IBX Lifestyles Celebrates Inner Banks Artists

Celebrating

Celebrating Inner Banks Artists

Summer 2009

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Volume 1, Issue 2

Summer 2009

Welcome to North Carolina’s Inner Banks!

CONTENTS Jonathan Bowling, 4 Linda Darty, 6 Robert Ebendorf, 8 Aleta Braun, 10 Bernard Timberg, 12

North Carolina’s Inner Banks towns and counties offer unparalleled natural assets— wildlife, forests, sounds, rivers, beaches and the Intracoastal Waterway— all of which translate into unlimited potential in the emerging Creative Economy.

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Carroll Dashiell, 14 The Inner Banks region is also home to some of the most ac-

Artists to Watch, 16 complished and respected artTom Kilian, 18 ists in the U.S. and the world.

Lightnin’ Wells, 20 Cool IBX Stuff, 22

Enjoy this, the Summer ‘09 Arts Issue of “IBX Lifestyles.”

Cover art by Robert Ebendorf and Jonathan Bowling.

Project Harmony, 24

Margaret Bauer, 26 Magnolia Arts, 28 Ralph Scott, 30 IBX News Digest, 32 IBX Towns, 34 IBX Tourism, 38 Photo Credits, 39

To the right, Linda Darty.

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4

Inner Banks Rising Star: Jonathan Bowling Jonathan Bowling grew up on a small farm in Kentucky where the Appalachian Mountains melt into the rolling hills of blue grass.

Bowling’s first sculptural efforts involved the simple games of childhood: fieldstone castles, a bridle of hay-twine, a driftwood armada. As a teenager in the late 1980s, Bowling lived in Belgium, where he took advantage of the access he had to the museums of western Europe. Upon his return to Kentucky, Bowling attended the University of Kentucky where he got a BFA in studio art and a BA in art history. "Farm Meets Industry," a piece from Bowling's senior show at the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning, shows a connection not just to formal abstraction but to found objects and the stories they can tell.

Bowling took up graduate study at East Carolina University where he began to hone his narrative of the found object. Bowling worked at ECU’s Gray Gallery and the School of Art and Design’s woodshop, in addition to working in the sculpture department’s welding studio.

While at ECU Bowling became associated with the Chowan Arts Council in Edenton as well as the Imperial Center in Rocky Mount, where his work is on permanent display.

Bowling works in a number of media—steel sculpture, assemblage and painting—and his art works can be found all over North Carolina.

west

“All five of my mother's brothers were in World War II and two of them were stationed in North Carolina.

When I was a small child, we visited and I remember going to the Sanitary Fish Market and to Emerald Isle (before there was a bridge), so moving to North Carolina as an adult felt a lot like coming home.”

nc

Jonathan Bowling: In His Own Words…

I am a sculptor and collector. I find and retrieve what is lost as a basis for sculpture and assemblage. My work is an active exploration of found-object constructions that manifest themselves as a tension between abstraction and the figure.

My art depends on the places I work. The materials are artifacts of our daily lives which we chose to discard. Each local, recycled fragment inspires the final work, bringing with it its own story. My preferred medium is steel. I like it because it is at once obstinate and flexible, supple and rigid. It can rust, and it can also shine.

I am stimulated by what I collect, the shapes and materials from the farm in Kentucky where I grew up, the masks and figures at the African museum in Brussels around the corner from where I lived. But each piece is born in a moment of electricity; after hours or months of collection and reconfiguration, a concept or image will resonate within me, and the final form usually takes me by surprise.

My most recent experiments are equestrian themes. The horse is the ultimate test case of my sense that we tend to see the human figure everywhere: throughout history we have given human characteristics to horses. From Bucephalus to Silver , we have identified them as both noble and flighty, defiant or proud; they are romantic, powerful, loyal or trustworthy, but they are also mischievous and dangerous.

Finally, the horse’s body conveys meaning, as the human does. Horses are very expressive, they exhibit both delicacy and strength, because they are articulate.

I can pose a horse, just as I can pose a human.

memory loss

3’s

belgian torso Inner Banks Artist Jonathan Bowling

rickshaw

From a recent press release…

Inner Banks Sculptor’s Work Selected for National Juried Exhibition Greenville, NC – Apr 27, 2009 – IBX Lifestyles is pleased to announce that Inner Banks sculptor Jonathan Bowling’s “west” has been selected for a national juried outdoor sculpture exhibition, The 2009 Cary Visual Art Outdoor Sculpture Exhibition.

Read more here: http://www.ibxlifestyles.com/news.php?extend.15 For more information on the artist, or to commission work, please visit: www.jonathanbowling.com or call 859.248.2688.

6

She Wrote the Book on Enameling: Linda Darty Originally a psychology major, Linda Darty returned from a semester abroad in Italy when she was 21 years old, with no formal art training, determined to study art. Ceramics happened to be the first class she could get into, so she started immediately. Two years later she received her BS degree in Ceramics and Art Education from the University of Florida. In 1975, after two years teaching high school art, Linda moved from her home on the coast of Florida to Penland School of Crafts in the mountains of North Carolina. It was there, while working as the Assistant to the Director, that she discovered enameling.

In 1982, Darty began the enameling program at East Carolina University while earning her MFA degree in Metals. Now a full professor, Linda heads the ECU metals program, one of the largest graduate metals programs in the country, renowned for its focus on fine metalwork and enameling.

In 2003, as a more organized way of providing notes to her students, Ms. Darty wrote “The Art of Enameling.” The book is published by Sterling Books and is currently used as a text in many universities.

During her tenure at East Carolina University Darty has received eight teaching or research grants and has been awarded the North Carolina Board of Governor’s Award for Teaching Excellence, the East Carolina University Alumni Teaching Excellence Award and East Carolina School of Art’s Scholar Teacher Award. In 2003, she received The Lifetime Achievement Award from The Enamelist Society, an international organization. In 2009, Professor Darty received East Carolina University’s Lifetime Achievement Award, its highest honor, awarded for excellence in creative research.

Darty’s metalwork is currently included in the permanent collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Museum of Art and Design in New York City and the Arkansas Art Museum in Little Rock Arkansas. In addition to her work in the United States, Linda has received invitations to exhibit or lecture in England, Ireland, India, Canada, Costa Rica, Scotland, Germany, Korea, Italy, Japan and Alaska.

Linda Darty in her own words:

“The Art of Enameling” is available at Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Art-Enameling-Techniques-ProjectsInspiration/dp/1579905072

“One evening after working in the office at Penland, I walked from the ceramics studio through the enameling area and saw the instructor using underglaze pencils. I was familiar with these pencils because I used them in my ceramics work to draw on fired porcelain. The teacher informed me that it was all the same—glass on clay or glass on metal. The wonder of it hit me like a lightening bolt! I marveled that the enameled surface was detailed and glassy after only two or three minutes in the kiln, and that the layers of powdered glass could be applied and fired many, many times with immediate results, in a very painterly way. During the seven years I lived at Penland School, I studied with over 30 enameling and metal teachers, always seduced by the transparency of the glass while learning a multitude of techniques making jewelry, objects and wall pieces. I kept detailed notes from each teacher and asked hundreds of questions. It is those notes and those questions that are the foundation for the book I wrote on enameling, compelled to share with my own students what so many gifted teachers had shared with me.”

Clockwise from top left: Garden Candlestick; Branches: Goblet; Garden Brooch Series; Rabbit Hop Road; Rabbits and Cats Series.

For more information, or for commissions: dartyl@ecu.edu

8

The Gray Eminence: Robert Ebendorf

by Lisa Beth Robinson

Native Kansan Robert Ebendorf is the Belk Distinguished Professor at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina. He teaches students, mentors artists, oversees the visiting artist program and creates provocative and intriguing work in his studio.

Shortly after attending graduate school at the University of Kansas, where he trained as a metalsmith, Mr. Ebendorf was awarded a Fulbright Scholar Grant to study at the School of Applied Arts and Crafts in Oslo, Norway. (He returned to Norway in 1965 after being awarded a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation grant, working in Fredikstad at Norway Silver Design.)

By the mid-1960s Ebendorf was already considered a master metalsmith. During this period, however, he changed course when he decided to begin exploring the possibilities inherent in using unconventional materials in his jewelry, especially found objects.

He finds an object (i.e. a crab claw, a religious medallion, a Chinese newspaper) and by uniting and juxtaposing it with other materials—some that are common (plastic tags from bread, shards of broken ceramics, doll parts), others that are precious (gold, pearls, roman glass found on an Israeli archaeological dig) and/or natural (twigs, stones, shells)— Ebendorf creates fresh objects that are by turns playful, troubling, demanding and profound. These pieces function as ornament, object of devotion, artwork and fetish.

7 Spoons

Brooches

Ebendorf is a leader in the global studio jewelry movement. He continues today to embrace the mystery of the found object and the primal energy of hunting and gathering these objects. Ebendorf’s influence has altered the way students and fellow artists view the world. Whether he is engaging materials, students, artists or curators, Bob is an alchemist, always catalyzing, creating and transforming.

Today Ebendorf is the visiting scholar at University of West England-Bristol, and he continues to build bridges to the world’s creative communities by cultivating an exchange of ideas with other artists through his international workshops. Ebendorf’s work may be seen in private collections, galleries and permanent museum collections worldwide, including the American Craft Museum (NY), Mint Museum of Art (Charlotte, NC), the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and the Kunstindustrimuseet in Oslo, Norway.

For more information, or for commissions, Mr. Ebendorf can be reached at 252.328.1318; or by email at ebendorfr@ecu.edu

Ebendorf accepting a lifetime achievement award at the 92nd Street Y in NYC

Every found object has its story (or stories), an observable history that can inform the artist’s choosing, though Duchamp maintained that complete aesthetic indifference to the object was fundamental to his choosing of readymades. It can confound and/or inspire the artist to ponder that the object may (and frequently does) have a prehistory that is forever lost. Take metal, the most obvious example, something that is cast and recast. What one sees in the object today may be, usually is, but one of multiple manifestations in the course of its useful life.

As for me, many of my objects, when I find them, are on their way to the incinerator, the sewer or the landfill. Desiccation and weather have marked some of them, simple wear and tear others, and neglect, that’s a given. All that to say, I choose objects according to, for example, age (older), original usefulness (gone, mostly), and beauty (provisional, arguable).

Ebendorf in his own words

Clockwise from top left: Portable Souls; Bone Brooch; above: Hidden Treasure; Cicada Brooch; Tin Birds

In 2005, a global network of artists and critics named Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain” as the most influential artwork of the 20th century. Duchamp picked up a simple “Bedfordshire” urinal in J. L. Mott’s Ironworks in New York City and submitted it—under the nom d’art “Richard Mutt”—to the Independents Exhibition of 1917, a “juryless” show featuring a melting pot of art from across the U.S. The hanging committee—peopled by such art luminaries as Ashcanners William Glackens and George Bellows—rejected it as obscene. Today “Fountain” (and its many reproductions and derivations) occupies aesthetic space in museums and minds around the world.

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Following Nature’s Lead: Aleta Braun Multi-media artist Aleta Braun juxtaposes thoughts, materials, textures and colors to create her two-and three-dimensional artworks to produce a collaboration between artist and nature.

SELECTED ONE PERSON EXHIBITIONS Vault Project 2008 : Make Dying Alive, Quirk Gallery, Richmond, VA, 2008 Material Changes, Gregg Museum formerly NC State University, Raleigh, NC, 2006 Aleta Braun in Starlight, Starlight Cafe, Greenville, NC, 2003 Aleta Braun: Artist, Teacher, Storyteller, U. of Colorado, Norlin Library, Boulder, CO, 1998 Open Studios ‘97 - Self-Guided Tours of Boulder Studios, Boulder, CO, 1997 SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS BookMarks, The Book as an Aesthetic Object, Gallery Walk at Terminus, Atlanta, GA, July-Oct 2009 Books Outside the Binding, Alice C. Sabatini Gallery, Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library, Topeka, KS, Dec 2008 - Feb 2009 Fiber + Book, Fiber Art Center, Amherst, MA, 2007 Action/Interaction: Book/Art, Chicago Center for Book & Paper Arts, Chicago, IL, 2007 Bound Visions: Artists’ Books, Craft Alliance, St. Louis, MO, 2006 The Liquid Language of the Artist’s Book , University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY, 2002 There’s No Place Like Home, New Works Gallery, Kansas City, MO, 2000 Collaborations, Sienna Gallery, Lenox, MA, 1999 Sweethearts, OXOXO Gallery, Baltimore, MD, 1999 Beyond Bounds - Beyond Borders! Johnston County Community College Gallery of Art, Overland Park, KS, 1999 To contact Ms. Braun about her work or to discuss commissions, email her at aletabob@earthlink.net.

My process in the studio is based on call and response, collaboration. It involves responding to some inner stirring: a question; an impulse; observations of the seen world, the unseen world and the space in between; my attempts to bring all of this into the world of form. I try to stay out of the way and let things happen. This part of the process makes it feel like a collaboration.

I use layering, transparency, texture, paint and paper, thread and objects collected from nature to give voice to my questions and observations. The work is motivated by my interest in the forces of nature where everything is connected, balanced and made of one fabric.

As I look for connections, bridges between colors, textures, ideas, the dance of the opposites, I bring them together by gluing and sewing, juxtaposing, the circle and the square, above ground and below ground, shadow and light, in-breath and out-breath, the feminine and the masculine.

While exploring fragility, vulnerability, adaptability and strength, I choose lightweight materials. Paper, paper stressed with crumpling, tissue paper, silk vellum, linoleum stressed with age, cloth, tea bags, and even rove into testing the fragility of nature to find that materials are incredibly strong and designed to be resilient: leaves, insect wings, flower petals.

As I love my questions, all I can say with any certainty is that there are more questions than answers. Constantly return to the breath.

Aleta Braun

Clockwise from top left: Lifting and Grounding; Japanese Packing; Lunar Series; Interior Illumin; opposite page: Gauntlet of Fire

12 Inner Banks Filmmaker Tapped for Visiting Scholar Residency at UNC-CH ENC Film Commission Board Member Bernard Timberg set to work on documentary film “Images of the South” at Center for the Study of the American South The Interview IBX Lifestyles: Where did you develop your interest in the South?

Bernard Timberg: Well, looking back, it was more an interest in the “mythology” of the South than the South itself.

Like many kids, I grew up in a northern city imbibing some of the romance of the Confederacy. I had no idea of the real history. In fact, I remember seeing “Birth of a Nation” at a young age, and for me, like Woodrow Wilson, it was “history writ in lightning.” I later came to understand Thomas Dixon’s and D.W. Griffith’s grotesque caricatures and atrocious distortions of Reconstruction history (I remember the images of buffoonish black legislators throwing chicken wings over their shoulders in the film’s depictions of Southern legislatures during that period), but it wasn’t until I read John Hope Franklin’s superb book on the Reconstruction period that I came to understand exactly what kind of distortion I had been seeing. Images are powerful. By the time I saw “Gone with the Wind” I deeply was embarrassed by the “pickaninny” images, and I thought the Hattie McDaniel “mammy” character was broad and over-drawn. But I also grew up listening to the Alan Lomax Library of Congress recordings of Southern music – and feeling how powerful and authentic that music was. So I grew up with a mixture of ideas and images of the South. Then I came South, well, to Southwest, Virginia, and my ideas about the South started to deepen, become more complex, and broaden.

IBX: How so?

Timberg: My first teaching job in the South was actually in the foothills of Appalachia in Southwest, Virginia, at Radford University. I lived in Blacksburg, and Floyd, a town nearby, was a center for Appalachian culture and music; Radford had a small but vigorous Appalachian Studies program. I made some friends and got interested in the Appalachian Studies program. I listened to the old time and bluegrass music on the AM station out of Galax, Virginia, on road trips.

I later met and married someone from the mountains – her mother’s family coming from Sodom Laurel, a center for traditional ballads and storytelling in Madison County—not far from Asheville. Then, after I came to chair a department and teach at Johnson C. Smith University, a 140-year old historically Black university in Charlotte, North Carolina, that re-awakened my interest in African American culture and history (in the Sixties I had been part of the civil rights movement—in high school and college). It all started to add up.

IBX: Was this a personal interest? Or did it reflect itself also in your academic writing and teaching?

Timberg: At Johnson C. Smith University I co-taught, with an African American colleague in the English Department, a course called “Blacks and Jews in Film and Literature.” We visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, and compared what had happened to African Americans as a result of slavery and what had happened to Jews as a result of prejudice and discrimination in Europe and the Holocaust. In 2000, I took a group of students on a documentary video project to the 40th Anniversary of the founding of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee at Shaw University. But the biggest incentive to understanding the South in a new way, and seeing some of the best that had been written and thought about the South as a region, its culture and unique sense of place and region, was a course I sat in on taught by William Ferris at the Center for the Study of the American South. It was called “Southern Literature and the Oral Tradition.” I had heard a brilliant lecture by Ferris on the blues as a cultural art form at Virginia Tech University, and got to know him better when I sat in on his class. I think that experience led me directly to applying, and being accepted, for the guest residency next year.

(Continues on next page)

Interview with Filmmaker/Documentarian Bernard Timberg continues.

IBX: What will you be doing in Chapel Hill next year?

Timberg: I will be attending the seminars, colloquia and special events sponsored by the Center for the Study of the American South—always high quality, as CSAS is one of the premier regional study centers in the U.S. My own project will be a documentary film whose working title is “Images of the South in Hollywood Film.” It will be similar to a documentary I completed this year on the Jewish-American experience in film from The Jazz Singer to Borat, now being built into a documentary feature. I intercut scenes from 19 films in this documentary, which I call a commentary montage, because it weaves together scenes with a voice-over narration that explains the themes and images we see over eight decades of Hollywood history and four generations of Jewish-American experience on the silver screen. My plan is to do the same for images of the South, from the “Birth of a Nation” to more recent films like “Junebug,” but dividing the film into separate sections that deal with Hollywood images of certain areas and regions within the South: the Appalachian region, the deep South, New Orleans and Cajun culture, some of the grand cities like Savannah and Charleston, and also the coastal regions: Gullah (with its African American heritage), the Outer Banks, and our enchanting Inner Banks. I’m sure people who read the IBX Lifestyles newsletter will have ideas for me as I do my research.

IBX: If there is one word, one idea or concept that can best sum up your experience in the South, coming from up North as you did but now living here for a long time, what would it be?

Timberg: Hmm. That’s kind of difficult. Food? No. That’s too quick and easy. Music? Well, that certainly has gone deep into my understanding and appreciation of the South. Storytelling? Has to be one of the most compelling features of this region—and you hear those stories everywhere: in the grocery store, at the gas station…But one word? I guess it would have to be: “Richness.” There is a richness and deepness, and a complexity and resonance, to those “images” that I picked up as boy. And I discover that, and am more attuned to it, each time I see a film and try to understand its roots, or listen to a piece of music, or here a joke or a richly flavored story.

“My understanding of the South deepened when I began to visit small towns in rural areas of Eastern North Carolina with projects’ director Erick Yates Green as we were producing two films in this part of the state: Bunny Sanders: The Mayor Who Stood Up, and The New Country Doctor. (The Bunny Sanders film was screened at the "In the Works" session of the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival Spring ‘09, as well as the Convocation of the College of Fine Arts and Communication at ECU; The New Country Doctor, a work-in-progress, was screened and received feedback at the University Film and Video Association.) Green and I learned much in each of our visits and talks with people in the area, and we found it refreshing to get off campus and out of classrooms to feel, and experience, the countryside and people outside the boundaries of the University.”

Prof. Bernard Timberg addressing the audience for an advanced screening of student-produced Public Service Announcements about HOPE Station, a peer community mental health center in Greenville, April 15, 2009.

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Inner Banks Maestro: Carroll V. Dashiell Jr. Bassist, pianist, singer, music director, conductor, composer, arranger and producer: Washington, DC, native Carroll V. Dashiell Jr. has an enviable résumé, a constellation of awards, stellar musician friends and an enchanting wife and four talented children. Beyond that, he’s just your average genius-next-door who produces great music and great students in roughly equal proportions.

Carroll—or C.D., if you’re fortunate enough to know him—became the Director of Jazz Studies and the Jazz Ensemble at East Carolina University (in the Inner Banks town of Greenville) at the seasoned age of 28. And yes, his university jazz ensemble wins awards too, most notably being recognized as one of the top four university jazz bands in the U.S. by DownBeat magazine, the bible of the jazz world. (See box below in right corner.)

C.D. was an only child in a family of musicians: father Carroll Sr. directed an all-male spiritual singing group; his mother sang in a couple of church choirs; and his grandmother sang in four church choirs and played piano.

As a young boy, C.D. played viola in his grade school orchestra. In the fifth grade, the school conductor decided that C.D. should begin playing the big bass fiddle, primarily, as Dashiell has said, because he was the only student big enough to bring it down to the practice room from the third-floor instrument storage area.

Words aren’t enough, however. One simply has to hear him play. Musicians who have had the distinction of playing with him speak in unison as they hail Carroll Dashiell as one of the greatest bass players alive.

C.D.’s latest CD: “Heir to the Throne,” by Dashiell’s band the CVD Ensemble: with Jeffrey Bair on saxophone, Dashiell’s son C.V. III on drums and Dashiell himself on bass and keyboards. Enjoy fifteen original compositions that chart Dashiell’s stylistic evolution through jazz, fusion and funk.

Available at Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Heir-Throne-Carroll-Dashiell-Ensemble/dp/ B000FTBALE/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1246465244&sr=1-4

The ECU Jazz Ensemble, under the direction of Carroll V. Dashiell Jr., has performed at jazz festivals across the U.S. and Europe, including the JVC Jazz Festival (New York City), Carnegie Hall and the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland. They’ve won the JazzFest USA Gold Award.

A short list of performances, performers and recordings:

Carroll V. Dashiell Jr.

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Boston Pops Orchestra

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National Symphony Orchestra

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Washington Philharmonic Orchestra

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Dr. Billy Taylor

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Ray Charles

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Vanessa Rubin

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Jennifer Holiday

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Maurice Hines

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Maceo Parker

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Ethel Ennis and the Fifth Dimension

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Bobby Watson and Horizon (Blue Note Records)

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Roger “Buck” Hill (Muse Records)

DownBeat magazine “Jazz Educator of the Year, 2002” Three-time nominee, Carnegie Foundation Case Award, National Teacher of the Year

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Four Young Inner Banks Artists to Watch HALEY SULLIVAN Haley Sullivan utilizes a wide variety of techniques and materials to create one-of-a-kind metal designs. Silver, gold, copper, wood, found objects and gemstones are incorporated into her jewelry, flatware, vessels and wall pieces.

The imagery in Haley’s work is by influence of growing up on North Carolina’s coast; her concepts derive from explorations into how experience and environment shape us. By contrasting layers, textures and types of materials, she aspires to share with a viewer/wearer of her art the complexities of human nature. Resources conventionally considered valuable are juxtaposed with those we consider disposable or even trash. Haley endeavors to create an aesthetic that expresses these visceral, internal landscapes to her audience.

Haley received a BFA in metal design from East Carolina University in 2008, and presently lives in Greenville, NC, working as a studio artist and Chief Fabricator for Logan Louis, LLC. Visit her website to contact her or see more work: http://haleysullivan.com

Potential Necklace Series #4 Found Object, Paint, Sterling Silver, 10k Gold, Guitar String Pendant: 2” long, Necklace: 19”

Reality’s Autographs (shown with Let Us Goblet) Found Wood, Birch, Pine, Red Oak, House Paint, Mirror, Plexiglas, LED light 21.5” x 6.5” x 27.5”

Edge Belt Buckle Sterling Silver, Copper, Brass, 10k gold, Found Objects 3”x2”

JUDD SNAPP Judd Snapp designs and builds one-of-a-kind pieces of furniture and sculpture. Each work of art draws its unique quality and aesthetic from the resources used to create it. Judd incorporates found wood and materials whenever possible, both in attempt to be environmentally friendly and in respect for the materials that have a “past life.”

Resurrecting and transforming an old piece of wood or object into a new work of art for others to utilize and enjoy is the inspiration in Judd’s creative process. The finished product from Judd’s handcrafted furniture or sculpture reveals not only his own intentions with the specific design, but also the aesthetic voice of the reincarnated wood or metal.

Judd has a BFA in Sculpture and MFA in Wood Design from East Carolina University. He currently lives and works in Eastern North Carolina. For information about his work contact him via email at jfs05@yahoo.com.

Surfboard Podium Found Wood

Rivers and Bowls Credenza Heart Pine, Dye, Found Stone

IBX Lifestyles LISA BETH ROBINSON Chicago native Lisa Beth Robinson trained as a letterpress printer, printmaker, graphic designer and poet during her undergraduate years at the Johnston Center, University of Redlands in southern California. She turned her focus to books while earning her MFA at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Her latest body of work developed from a confluence of events: a deadline, a death, a concert and two of her lifelong loves, books and the night skies. While visiting her mom in hospice, she spent time focusing on breathing and meditation, and integrated these ideas into an altered book. The pages dealt with the act of reading; the way layers of thought and feeling manifest and shift as language is consumed, unconsciously, letter by letter.

Ms. Robinson exhibited in a Spring ’09 solo show at the Imperial Centre in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. The body of work is named Sidereal, a method of measuring time by the stars rather than the sun, whose pieces address the darker, nocturnal side of relationships, still keeping in mind text and subtext, consumption and contemplation.

One of the first recipients of the Penland Winter Residency and a board member of the College Book Arts Association, Ms. Robinson has an active exhibition record and more of her work can be seen at www.lisabethpress.com.

Left to right:

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Your Nautilus Heart

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Luminous

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Convection

OWEN SULLIVAN Owen Sullivan creates hand-made metal designs in silver, copper, enamel, wood and found objects. His designs range in form from jewelry to raised vessels and small sculptures. Each of Owen’s works of art attempts to express the value of manual labor, and he believes he has a moral responsibility to address the importance of labor (and the laborer) in his art.

Owen sees labor as a process of transformation. In each piece, he stresses the very process of making to the viewer, whether by exposing the connections or utilizing common images such as planks or tiles referencing the building method. By creating a harmonious aesthetic with color, texture and design, he hopes to share his values with his audience.

Currently a student at East Carolina University, Owen will be a candidate for a BFA in metal design in 2010. For information and to see more of his work, contact Owen via email at ops0916@ecu.edu.

Spoons Sterling Silver, Pear Length varies; approx. 6”-7”

Restoration Salt and Pepper Shakers Copper, Fine Silver, Dental Implants

18

IBXarts.org: A Community of Inner Banks Artists

By Tom Kilian IBXarts was launched in the spring of 2008 as a venue to promote and showcase the work of independent artists in North Carolina’s Inner Banks and to grow a sustainable Inner Banks artistic economy.

Today IBXarts represents and is supported by 64 artists, four artists operating galleries, eight arts council galleries and four artist support organizations within the 22-county region. The artists that comprise IBXarts are diverse, yet there is a common bond. Across the Inner Banks one can find painters and sculptors and candle makers, poets, photographers, potters, basketweavers, metalsmiths and woodworkers. A community of artists, that’s IBXarts.org.

The Inner Banks is a vast region geographically, and as a result it hosts a mix of diverse cultures. Many Inner Banks towns, rich in history, sometimes separated by water and wetlands, have come down to us well-preserved—culture as well as buildings— much as they were in the 18th and 19th centuries. And deeply embedded in the fabric of a particular crossroad or farm community, river landing or town, is its rich history, quiet dignity and diverse culture.

The Inner Banks region has quality road systems and ferries that are pleasurable and uncrowded. Affordable "green" housing abounds within the Inner Banks, much of it free from covenants and restrictions that would impede the blacksmith or raku potter. The Arts are well regarded and supported by the native Inner Banks population; the region’s citizens drive an economy based on heritage, recreation and eco- tourism, while preserving heritage with minimal impact on the land we love.

Artists across the Inner Banks bask in the support of their diverse communities and can indeed become, and be regarded as, fresh, vital contributors to the rich life and history of this exquisite region.

Inner Banks artists, whether indigenous or transplants, have the mental and physical space to grow, yet they have the opportunity to share concepts, strategies and visions.

IBXarts is featured in the July issue of "Our State" Magazine, now available at bookstores and newsstands statewide and at all Inner Banks Food Lion grocery stores.

Tom Kilian coordinates IBXarts. He is the author of "off the Palette,” (an art insight column,) and the sculptor of the Darfur Monument. His work can be viewed online at: www.TomKilian.com

IBX Lifestyles Salutes Our State Magazine!

July 2009 issue of the award-winning magazine celebrates North Carolina arts and artists and features Inner Banks artist & entrepreneur

Tom Kilian and IBXarts.org

Our State, July 2009 Issue On newsstands June 30th.

Or, you can subscribe to North Carolina’s premier magazine:

www.ourstate.com North Carolina’s Inner Banks’ Premier Hand-Craft Education Center Pocosin Arts Folk School is a nonprofit educational arts organization whose mission is to expand understanding of the relationship between people and place, culture and environment, through the production and exhibition of the traditional arts of the people of the Pocosin region of eastern North Carolina’s Inner Banks.

Pocosin Arts offers a variety of studio classes and workshops for children and adults throughout the year; exhibits traditional arts of eastern North Carolina cultures: Native, European, African, Vietnamese and Hispanic; exhibits artwork of regional artists whose focus represents in some way the cultural and/or natural heritage of the region; and, it’s within walking distance to a coffee house, restaurants, an ice cream shop, other Main Street attractions and a B&B. www.pocosinarts.org Also nearby, the Pocosin National Wildlife Refuge and a designated National Recreation Trail.

UPCOMING STUDIO WORKSHOPS Surface Embellishment & Kum-boo Metals/Jewelry w/Kathryn Osgood Saturday, June 27th Sunday June 28th, 2009 9:00am-4:00pm Rings, Rings, Rings Metals/Jewelry w/Tim Lazure Saturday August 15th Sunday, August 16th, 2009 9:00am-4:00pm Call 252-796-2787 for more information.

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Inner Banks Bluesman: Mike “Lightnin’” Wells The great bluesman Mike “Lightnin’” Wells was raised and resides in the Inner Banks of eastern North Carolina. He is a lifelong student and researcher of various forms of American Roots and American Folk music, including old-time, country, jazz, ragtime, pop, Piedmont Blues and vintage tunes from the 1920’s and Depression era. Wells plays harmonica and a number of acoustic stringed instruments: guitar, ukulele, mandolin, and banjo. He plays with remarkable energy and a dynamic style that breathes new life into tunes from past eras. His performances are laced with commentary on the music he writes and plays, reflecting his deep dedication to his craft. Go to www.ibxlifestyles.com to find a link to audio files of the music of Lightnin’ Wells.

A brief biography of Lightnin’ Wells Born 04-15-52, Wheeling, West Virginia Moved to Goldsboro, N.C. in 1962 at age 10 and graduated from Goldsboro High School 1970 Received a Hohner harmonica from Grandfather in the third grade and learned to play simple melodies on it Taught self to play guitar; influenced by folk music: early Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger Attended University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, receiving a degree in English literature’ began performing locally in Chapel Hill at The Endangered Species, Fat City and the old Cat’s Cradle.

1975-76: Performed in an old-time duet with Martha “Libby” Sexton in Goldsboro and Tarboro, NC 1976-77: Attended East Carolina University and moved to Greenville, receiving a degree in Therapeutic Recreation; began performing in Greenville area, frequently as a solo act but often with string band The Home Town Boys and the Electric Lightnin’ Wells Blues Band 1977-1980: Began performing at venues across North Carolina 1981: Began playing at the Festival for the Eno in Durham, NC; has played there every year since 1982: First tour, performing in New York City and West Point Academy 1983: Met Beaufort bluesman Richard “Big Boy” Henry. Produced and played on “Mr. President,” 45 record by Big Boy released on the Audio Arts label of Greenville, NC 1984-85: Produced records for Audio Arts by Big Boy Henry and Johnston County blues woman Algia Mae Hinton 1987: Arranged and performed the musical score of traditional blues for Sam Shepard's "A Lie Of The Mind" at Steppenwolf Theatre, Chicago, Illinois 1988: Performed at Lincoln Center, New York City outdoor Blues And Gospel Festival with Big Boy Henry 1994: Began teaching blues guitar regularly at The Centrum Country Blues Week in Port Townsend, Washington 1996: Released first solo CD, “Bull Frog Blues” on New Moon label, Chapel Hill, NC 1998: Made first European tour, with Big Boy Henry, to Holland, Belgium and Germany 2008: Released fourth CD, “Shake ‘Em On Down,” on own label, as well as “Jump Little Children,” a CD project geared toward younger audiences 2008: Toured Germany 2009: Completed a more extensive two-week tour of Germany, performing across the country Enjoy the music of Lightnin’ Wells on CDs Available at Amazon.com (see link below) and music stores across the U.S. Visit his website: http://www.lightninwells.com/

Wells in 1978

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Dpopular&field-keywords=Lightnin%27+wells

Releases •

Bull Frog Blues (New Moon 9507) 1995

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Ragtime Millionaire (New Moon 9820) 1998

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Ragged But Right (Music Maker 26) 2002

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Shake ‘Em On Down (Lignite Records) 2008

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Jump Little Children: Old Songs For Young Folks 2008

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Featured on Kent Cooper The Blues and Other Songs (Labor 7036-2) 2002

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Featured on Shoo Fly, an audio magazine for children, (Vol. 2 No. 1) 1995

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Featured on The American Fogies Vol.2 compilation of recent American folk music (Rounder 0389) 1996

Publications •

A Ten Year Retrospective Text for “A Guide Through North Carolina Blues,” Bull Durham Blues Festival, 1997

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Tar Heel Tunes, North Carolina Recording and Record Production, North Carolina Literacy Journal, East Carolina University, 2000

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Honey Babe, Algia Mae Hinton, liner notes (Music Maker/Cello 91005-2), 2000

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Tarboro Blues, George Higgs, liner notes (Music Maker 19), 2001

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“North Carolina Recording Industry” in The Encyclopedia Of North Carolina, edited by William S. Powell, University Of North Carolina Press, 2006

TwoInner GreatBanks InnerOnline Banks Magazines Businesses to Enjoy Two Great 94.1 WKOO, Kool 94.1 Oldies & Beach Music For the Crystal Coast

94.3 WTIB FM The Talk FM, Greenville

96.3 & 103.7 FM Thunder Country, continuous country for all of Eastern North Carolina

North Carolina’s

Inner Banks Leader

IBX vs OBX Real Estate From the New York Times Real Estate section, two recent articles from an ongoing series entitled “What you can get for…”

“...$150,000 in Edenton, NC” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/12/ greathomesanddestinations/12gh-what.html?_r=1

“...$400,000 in Kitty Hawk, NC” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/26/ greathomesanddestinations/26gh-what.html See for yourself what fantastic properties can be found in North Carolina's Inner Banks at:

www.IBXhomes.com

2009 First-Time Home Buyer Tax Credit As part of its plan to stimulate the U.S. housing market and address the economic challenges facing the nation, Congress has passed legislation that grants a tax credit of up to $8,000 to first-time home buyers.

Learn more here:

http://www.realtor.org/

home_buyers_and_sellers/2009_first_time_home_buyer_tax_credit

Two Great Inner Banks Online Magazines

Experience all the wonder of the Inner Banks in beautiful Swan Quarter, North Carolina ————

www.swanquarterly.net

24

“Project Harmony”

by Anna & Amelia Dietrich

Editor’s Note: Anna, 16, and her sister Amelia, 15—musicians and writers—are students at J.H. Rose High School in Greenville.

It is our great pleasure to introduce our readers to these two talented young artists.

To us, it is hard to believe that every musician doesn’t begin studying at age three, immediately surrounding themselves with esteemed pioneers of the Suzuki violin methodology. As we sit here to recall our experience with the arts in Eastern North Carolina, we realize that there is something special about our area. For years it has been blessed with the presence of Joanne Bath, who brought the Suzuki Method to Greenville over forty years ago, and has since attracted hundreds of young musicians and their families. We have seen the difference that Mrs. Bath has made and we have admired her visionary and progressive teaching methods. She has helped develop hundreds of fine violinists, many of whom are themselves teaching today. As the Suzuki community has blossomed over the years, so have the lives of those in it. The fact that we have been able to grow both as people and as musicians in such a tight-knit community has inspired us to give back and share our music opportunities to those without.

In 2005, we founded a not-for-profit service organization with one of our closest friends, Emily McLawhorn, with whom we have played violin since the age of three. Casual conversations during countless hours as stand partners in a state-wide orchestra posed the question: Why are we doing this? We had been playing the violin for ten years and weren’t sure that a career in music was something our futures would hold. Barely twelve years old and completely naive to the intricacies of starting an organization, we founded Project Harmony as a way to give meaning to our decade of violin studies. Little did we know, a figment of the philanthropic imaginations of a couple of preteens would grow into a successful and sustainable venture with a broad charitable impact.

Project Harmony was founded with the intention that it become a multi-faceted organization. Our Christmas caroling program for patients in the Intensive Care Units of the hospital inspired in us the fervent desire to push outside the realm of most other not-for-profit groups, as we realized that our talents could be used to achieve not only financial relief but emotional relief for those in need. Our incorporation of both music therapy and fundraising gives Project Harmony a human dimension quite beyond the raw numbers of donations received. Such numbers, we realized, were only the byproduct of what our group had originally set out to do—improve the lives of others through music.

Under the motto “United by strings, motivated by love,” we formed Project Harmony as three middle -school girls, completely unaware of the complex schedules that high school was soon to bring. We made this transition as our pet project was expanding at an incredible rate. As the work of Project Harmony became known, fundraising jumped from three, to four, to five digit figures; all the while, our school work demanded from three, to four, to five hours per night. We struggled to keep Project Harmony going, as free time became but a fond memory in our busy lives. We faltered, but only briefly, before reminding ourselves of the genuine reason why the group was formed in the first place.

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As we refocused our group back toward service, it became obvious that the three of us could not keep up the program on our own if it were to continue to grow. We extended involvement in Project Harmony to our other musical peers as a way of emphasizing youth advocacy for local and state causes. Not only did we aim to broaden the impact of our service, but to motivate others to use their talents. Now with 26 young people across Pitt and Greene Counties, Project Harmony is branching out even further. As the founding members of the organization move on to college over the next few years, we are confident that Project Harmony will continue to achieve great things under those who now being mentored to carry out the legacy of grounding young musical talents in public service.

Project Harmony has organized fundraisers for: Scholarships to Suzuki Institute; Spinal Muscular Atrophy Research; Sadie Saulter Elementary Strings Program; Greene County Suzuki Association; and the Reach-Out-andRead Program for Brody School of Medicine Pediatrics. Our team members have played for those unwell and with limited mobility in Surgical and Medical In-Patient Units at Pitt County Memorial Hospital, in addition to nine other medical offices across the county, including the dialysis treatment center and chemotherapy and blood infusion rooms. The gratification of such music therapy is immediately apparent in the faces of the sick, which rebounds upon the performers as well. This year, Project Harmony organized a food drive for the National League of Orchestras, which collected food to be distributed to local food shelters.

Project Harmony has raised money and worked hands-on with the children of the Sadie Saulter Elementary Strings Program. It is a pilot strings program, the first of its kind in the area, in which students are taught to play the violin from kindergarten until fifth grade. Made possible by a grant from a local foundation, Sadie Saulter Strings reaches out to children in a struggling school, providing invaluable experiences to these children. Project Harmony began working with the program on the first day it began in 2007, and we have fallen in love with the idea of exposing children to music from such a young age, and we’ve fallen in love with the children themselves. Outside of the classroom, we have attended their performances and helped to lead the group as they play. Also through Project Harmony we have been able to raise funds for the program, funds that will be used to purchase new instruments.

In times of economic hardship, such programs cannot be sustained, nor can we rely on state funding; and here is where we stress the necessity of community support. Because of Project Harmony many underprivileged students have been fortunate enough to receive the same gift of music that we have since we were children.

Now, school is out for the summer. Members of Project Harmony have taken on a large number of the children as private students (some on a no-pay basis) while their teacher is away. The true spirit of the Suzuki Method is epitomized in the interaction and bonding Project Harmony’s principals develop with these children. As the children grow into sophisticated musicians, we hope that they will come to appreciate, and be nurtured by, the incredible musical and cultural community that Eastern North Carolina’s Inner Banks provides.

Pia Van Coutren was born in North Africa of Greek heritage. As a child, she lived among many ethnic groups. Consequently, over time she mastered the finer techniques of Italian, Indian, French, English, Arabic and American cooking. Chef Pia’s grandmother was also a big influence via her own Greek and Turkish recipes.

Chef Pia invites you to join her at her two restaurants—Pia’s at New Bern and Pia’s at Washington—located in two of our most beautiful Inner Banks towns. You’ll enjoy an eclectic array of international food, brilliantly prepared by the master Chef herself.

www. ChefPias.com New Bern, 2909 Trent Road, 252.636.0086 Washington, 156 W. Main Street, 252.940.0600

26

Inner Banks Scholar/Writer on the American South: Margaret Bauer Margaret D. Bauer is the Ralph Hardee Rives Chair of Southern Literature, professor of English, and editor of the North Carolina Literary Review at East Carolina University. She is the author of The Fiction of Ellen Gilchrist (1999) and William Faulkner's Legacy (2005). In 2007 she received the Parnassus Award for Significant Editorial Achievement from the Council of Editors of Learned Journals for her work as editor of the North Carolina Literary Review. Bauer’s latest effort is Watering the Sahara: Recollections of Paul Green, which she edited.

From the Editor’s Preface to Watering the Sahara In the fall of 2001 I was fortunate to have come into my hands a manuscript by North Carolina native James R. Spence, author of The Making of a Governor: The Moore-Preyer-Lake Primaries of 1964 (Winston-Salem: John F. Blair Publishers, 1968) and Portrait of a Place and Time: Recollections of a Farmer's Son (Winter Park, Fla.: Discovery Publishing House, 1991). The almost three-hundred-page typescript, then titled “Young Paul Green, The Years 1894-1937,” is based on interview conversations the author conducted with Paul Green and members of his family; other recorded interviews with Green by Green’s administrative assistant Rhoda Wynn (the first director of the Paul Green Foundation), photographer Billy E. Barnes (director of the North Carolina Fund in the 1960s), and historian Jacquelyn Hall (now director of the Southern Oral History Program); excerpts from Green’s diaries; quotations from letters and telegrams in the Paul Green Papers; and various biographical sources—from Elizabeth Lay Green’s biography of her husband, The Paul Green I Knew, to actress Bette Davis’s autobiography, in which she talks about her first role as a vixen, which happened to be in the first movie that Paul Green worked on.

At the recommendation of Winston-Salem public relations executive Carroll H. Leggett, former North Carolina attorney general and U.S. senator Robert B. Morgan (for whom Mr. Leggett had served as chief of staff) sent me Mr. Spence’s manuscript. Senator Morgan had received a copy from James Spence himself before Spence’s death in 1995...

At the time that Spence conducted his interviews for this manuscript (1974-1979), there was as yet no scholarly biography of the playwright; indeed, noted Green scholar Laurence G. Avery was then still editing the letters of dramatist Maxwell Anderson. Avery’s volume of Green’s letters did not appear until twenty years after Spence’s first interview session, and John Herbert Roper’s biography, Paul Green: Playwright of the Real South, followed the interviews by almost thirty years. Besides Green’s own words, then, Spence consulted (and sometimes drew heavily from) such monographs on Green as Agatha Boyd Adams’s Paul Green of Chapel Hill and slim volumes by the playwright’s wife, Elizabeth Lay Green’s The Paul Green I Know, and his best friend, Barrett H. Clark’s Paul Green, as well as an article by North Carolina literary historian Richard Walser, “Paul Green Undergraduate.” Spence also read and cited autobiographies and biographies of those who worked with Green—producer Cheryl Crawford, actresses Bette Davis and Lotte Lenya, professor Frederick Koch, and writers Thomas Wolfe and William Faulkner—as well as books on the various groups with which Green was involved—Campbell College, the University of North Carolina, the Carolina Playmakers, Broadway, the Group Theatre, and the Federal Theatre. And., of course, Spence also read Green’s plays and fiction and the reviews of his plays and novels...

H. L. Mencken’s well-known essay “The Sahara of the Bozart” came up a few times in Spence’s interviews with Green, and Spence (who seems to have agreed with Mencken’s characterization of the South) addressed Green’s achievement of “watering” the South’s artistic desert with his own work. Indeed, Spence even told Green that he was “tempted to call this book ‘Watering the Sahara’ because . . . that’s what you’ve been doing all these years . . . you’ve been involved in watering the Sahara down here.” He continued, “A thread that runs through this whole thing . . . is that when you started, it was a Sahara just like Mencken said it was, and, and just look how it has flowered since then.” Spence is among those who continued to appreciate Green’s contribution to southern letters past the playwright’s heyday. Spence’s manuscript (and listening to his recorded interviews, many of which were not used in this book) reminds us of Green’s reputation in his own day—that his early Pulitzer Prize brought him national attention from Broadway to Hollywood, in both of which places he found work (or rather, work sought him out) for years to come, including numerous requests of him to write screenplays of movies; a commission to adapt Richard Wright’s Native Son for the stage; and offers to teach from his own alma mater in Chapel Hill, as well as from Harvard and Princeton.

(Continues on next page)

Amazon.com on Watering the Sahara: Based primarily on previously unpublished interviews with Paul Green, Watering the Sahara is a compelling study that chronicles the dramatist's life from childhood in rural North Carolina; to military service in World War I; the beginnings of his career as both educator and writer; his work as a Hollywood screenwriter; and the theater collaborations that culminated in the creation of the symphonic drama The Lost Colony. Extensive quotation from the interviews provides the reader with new insight into the complexity of North Carolina's leading playwright.

Order the book: http://www.amazon.com/Watering-SaharaRecollections-Paul-Green/dp/0865263337/ref=sr_1_1 ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1246638704&sr=1-1

Also by Margaret D. Bauer:

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The Fiction of Ellen Gilchrist An analysis of the literary style of Ellen Gilchrist.

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Understanding Tim Gautreaux Bauer presents the first book-length study of the Louisiana storyteller.

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William Faulkner’s Legacy: What Shadow, What Stain, What Mark "A major contribution to the study of southern literature"--Choice

North Carolina Literary Review (NCLR) publishes poetry, fiction, and nonfiction by and interviews

with North Carolina writers, and articles and essays about North Carolina writers, literature, and literary history and culture.

A cross between a scholarly journal and a literary magazine, NCLR has won numerous awards and citations, including three from the Council of Editors of Learned Journals: the Best New Journal award in 1994, the Best Journal Design award in 1999, and the Parnassus Award for Significant Editorial Achievement in 2007.

The North Carolina Literary Review is edited by Margaret Bauer and available here: http://www.ecu.edu/nclr/

More from historian, scholar and author Dr. Margaret Bauer…

An Interview with Tim Gautreaux: "Cartographer of Louisiana Back Roads" Margaret D. Bauer From Southern Spaces, an inter-disciplinary journal about the regions, places and cultures of the American South In this interview with Louisiana native Margaret D. Bauer, author Tim Gautreaux discusses a quarter century of his fiction writing. Resisting simplistic labels of "Cajun" and "southern," Gautreaux's storytelling reveals an intimate understanding of southern Louisiana's white, working-class people and culture. Often drawn from his own background, Gautreaux's characters are shaped by a range of experiences, from working on steamboats and fighting in world wars, to struggling in the 1980s oil bust.

From the Introduction: In his 1983 book, The People Called Cajuns, James Dorman observes that Cajuns "rarely speak for themselves" in the various sources that refer to them — historical, biographical, or literary — but that same year Louisiana's Tim Gautreaux published his first short story, "A Sacrifice of Doves," in the Kansas Quarterly. In the more than quarter-century since, he has published two short story collections and three novels, most recently The Missing (Knopf, 2009). Gautreaux's name reveals his ethnicity, and in his fiction readers find his Cajun perspective. He is a descendent of the French Acadians who settled in south Louisiana after the British drove them out of Novia Scotia in the eighteenth century.

Read Dr. Bauer’s interview with author Tim Gautreaux here: http://www.southernspaces.org/contents/2009/bauer/1a.htm

30

Inner Banks Historian Pens Book on WWII-era Wilmington Shipyard Between 1942 and 1946, the shipyard in Wilmington built some 243 Liberty- and Victory-class ships to fill out the ranks of the United States World War II fleet. Inner Banks historian and author Ralph Scott brings to life this spectacular and all but forgotten story in his book “The Wilmington Shipyard: Welding a Fleet for Victory in World War II.” Recently, IBX Lifestyles had the distinct pleasure to speak with the author about the story behind the building of the Inner Banks shipyard that contributed so much to the war effort against the Axis Powers.

IBX Lifestyles: In the Introduction to your excellent new book on the Wilmington Shipyard you write about the cunning behind President Roosevelt’s maneuver to outflank the Neutrality Act—passed in 1935, the act prohibits the President from sending U.S. ships into “the combat area”—and provide England with ships to begin what we now call the Lend-Lease program. Could you speak a bit about this, and also touch upon Roosevelt’s general enthusiasm for building shipyards in the South as an economic development strategy?

Author Ralph Scott: At this time there was considerable isolationist sympathy in the U.S. lead by individuals such as Charles Lindberg. Roosevelt was interested in helping the British and he thought a Lend-Lease program might work, while at the same time providing the US with worldwide bases. We would lend the ships and the Commonwealth would lease the bases! The South was part of the Democratic election strategy and it made sense to help with the economic recovery in the region by providing jobs. The South, of course, had good weather, good transportation (rail) and, most important, a ready supply of non-union labor. Roosevelt had a home in Warm Springs, Ga., and his good friend and economic guru, the industrialist Bernard Baruch, lived on the coast of South Carolina.

Also, from a strategic point of view it made good sense to have yards in all areas of the country, not just in the New England, MidAtlantic and West Coast ports.

IBX Lifestyles: Clearly, proximity to the shipyards in Newport News was a factor in the discussion to locate a new company in Wilmington. In fact, as you’ve written, as far back as World War I, Homer L. Ferguson, World War II president of the Newport News Shipbuilding Company, wrote that in his judgment it (Wilmington) “was the best place on the South Atlantic coast to build an additional shipyard.” What sold Ferguson on Wilmington?

Mr. Scott: Homer Ferguson liked Wilmington for a number of reasons. He had good friends living in the area and was familiar with the region. There was ready access to rail transportation (Wilmington was the headquarters of the Atlantic Coast Line Railway), a good climate and ready work force; significantly too, unions had not made inroads into North Carolina. It was also important to keep a rival company from invading, so to speak, the local Newport News Shipyard territory.

Some shipyards had already opened in the South Carolina and Georgia ports. Also, with the long-channel Cape Fear River, it was relatively safe from enemy shelling. It was also a short train or car ride from the Tidewater area. Roger Williams, the yard operation manager, was also from Wilmington.

IBX Lifestyles: In November of 1940, the Maritime Commission decided to locate the new shipyard at Wilmington. Admiral Emory Scott Land wrote about the moment in his autobiography: My friendship with Homer Ferguson led to one of the best chores I ever accomplished for the Merchant Marine directly and the Navy indirectly, when I persuaded him to start a shipbuilding plant for cargo vessels at Wilmington, North Carolina…This piece of business followed a happy and successful day with Homer in a duck blind at Hog Island.

Up to that moment, Land had, in fact, also been considering Morehead City. Is it possible that an episode of duck-hunting changed naval history?

Mr. Scott: It would appear that the duck blind visit did change history as far as Morehead was concerned. I think when it was pointed out the revenue the Atlantic Coast Line railway would get from the material sent to Wilmington, the picture became crystal clear. (ACL was probably a major contributor to the Democratic War Chest.)

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Interview with Ralph Scott, continues

Morehead on the other hand had a rail line that was owned and operated by the state of North Carolina. Also, the remains of the WWI yard were in Wilmington and it seemed like a good place to go back to. Don’t forget the large military training bases in North Carolina. They could provide quick, ready security to the Wilmington yard should a Nazi invasion occur.

The individuals in the duck blind were also astute historians and they recalled how difficult it was for the North to unseat the Confederates from their base of operation on the Cape Fear River in the Civil War. Wilmington just made better sense all around, while Morehead had drawbacks, not the least of which was the narrow channel through the outer banks that was relatively unprotected.

IBX Lifestyles: The Federal Writers’ Guide to North Carolina described Wilmington as it was in the late 1930s: The city…is (in) a region noted for the variety of its vegetation The river is so thickly lined with piers and warehouses that it is visible only at street end and at the customhouse wharf…Saturday brings a horde of farmers from outlying farms. The peal of many church bells breaks the Sunday calm.

Soon, however, “World War II brought a shipbuilding boomtown atmosphere to the Wilmington area. The city became a latter day version of the Alaska gold rush as rural Southern farmers flocked to employment opportunities at the North Carolina Shipbuilding Company.” Tell our readers more about the momentous changes that came to Wilmington in the early 1940s.

Liberty Ship

Mr. Scott: Well, as Agnes Meyer relates in her book Journey through Chaos, Wilmington was more bustling, in her opinion. than Washington DC. Everything from food to housing to transportation was in short supply. Not only was there the shipyard in the town, but there was also a Marine base and an Army camp (Davis) nearby. Food, gasoline, shoes, tires and sugar were all rationed. Prior to the shipyard’s existence Wilmington was a quiet Southern town that depended largely on the railroad for its existence. There was some shipping along the waterfront, but nothing to equal either Charleston to the south or the Tidewater ports—Newport News, Norfolk, Baltimore—to the north. There was a tremendous increase in population starting in 1942 with the construction of the yard. There were lines everywhere for everything. Tickets on the train out of town were scarce. There was no air service to speak of. Food and material had to come into town either by the roads from Fayetteville, Raleigh or New Bern, or by train or ship. A lot of the rail capacity soon became taken over by material for the yard and the surrounding military bases. Weekends there was no place for people from the yard and bases to go but downtown or to the beach. Extra security was evident. Ship captains complained that the lights from the yard made them a great target for the Germany subs off shore as they traveled along the Outer Banks. The Army investigated and decided that it was more important to build the ships than to protect the vessels traveling along the coast. In an "emergency" all the lights at the yard could be turned off at once.

IBX Lifestyles: By May of 1943, the Wilmington shipyard employed over 20,000 workers and had a total gross payroll of over $52 million. Over 6000 of these men—almost 30% of the workforce—were African-American. (This mirrored labor statistics at the Newport News shipyard at the time.) In July of 1943, the SS John Merrick—named for the head of the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company, one of the largest Black-owned businesses in the world—was launched. These are notable events for the era, yet there was a sadly predictable racial backlash. Please explain.

Mr. Scott: Overall, compared to some of race relations issues in other cities and yards, NCSB and Wilmington had a rather good record. Some of the yards along the Gulf coast did not allow Blacks to work in the yard. At the Wilmington yard, Maritime Commission records indicate that the crews were not segregated, although some people that I have talked with dispute this fact. Certainly many crews were segregated, but you would find Blacks and Whites working on the same vessel. This was not true in all yards. Blacks had a separate dining and recreation programs. This is not to say that Blacks were well respected by White yard workers, this was after all deep in the South in the time of Jim Crow laws that governed race relations. I think, considering the past events in Wilmington in 1898, things went along about as well as they did in the South at the time. Women, on the other hand, made great strides in many occupations at the yard during the war. The U.S. Department of Labor had a special Women’s Bureau that looked after female workers. Women were not permitted to work inside completed hulls, due to the fear by management of “hanky-panky” below decks. Almost all of the surviving yard workers today are female, and I have met a few of them.

(Interview with Ralph Scott continues on page 33)

NEWS FROM AROUND THE INNER BANKS Hertford community makes best retirement list

U.S. opens way for wind power off coast

Albemarle Plantation has been named one of America’s 100 best master-planned communities by “Where to Retire” magazine.

Washington—The federal government has cleared the way for developers to plant wind farms in offshore waters on the Outer Continental Shelf, a move that could have a significant impact for North Carolina. Dennis Scanlin, a senior research scientist with the Appalachian State University Energy Center, said North Carolina is one of the top states in the country for coastal wind resources.

Read more: http://www.newsobserver.com/news/ story/1497159.html

“We are very pleased living there,” said Bob Ewing, who retired to Perquimans from New York three years ago. “We do a reality check every few months. We feel like we’re still on vacation.”

Dave Goss, who’s been a resident for four years since leaving Cleveland, Ohio, said the quality of life, including the community’s golfing and boating amenities, is what attracted him. “We love the smalltown atmosphere of Hertford,” he said.

Gayle How, originally from Illinois, moved to Albemarle Plantation nearly 10 years ago. She feels the community’s residents are helpful to one another.

Don Johnson said he fell in love with Albemarle Plantation the moment he saw it. He retired to Perquimans County from Iowa.

Read more: http://www.dailyadvance.com/news/plantation-makes-

Golf Digest Ranks Best Inner Banks Golf Courses Criteria: 18 hole courses; including public, municipal, semi-private and resort courses; Golf Digest rating of three and above stars, out of five possible.

Read more: http://www.ibxlifestyles.com/news.php?extend.7

For 72nd Year, Let Drama Begin on Roanoke Island Settlement huts set ablaze, fog-shrouded scenes of slaughter and ominous sound effects were some of the new dramatic tools brandished at Friday's opening night of the 72nd season of "The Lost Colony." In his second year with the nation's longest-running outdoor symphonic drama, director Robert Richmond said he wanted to give the audience at Waterside Theatre the sense of what the 1587 English settlers may have experienced.

Read more: http://hamptonroads.com/2009/05/72nd-year-let-drama -begin-roanoke-island

Edenton a Big Draw for Inner Banks Tourism “They’ve come here from Canada, England, Australia, Russia, Italy and other places. Mostly, they are on vacation. They tell us they love how clean the town is, the look of the old homes here, and the water.”

Read more: http://www.dailyadvance.com/features/edenton-provesto-be-a-big-draw-for-area-tourism-616893.html

Elizabeth City’s New “Cruise the Carolina Loop” Boaters’ Guide Published The Elizabeth City Area Convention & Visitors Bureau (ECACVB), in cooperation with the Dismal Swamp Canal Welcome Center and the Currituck County Department of Travel and Tourism, has published the “Cruise the Carolina Loop” boaters’ guide. The new book outlines a regional, self-guided tour along the Intracoastal Waterway, as well as details of navigable miles, lock and bridge opening schedules, restaurants and visitor sites located en route.

Read more:

Inner Banks Vineyards and Wineries Eastern North Carolina Wines: A Growing Business Read more: http://www.ibxlifestyles.com/news.php?

Forbes Magazine Ranks N.C. Inner Banks Town 2nd in U.S. Greenville ranked 2nd for Business and Careers in Small Metro category.

Read more: http://www.ibxlifestyles.com/news.php?

Craven County’s Fiber Optic Project Named Best of the Year Project began operating in August 2008 named top project of the year by North Carolina Association of County Commissioners.

Read more: http://www.newbernsj.com/news/county-

Filmmakers Document Inner Banks Living IBX communities focus of documentary films. http://www.ecu.edu/cs-admin/news/poe/2009/309/filmmakers.cfm

Bertie County Peanuts Just a sampling of the many ways our peanuts are prepared: BlisterFried, Boiled, Sea Salt & Black Pepper, Roasted in the Shell, Red Hot Hexalina, Honey Glazed, Peanut Brittle, Roanoke River Trail Mix, Chowan River Trail Mix, & more!

Order our products @ www.pnuts.net/? r=IBX&p=IBX09 Use code IBX09 with purchase of $20 or more and receive one jar of Blister Fried Peanuts FREE! Bertie County Peanuts is NOT among the companies that have been asked by the FDA to hold or recall their peanut-containing products Interview with Ralph Scott, continued from page 31 IBX Lifestyles: The North Carolina Shipbuilding Corporation produced some 243 vessels at Wilmington between 1941 and 1946. The most famous were the so-called “Liberty” ships, of which 126 vessels were launched. The “Victory” class ship—a newbie in the line— was also produced in Wilmington. It was a faster ship and had the capacity of about 270 railroad boxcars. How did these two vessels distinguish themselves in the war and afterwards?

Mr. Scott: The Liberty vessels were largely designed for one time use, although a few are still around used as training ships. Some were sunk for breakwaters at the Normandy invasion, while others were sold to foreign nations for use as tramp steamers. The Liberty vessels were part of the British Ocean Class vessel designed in the 1930s and, as such, were largely outdated by the early 1940s. They were slow reciprocating steam engine vessels. A more modern vessel was needed for the upcoming invasion of the Japanese homeland. The Victory class vessel was designed by the Maritime Commission to meet the need for a fast turbine-powered cargo ship that could accompany the fleet to the Pacific. A large number of Victory vessels were completed at Wilmington and most were turned over to the U.S. Navy. Some were used as command and control ships up until the late 1990s. These ships made convoy runs to Russian, Africa and Europe during the war. The very last vessels built at the yard in 1946 were turned over to commercial shipping companies for use in the South American travel trade. These vessels, which were freighters, had very nicely constructed cabins for their passengers. Many IBXers will remember the Victory and Liberty class ships that were placed, following the war, in the U.S. Strategic Reserve Fleets, which were located in the James and Cape Fear Rivers. Almost all of these vessels have now gone to the breakers and a great era of North Carolina shipbuilding has come to an end.

Professor Scott is Curator of Printed Books and Maps and Editor of North Carolina Libraries.

His book is available at Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Wilmington-Shipyard-Welding-Fleet-Victory/dp/1596292105/ ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1245155194&sr=1-1 The book is also available at area book stores in the NC History section.

Welcome to North Carolina’s... Inner Banks?

Here are a few reasons why Inner Banks towns are becoming magnets for retirees, entrepreneurs, artists and crafts persons from around the world...

Historic Edenton

Swan Quarter

Washington, the Heart of the Inner Banks

20,000+ square miles of lush landscape and affordable real estate

Elizabeth City

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Our database holds contact information for leaders in travel/tourism, media, business, education, finance, development, the arts and other industry sectors. IBX Lifestyles brings the world to your Inner Banks doorstep.

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Historic Edenton, N.C., Bed and Breakfast Sold A Virginia Beach lawyer came to the auction of the historic Lords Proprietors' Inn to buy some beds. He walked away owning the entire bed and breakfast.

Stephen Gunther...bought the inn, its restaurant and parking lot at auction Saturday for $270,000. Lords Proprietors is on the National Register of Historic Places.

It is expected to remain an inn, said Gunther, who lives in nearby Hertford and commutes to his law office in Virginia Beach.

The Lords Proprietors’ Inn, above, along with its land and three other buildings was appraised at $2.2 million two years ago. (File photo copyright of Virginian Pilot)

Read the entire Virginian Pilot article by Connie Sage at: http://hamptonroads.com/2009/06/historic-edenton-nc-bed-andbreakfast-sold

Enjoy past issues of “IBX Lifestyles” (and its earlier incarnation, the “IBX Newsletter”) by following this link:

http://www.ibxlifestyles.com/page.php?25 Here’s a sample of what you’ve been missing: Spring 2009 “IBX Lifestyles” magazine Enjoy the new issue of the "IBX Lifestyles" newsletter, featuring: an interview with New York-toInner Banks transplant Ingrid Lemme; the 29 Inner Banks historical sites and towns of the Historic Albemarle Tour; Inner Banks film news; Inner Banks calendar of events and tourism resources; and, some of the best Inner Banks photography you’re likely to see anywhere.

Summer 2008 Paddling the Inner Banks • Lake Phelps and the Scuppernong River • Roanoke River • Jean Guite Creek • Lumber River • Northeast Cape Fear River • White Oak River and Bear Island • Building a Water Trail Economy • Feature Film Shoots in New Bern: “Death, Taxes and Chocolate” Written and Produced by Inner Banks Filmmaker • Inner Banks Events Spring 2008 Interview with Celebrated Inner Banks Artist Robert Ebendorf • Pocosin Arts Folk School • Documentary Film Shooting in Hertford • Handmade in America: Drawing Inspiration from Western North Carolina • Inner Banks Mourns Loss of Goldsboro Native and “Honorary Mayor of Hollywood” Johnny Grant: January 9, 2008

More past issues of “IBX Lifestyles” and the “IBX Newsletter”…

Winter 2007 Columbia: Honoring Our Past; Designing Our Future • Currituck County: Rich in Heritage; Full of Adventure • Manteo: Linking the Inner Banks to the Outer Banks • South Mills: A Town and a Canal Forever Linked Fall 2007 Vineyards and Wineries of the Inner Banks • Duplin Winery • County Squire Restaurant and Winery • Bannerman Vineyard and Winery • Lu Mil Vineyard • Martin Vineyard Summer 2007 Wilson Botanical Gardens • Hollister’s Medoc Mountain State Park • Roanoke Canal Museum and Trail • Confederate Civil War Drum Returned to New Bern • Merchants Millpond State Park • Sylvan Heights Waterfowl Park and Eco-Center • Paddle for the Border: Paddling Event Links Inner Banks Great Dismal Swamp to Chesapeake, VA Spring 2007 Interview with NC Community College System President Martin Lancaster • Interview with Author/Journalist Willie Drye • Expanding the “Fourth Utility” in Warren County • Williamston: Crossroads of Northeastern North Carolina • Mattamuskeet Foundation Releases Film: “A Winter Day” • Inner Banks Media Corporation Formed Winter 2006 Inner Banks Leaders Look to “Irish Miracle” for Entrepreneurial Inspiration • Washington: The Heart of the Inner Banks • Remarkable Rocky Mount • William Howard Kuntsler Headlines Inner Banks Conference • Inner Banks Seasonal and Special Events Fall 2006 Inner Banks Creative Communities Initiative Launches • Ayden: A Progressive City with Small Town Charm • Edenton: “The South’s Prettiest Town” • Murfreesboro: Small Town Renaissance • Hertford: Carolina Moon • Plymouth: Clean Water, Abundant Wildlife, Great Fishing

Enjoy more past issues at: http://www.ibxlifestyles.com/page.php?25

Inner Banks Tourism Resources Beaufort www.originalwashington.com

Gates www.gatescounty.govoffice2.com

Northampton www.northamptonchamber.org

Bertie www.windsor-bertie.com

Greene www.greenechamber.com

Onslow www.onslowcountytourism.com

Camden www.camdencountync.gov

Hertford www.hertfordcounty.com

Pamlico www.pamlicochamber.com

Carteret www.crystalcoastnc.org

Hyde www.hydecounty.org

Pasquotank www.discoverec.com

Chowan www.visitedenton.com

Jones www.co.jones.nc.us/recreation.htm

Pender www.visitpender.com

Craven www.visitnewbern.com

Lenoir www.kinstonchamber.com

Perquimans www.visitperquimans.com

Currituck www.visitcurrituck.com

Martin www.visitmartincounty.com Nash www.rockymounttravel.com

Pitt www.visitgreenvillenc.com

Duplin www.duplintourism.org Edgecombe www.tarborochamber.com

New Hanover www.cape-fear.nc.us

Tyrrell www.visittyrrellcounty.com Washington www.visitwashingtoncountync.com

“IBX Lifestyles” Salutes Pitt Community College PCC Earns “Exceptional” Status in State Report Each year, the North Carolina Community College System (NCCCS) releases its Critical Success Factors Report to demonstrate how the state’s 58 community colleges performed in eight core areas during the previous academic year.

And in related news…

“Too often, community colleges are treated like an afterthought,” said President Obama in a July 14th speech in Warren, Michigan. “Right now, somewhere between one-third and one-half of American undergrads are at community colleges. Yet community colleges receive only 20% of federal funding (for education).” The President proposed spending $12 billion on U.S. community colleges.

“These accountability measures show that North Carolina Community Colleges are providing a great foundation for our students, whether they are headed to the workplace or into baccalaureate institutions,” said NCCCS President R. Scott Ralls.

“We are indeed pleased that the high quality of Pitt’s classes and services are receiving this ‘exceptional’ rating,” PCC President G. Dennis Massey said. “This is a testimony to the excellence and hard work of our faculty and staff…(I)t’s always positive to garner respect from the state and our peer colleges.”

Please contact us via email at: info@ibxhomes.com.

Next Issue: Fall 2009 Special thanks to the following individuals and organizations for providing photography, copy and graphics for this issue: Jonathan Bowling, Linda Darty, Robert Ebendorf, Aleta Braun, Bernard Timberg, Carroll Dashiell, Haley Sullivan, Judd Snapp, Lisa Beth Robinson, Owen Sullivan, Tom Kilian, Glenn McVicker, Elizabeth Zongolowicz, Lightnin’ Wells, Margaret Bauer, Ralph Scott, Ray & Susan Ellis @ Footpath Pictures, Erick Yates Green, Ingrid Lemme, Henry Hinton @ IBX Media, Josh Armstrong @ Magnolia Arts Center, Chris Schwing, ENC Film Commission, IBX Foundation, Inc.., Feather Phillips & Suze Lindsay, Russ Haddad, Elizabeth Evans, Elizabeth City Area CVB, Bill Russ @ NC Division of Tourism, and Jon Powell @ Bertie County Peanuts.

If we have missed anyone, please accept our apologies and contact us at:

info@ibxhomes.com

Learn more about the Inner Banks! www.YouTube.com: search “Inner Banks—IBXlifestyles.com”

IBXHOMES.com

ENC Film Commission www.filmeast.net

IBXhomes.com markets a comprehensive listing of up-to-date real estate offerings from across the Inner Banks region: homes and condominiums, commercial properties, raw land, office and manufacturing facilities.

The Eastern North Carolina Film Commission provides an array of services to make film and television production across the Inner Banks as trouble-free as possible. In coordination with the North Carolina Film Office and the North Carolina Department of Commerce, the ENC Film Commission offers all the information and access to services that film and television producers need to mount production here in North Carolina’s Inner Banks.

“IBX Lifestyles” is a publication of the IBX Foundation, Inc., IBX Ventures, the Eastern North Carolina Film Commission and IBXhomes.com and IBXlifestyles.com.