reputation for blending tradition with quiet creativity. At the heart of Blue Highway’s music is storytelling. Many of their songs draw from Appalachian landscapes and experiences—railroad towns, rural communities, family histories, and the emotional pull of home. These themes have long shaped the region’s ballads and bluegrass traditions. The band’s instrumentation reflects the classic structure of bluegrass: guitar, mandolin, fiddle, banjo, and bass working together in balanced conversation. Each instrument supports the others, creating the layered sound that defines the genre. Blue Highway’s performances reflect that same musical awareness. Their arrangements are carefully constructed yet retain the spontaneity that gives bluegrass its energy. Over the years, the band has earned numerous awards and critical recognition. But what sustains their reputation is not simply technical skill—it is the authenticity of their music. Their songs feel lived in. Listeners hear not just instruments and harmonies, but stories shaped by real places and experiences. At MerleFest, where musicians from across the roots music world gather each spring, Blue Highway represents a strong thread of traditional bluegrass—music that continues to thrive because musicians remain deeply connected to the traditions that shaped it.
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AJ Lee & Blue Summit One of the most encouraging things about traditional music is how often it finds new life in the hands of younger musicians who approach it with both curiosity and respect. AJ Lee & Blue Summit represent exactly that kind of continuation. Their music carries the structure and discipline of classic bluegrass while reflecting the perspective of a generation that grew up studying the masters who came before them. AJ Lee began performing bluegrass as a child, learning the language of the music the way many Appalachian musicians once did—by listening closely, playing often, and absorbing the rhythms and melodies that shape the genre. Though the band formed in California rather than the mountains of Appalachia, their sound reflects a deep understanding of bluegrass tradition. That speaks to something important about the music itself. Appalachian bluegrass has never been confined strictly to geography. While its roots lie in the mountains, the style spread quickly through radio broadcasts, recordings, and traveling musicians during the twentieth century. AJ Lee & Blue Summit approach the tradition with careful attention to its musical foundations. Their performances feature the classic bluegrass instrumentation—guitar, mandolin, fiddle, bass, and banjo—woven together through tight ensemble playing and natural harmonies that echo long-standing Appalachian vocal traditions. What makes the band particularly compelling is the sincerity they bring to the music. Nothing feels forced or overly polished. Instead, their songs carry the relaxed confidence of musicians who genuinely love the tradition they are continuing. At MerleFest, where artists from several generations gather each year, AJ Lee & Blue Summit represent the younger side of that lineage—reminding listeners that traditional music survives when new musicians learn the songs, absorb the style, and carry it forward. Photo by Heidi Holloway
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Sister Sadie Bluegrass has always demanded exceptional musicianship. The speed, precision, and coordination required for a great bluegrass performance leave little room for hesitation. Every instrument must find its place within the ensemble, and every musician must listen as carefully as they play. Sister Sadie brings that level of musicianship to the stage with remarkable clarity. Formed by a group of highly accomplished players within the bluegrass community, the band quickly gained recognition for its powerful sound and tight harmonies. Their performances feature the classic elements that define traditional bluegrass—driving fiddle tunes, intricate banjo work, rhythmic mandolin, and layered vocal harmonies rising above the instrumentation. Yet what sets Sister Sadie apart is not simply technical skill. It is the collective understanding of the music’s roots. Each member of the band brings years of experience studying and performing within the bluegrass tradition. That knowledge shapes the way the group approaches both traditional songs and original material. Even when introducing newer compositions, the structure and feel of the music remain deeply connected to the genre’s Appalachian foundations. Bluegrass itself emerged during the 1940s through the work of Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys, but its musical vocabulary drew from much older traditions—old-time fiddle tunes, mountain ballads, gospel harmonies, and string band rhythms passed down through generations. Sister Sadie stands firmly within that lineage. Their performances move between high-energy instrumentals and more reflective songs where the harmonies take center stage, highlighting the vocal traditions that have long defined bluegrass music. At MerleFest, where bluegrass remains one of the festival’s central musical threads, Sister Sadie represents the continued vitality of the genre—music sustained not only by its history, but by musicians who approach it with skill, dedication, and genuine enthusiasm.
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Hogslop String Band While bluegrass often takes center stage at festivals, its older cousin—old-time string band music—remains one of the deepest roots of Appalachian musical tradition. Hogslop String Band draws directly from that style, creating performances that feel both energetic and communal. Old-time music developed long before bluegrass emerged as a distinct genre. It grew from a blend of European musical traditions brought by settlers and African influences that shaped rhythm and banjo playing. Fiddles and banjos became central to the style, later joined by guitars and other instruments as the music spread through mountain communities. Unlike bluegrass, which often highlights instrumental solos, old-time music emphasizes rhythm and collective playing. The goal is not individual virtuosity but a shared groove that keeps dancers moving and musicians locked together in sound. Hogslop String Band embraces that spirit fully. Their performances are lively and rhythmic, built around the driving interplay of fiddle and banjo that defines the old-time style. Tunes move quickly from one to another, creating the feeling of a musical gathering rather than a formal concert. That atmosphere reflects the social role old-time music has long played throughout Appalachia, where songs were often performed at dances, community gatherings, and informal celebrations. When Hogslop String Band takes the stage, audiences often find themselves clapping along, tapping their feet, or singing familiar choruses. The music invites listeners to join the rhythm rather than simply observe it. At MerleFest, where many branches of roots music come together, an old-time string band serves as a reminder of how deeply this tradition runs in Appalachian culture—music passed from musician to musician long before recordings carried mountain songs beyond the region. Photo by Hilda Smith
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Dom Flemons Dom Flemons is often described as an “American Songster,” a title that reflects the wide range of traditional music he performs and preserves. A singer, multi-instrumentalist, and historian of American folk music, Flemons has dedicated much of his career to exploring the roots of the songs that shaped American musical culture. His work is especially important for understanding the diverse influences that contributed to Appalachian music. While the region’s musical traditions are often associated with European ballads and fiddle tunes, African American musicians played a crucial role in shaping early string band music. The banjo itself—one of the defining instruments of Appalachian music—traces its origins to West African instruments brought to the Americas during the era of slavery. Through research and performance, Flemons brings attention to those intertwined histories. He performs traditional songs from across the American folk landscape—old-time banjo tunes, early country songs, ballads, and blues—demonstrating how these traditions overlap and influence one another. His performances often include stories that explain the origins of the music, helping audiences understand the cultural history behind the songs. Despite this historical depth, Flemons’ concerts remain lively and engaging, rooted in the joy that has always accompanied traditional music. At MerleFest, where the legacy of Doc Watson and Appalachian music remains central to the festival’s identity, Flemons reminds audiences that the story of American folk music is broader than many people realize. By bringing those stories forward, Dom Flemons helps listeners hear Appalachian music not only as a regional tradition, but as part of a much larger American musical heritage. Photo by Chad Casterlie
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A Tradition Still in Motion Folk traditions rarely announce themselves as history while they are happening. Most of the time, they simply continue—quietly, steadily—carried forward by the people who love them. That is the spirit that has always guided MerleFest. When Doc Watson helped create the festival in memory of his son Merle in 1988, the goal was never to build the largest music event in the country or to create a spectacle. The intention was simpler than that: to gather musicians and listeners together in a place where roots music could be played honestly and shared freely. Doc often described the festival’s philosophy as “traditional plus.” The phrase reflected his belief that the old songs and styles should remain at the center of the music, but that musicians should also feel free to explore and expand those traditions in ways that felt natural. Appalachian music, after all, has never stood still. It has always changed gradually as one generation learned from the last and then added something of its own. MerleFest reflects that same idea. Across the festival grounds each spring, audiences hear many branches of roots music—bluegrass, old-time, gospel, Americana, and new acoustic sounds that grow from those traditions. Some musicians push the music outward, blending styles and exploring new influences. Others stay close to the core. For this article, we’ve leaned toward that traditional side of the mountain. The artists featured here represent musicians who remain closely connected to the musical foundations of Appalachian culture: fiddle tunes learned by ear, harmony singing shaped by generations of family music- making, and songs that carry the stories of the region. Yet even these artists remind us that tradition is not a fixed point in the past. It is something living. Each performance at MerleFest becomes part of a much longer conversation between musicians separated by decades, sometimes even centuries. The songs that once traveled through mountain communities continue to move through festival stages, classrooms, living rooms, and front porches. In that sense, Appalachian music remains very much like the other forms of folk art celebrated throughout these foothills. Whether carved in wood, shaped in clay, painted on canvas, or carried through song, the tradition survives because someone is willing to learn it—and someone else is willing to pass it on. And as long as that exchange continues, the sound that first rose from these mountains will keep moving forward. Quietly. Steadily. Still very much alive.
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128 Chef Sullivan’s Appalachian Kitchen Chef Benjamin Sullivan has deep roots in the mountains of North Carolina—his family has called these hills home since the early 1700s. With over twenty years of experience in professional kitchens, Sullivan blends Appalachian tradition with modern culinary finesse. A graduate of the inaugural Johnson & Wales Charlotte campus and now the Director of Culinary Operations for Cranford Hospitality, Ben brings both heritage and innovation to the table. In this series, Chef Sullivan shares seasonal recipes that celebrate the flavors of western North Carolina with refined techniques and thoughtful updates. These aren’t just meals—they’re heirlooms passed down through generations, reimagined for today’s kitchens. As he puts it, “Sitting around a dinner table with recipes like these allows us not only to connect with our friends and family today, but with those generations that came before us who built what we have.” Turkey Pie Ingredients: • 4 tbsp chicken fat (lard, bacon fat, butter, oil—whatever you have) • 1 Medium onion, fine diced • 1 1/2 C Carrot, small dice • 4 tbsp AP flour • 1.5 C Chicken Stock • 2 C heavy cream or half and half • 1 tsp thyme • 1/2 tsp nutmeg, grated • 1/2 tsp Drty mustard • 2 tsp Texas Pete Chef Ben Sullivan Angel Biscuits Ingredients: • 1/2 cup warm water (100°F to 110°F) • 1 (1/4-oz.) pkg. active dry yeast (2 1/4 tsp.) • 1 tsp. plus 3 Tbsp. granulated sugar, divided • 5 cups all-purpose flour • 1 Tbsp. baking powder • 1 1/2 tsp. table salt • 1 tsp. baking soda • 1 cup cold salted butter, cubed • 2 cups whole buttermilk • 1 C Peas • 1.5 lbs Pulled chicken • 2.5 C Cooked Rice • 1 tbsp Salt or to taste • 2 tsp White Pepper Set the oven to 400F. In a large saucepan, heat the fat until melted, and onion and carrots and cook until the onions are translucent. Add your flour and stir until fully combined. Cook for another 3-5 minutes. Slowly add a half cup of the chicken stock to the flour mixture and stir until fully absorbed. Add the remainder of the stock and the cream in 1/2 cup intervals until the sauce thickens. Add the remaining seasoning, peas, and chicken. Fold the rice into the chicken mixture and place in a 9x9 casserole. Top with angel biscuit dough (recipe follows) arranged in an overlapping pattern. Bake for 15-20 minutes until biscuits are set. Activate the yeast in warm water for 5 minutes. Sift all dry ingredients together in a bowl, Work in butter and shortening. Add yeast and buttermilk and work until dough just comes together. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let rest at least 2 hours. Turn dough onto flour table and roll until 1/2 thick cut into desired shape.
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BLUE RIDGE parkway Live music on the TICKETS at b lue r idge m usic c enter.org Music Center Road, Galax, Va. | Milepost 213 on the Blue Ridge Parkway CELEBRATING 250 YEARS OF BLUE RIDGE MUSIC & FOODWAYS JUNE 12-14 Join us for a weekend of musical performances and delicious local traditions in partnership with The Bluffs Restaurant! summer concert series SATURDAYS @ 7 pm Steep Canyon Rangers • Shawn Camp • Chatham Rabbits • & more midday mountain music daily, 12-3 pm roots of american music museum daily, 10 am-5 pm FREE milepost music at parkway destinations sundays, 2-4 pm
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BECAUSE IT WAS NEVER MEANT TO BE PERFECT Folk art was never trying to impress anyone. It wasn’t made for juries or critics or white walls. It wasn’t created to be measured against rules or trends or technique. Most of the time, it wasn’t even made with the word art in mind.It was made because something needed to be said. Folk art doesn’t begin with skill. It begins with voice. A need to remember. A need to mark time. A need to say this mattered to me. That’s why it looks the way it does — uneven, expressive, sometimes awkward, often beautiful in ways that can’t be taught. Hands show. Brushstrokes wander. Perspective bends. Truth stays. In the foothills, folk art has always lived close to daily life. It shows up in yards and kitchens, on barn wood and scrap metal, on paper pulled from drawers. It tells stories about work and worship, loss and laughter, seasons and survival. These are not polished stories. They are honest ones. Folk art reminds us that creativity doesn’t belong to the trained or the young or the confident. It belongs to anyone who has lived long enough to have something worth saying. And maybe that’s why it still matters. Because long after houses change and fields disappear and names fade from memory, these pieces remain — quiet proof that someone stood here, saw this place, loved it, and chose to leave a mark. Not to be perfect. Just to be remembered. Sold by Ledbetter Auctions