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Two quilters will join our festival this year. Jane Hicks, a poet and quilter, hails from the mountains of east Tennessee. While she was at Kentucky's Hindman Settlement School Writers Workshop one summer, she struck up a friendship with novelist Sharyn McCrumb, our Appalachian Writer in Residence for 1999. Since that time, she has designed original quilts to illustrate Sharyn's ballad novels. Featuring the ballad quilts as well as other unique quilts, this is the first comprehensive exhibit of Jane's quilts. She will talk about quilt design and the creative process on Saturday afternoon. Cari Norris is a young woman of many talents. A featured musician in the "Banjo Women" exhibit, Cari inherited her interest in quilting as a family legacy and was especially influenced by Knott County, Kentucky quilter and novelist, Verna Mae Slone. Cari's quilt, "Permutations," is featured on the opening page of the Appalachian Heritage Festival website. |
| "Banjo Women in West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky" is a ground-breaking documentary study compiled by Susan and Geoff Eacker of Morehead State University and Miami University of Ohio. Developed during a Rockefeller Fellowship in the Humanities at Marshall University's Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Gender in Appalachia, "Banjo Women" documents through photographs, oral history interviews, and field recordings the little-known story of white mountain women who picked up this instrument of African origin. |  |
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Featured musicians in this study include Dora Mae Wagers,
Livingston, Kentucky (above); Sylvia O'Brien, Clay County, West Virginia
(left); Helena Triplett, Elkins, West Virginia; Pam Lund, Pocahontas County,
West Virginia; Cari Norris, Estill County, Kentucky; and Diane
Jones, Massey, Maryland. Cari and Diane will join the Eackers for a
workshop/demonstration on Saturday
afternoon. During the Friday
evening concert, Cari will play banjo and talk about her grandmother,
country music legend Lily May Ledford. On Saturday
evening, Diane will sing ballads and play clawhammer banjo.
Many thanks to Studio 105 for donating gallery space and highlighting this special exhibit as part of their fall season. Thanks also go to O'Hurley's General Store for hosting the Saturday afternoon workshops. Quilt by Jane Hicks. Photographs by Geoff Eacker. Order
tickets for evening concerts.
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