Shoe Shrines

In my journey to cover more visual arts, I have found yet another thing I must add to my budding art collection -- a shoe shrine!

A few people are doing shoe shrines: Melanie Hill Guion and blogging artistic types like Kay Cox, but by far the shrine I HAVE TO HAVE is a selection from Carol Cutshall, aka Shezilla (it's a rockabilly-punk-surf band thing from what I understand). Her Elvis shrine is featured at the top of this blog.

Shoe shrines call to the Mexican Santo shrine tradition, and honoring someone via mixed media is part of the form. In fact, shrines are inherently homemade, and Cutshall uses hers to celebrate famous musicians. Still, the idea of a shoe as frame is at once whimsical and genius.

I am on a mini-quest to track down Ms. Cutshall as I've found a gallery that carried some of her stuff but has lost touch with her.

Shoe shrines will invade Winston-Salem this weekend, as more than 100 have been created to honor Arts District mover and shaker Kelly Petersen. Article to follow on Thurs.!

Documenting Mills

I've always had a special place in my heart for textile mills. Long before I had a love affair with fabric, I was drawn to the buildings themselves, their massive brick facades often full of comparatively-small windows. In North Carolina during my lifetime, mills have always been laying off, shutting down, becoming vacant ghosts of themselves surrounded by neighborhoods no longer anchored to a workplace identity.

Mills also have just generally been part of Southern culture and its expression since they first came on the scene after the Civil War. Some of my favorite mentions:

-- Lee Smith's Fair and Tender Ladies, where it's a coal mine but still a spot-on description of a mill village
-- The Hallmark Hall of Fame The Dollmaker with Jane Fonda in one of the most heart-wrenching movies, even for chick flick fans
-- Any of countless mill houses in any N.C. small town, whose hardwood floors, sturdy construction and streets that go somewhere are better than any house in a cul-de-sac dead end
-- Textile Mills songs, especially Pete Seeger's Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues. Check out this list for more inspiration: Textile Mill Songs

Mary Dalton, documentary filmmaker at Wake Forest University, adds to the conversation with her new documentary Oakdale Cotton Mills: Close-Knit Neighbors. My article on it today in Go Triad delves into the process that helped save the stories of this now-shuttered mill.

Chef Keith Snow article makes WNC cover

A rainy drive to Tryon, N.C. was worth it this spring. My profile of Harvest Eating's Chef Keith Snow is the cover story for the September issue of WNC Magazine! I was thrilled to bring the idea of the Chef's profile to editor Eric Seeger and even more thrilled when I saw the story. The photos are outstanding and really capture Snow's life -- one part farm, one part TV host, and one part celebrity chef.

I'm looking forward to his show, Harvest Eating, this fall on PBS. Until then, I'll enjoy my late summer tomato harvest and look forward to collard greens, my version of Harvest Eating.

Rocky Top and More

Just in time for football season, check out this month's Worth the Drive -- Knoxville in AAA Go Magazine. I cover what there is to do in Knoxville besides football, and (despite the spattering of orange everywhere) that actually is a lot! I look forward to getting a chance to return to check out the great downtown area, especially Market Square, where I had only an hour to race about and shop. I needed more, but still came away with a great paper star lamp from India, which proves focus is more important than time when it comes to shopping. :)

Artists & Tacos, Oh My!

Charlotte is, and has always been a city of neighborhoods. There are completely different experiences of life depending if you are in Shuffletown, Dilworth, or Myers Park. One of my favorite neighborhoods there is NODA because it figures in my personal history as well.

Up until a few years ago, I refused to call the North Charlotte neighborhood by the moniker NODA. I'd been going there for years, attending gallery crawls in renovated hardware stores, making jewelry in a tiny bead shop, and chowing down on some great sandwiches at Fat City. Before that, years before that, I'd even taken swimming lessons at the Johnson YMCA. And before that, years before that, my father had lived out his childhood playing baseball in this same neighborhood. It was part of Charlotte, it was part of me, and really to call it NODA was just too much ...

Well, repeat it enough and the name sticks, and well, it's now legitimate -- NODA it is. Although I no longer live in Charlotte, I get back often and try to visit 36th and N. Davidson Streets whenever I get a chance. Gone is Fat City, so I grab a taco at Cabo Fish Taco then stroll through the galleries. Honestly, it is a great destination for a day trip for those of you within driving distance.

Check out my article on NODA in the current issue of AAA Go Magazine, then find a day to visit if you like art and good food. And linger a while. You'll be back, just like me.

Fawning Over Folly Beach Pier

Found a link today to one of the last stories I did for Lowcountry Living, and one of the sappiest. But it does not matter -- I still miss the pier today, the way I could tuck myself into a little shelter bench on it. From in the shade there, I could watch the sun glistening off the water, looking north to a Charleston Harbor I couldn't quite see but definitely feel. For a little late summer nostalgia, click here ...

Outsider Art Inside My Heart

Look at that title!! They don't call me a writer for nothin'! OK, bad rhyming aside ...

I love country roads, not in the John Denver sense so much, as for the people and their houses that dot them. B. and I are always taking the backroads, and when I ride with him, I get to look out the window and imagine who is it that lives in the house with the "Fresh Eggs for Sale" sign or what it would be like to live in the North Carolina town of Tyro. And sometimes, there are houses decorated with paint and signs and all types of homemade sculptures. I never stop. My new friend in Greensboro, Mike Smith, ALWAYS stops.

I met Mike while working on an article about his At Home Gallery in Greensboro. I have been interested in outsider art since coming across a book about it in the UNC Charlotte Library while avoiding my real research for a long forgotten undergraduate paper. That book, Signs and Wonders, is out of print now, but it really got me interested in the whole phenomenon, and so I've always been interested in learning/writing more about it.

Mike got interested in outsider art by driving the back roads of the South, and wondering just like I do. He went a step further and instead of just driving by, began to visit these folk artists with sincere interest in their work and motivation. That interest has led to a 20-plus-year career in the folk art/outsider art world, which made him a worthwhile subject for my cover article of Go Triad! last week. We were both thrilled.

Meanwhile, here's a little show and tell for you -- my piece of outsider art I purchased years ago with my first paycheck from The Highlander. I love the iredescent nature of this piece, and of course, its self frame. The first picture is a personalized piece on the back the artist doodled for me when he found out I purchased the piece, a generous added bonus.