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Catch the Spirit of Appalachia celebrates 15th anniversary
By Carey King
"We sat there and listened to the rain on the tin roof and just cried," remembers Amy Garza, thinking back to the day that Catch the Spirit of Appalachia was born.
It was late spring 1989. Garza and her sister, Doreyl Cain, had returned to their brother's Tuckasegee cabin after spending a day telling stories and making art with Jackson County students.
Fifteen years ago, upon their return to Jackson County, sisters Amy Garza, left, and Doreyl Cain sat on their great-grandmother Elmina Owens' fence, located on Wolf Mountain near Horseshoe Rock. The two came home to share mountain heritage, creativity and pride with area schoolchildren.
"We read what the children had written and knew we'd hit the mark the first time around," Cain said.
The two had journeyed to Jackson County from their homes in California and Illinois. Raised in Tuckasegee, they'd moved to South Carolina as teenagers, then moved across the United States, married and raised families. At the time, Garza was working for a tractor-trailer company in Chicago; Cain was at an advertising agency out West.
But they both knew it was time to come home.
"We suddenly discovered after talking to each other over the phone that we both wanted to come back to work with the children," Garza said. "We'd been out there in the world and knew what was out there. We wanted to save what we had back here."
Dressed in traditional mountain clothing, Garza and Cain pose with a group of Girl Scouts in front of one of Cain's "spontaneous murals." Garza, the storyteller, is known for "painting with words" while Cain, a pastel artist, illustrates those stories with "word pictures." Look for Cain's artwork in coming weeks on billboards around the county - Allison Outdoor Advertising has donated space to celebrate Catch the Spirit's 15th year.
Message and mission
"Before I went to high school, I thought I was rich," Garza recalled. "We went to Asheville just one time when I was a little kid, for Daddy to buy us shoes and a coat."
When the Ammons sisters hit high school, however, they soon discovered from their peers in town that they were "less-than," Garza said.
That experience was common for students who left small mountain classrooms to attend larger consolidated schools, Garza said.
"The whole day was spent going to and from school, leaving before dawn and getting home way after dark. It was impossible to help on the farm," Garza said.
A tiny Merima Friedman, daughter of Avram and Jody Friedman of Sylva, smiles in the costume she made for one of Catch the Spirit's first Parades of Many Colors. The event will be staged again this year as part of the downtown Sylva Greening Up the Mountains Festival, set for Saturday, April 24.
Besides being needed to pitch in with chores at home, many students dropped out because their status as "hicks" and "hillbillies" made them the butt of countless jokes.
"It was too intimidating," Cain said.
"They said the people at school 'didn't speak their language,'" Garza said.
That lack of self-worth - all too familiar from their own childhood - is what the sisters came back to combat.
"When we were driving down here in the car and planning, I did a drawing of young children just flying into the sky like birds," Cain said. "It showed that they could rise above all the negative things. I had discovered that we have so much potential inside of us. I wanted to help them discover the potential they have inside themselves."
The purpose of Catch the Spirit of Appalachia is twofold: to help harness mountain heritage before it is forgotten, and in doing so, tap into the pride and creative juices that have flowed through these mountains for so long.
"For years, it's been outsiders coming in and telling us what to do," Cain said. "We're training children and adults to take a part in their own heritage."
'Mountains breathe artists'
Garza is the storyteller; Cain, the visual artist. When they visit schools or perform for community groups, Garza weaves a mountain tale while Cain depicts it in pastels on mural-sized sheets of paper.
The sisters call it "spontaneous art."
"I don't know what I'm going to draw until Amy says it," Cain said.
"And I don't know what I'm going to tell until I see the crowd," Garza said.
In other words, the two like to say, Garza "paints with words," while Cain "makes word pictures."
Garza is the author of numerous books and short stories, including Retter, the story of her grandparents, Tom and Retter Ammons, and Cannie, the Hills of Home, which tells the story of her parents' marriage. Cain has a master's degree in medical art, and after twenty years in commercial art and advertising, exhibits work that depicts her Western North Carolina roots.
They've made a powerful pair for some time, dating back to girlhood days when Garza watched Cain draw pictures in the dirt.
"These mountains just breathe artists," Cain said
"The creativity just comes out of the ground," Garza said.
"People around here had to create because we didn't have the luxuries of life," said Irene Hooper, a member of Catch the Spirit's executive board.
"When you have to create," Garza explained, "you go into the world a whole different way."
Patchwork of projects
Fifteen years ago, starting with a $30,000 grant from the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, the sisters set out to catch that creativity - the quilts, canned goods, cornhusk dolls, and other handicrafts so distinctive to Appalachia.
"I saw a little converted gas station storefront in Tuckasegee and saw that these two women had art inside," said Ray Menze, another board member. "I thought, 'I've got to get these women into the schools.'"
The Ammons sisters first conducted workshops with ninth-graders who had read Garza's book, Retter.
"The teacher told me, 'The students would rather study your book than study Longfellow, because they're learning about themselves,'" Garza said. "The students reading the book had the same names as the characters in it."
Garza and Cain soon got a contract with Jackson County Schools to do a six-week workshop with fourth-graders on creative writing. That project then expanded into trips around the region, across North Carolina, to neighboring states, to Florida, Kentucky and Mississippi, and even back to California and Illinois.
"We can't even count the number of children we've worked with," Garza said.
Since their incorporation as the non-profit Catch the Spirit of Appalachia, the sisters have conducted a wide range of drama residencies, each of which begins with children exploring legends important to their history, then telling those stories on stage - such as Ghost Legends of Tsa-la-gi, performed by children at Cherokee Youth Center Boys and Girls Club last year.
"We use the stories of the people more than stories of the textbooks," Cain said.
Each year since its inception, Catch the Spirit has partnered with other area organizations to put on summer camps for children. The sisters offer writing and visual arts classes for adults, and perform for a variety of groups with 16-year-old Celtic musician Josh Bulla.
Each year since 1998, community members have staged Garza's The Trail of Light, an ecumenical drama, at Western Carolina University.
Catch the Spirit also sponsors the Parade of Many Colors, which began in 1991 as part of the organization's Festival of Many Colors. Seven years ago, it merged with Sylva Partners in Renewal to create the Greening Up the Mountains Festival. During that event, Appalachian heritage shares the spotlight with the food and fun of a modern street fair.
Catch the Spirit's contribution is an area where heritage crafters demonstrate mountain and Cherokee arts, children perform on guitar, fiddle and banjo, and local quilts, canned goods, breads and crafts compete for top honors.
A future rooted in the past
"At first, people didn't know what we meant by 'Catch the Spirit of Appalachia,'" Garza said.
"People thought we were crazy for promoting mountain heritage because there was such poverty in the region," Cain said.
But with the new emphasis on heritage tourism, the sisters see that their vision is catching on.
"Now heritage is the 'in' thing. It's part of economic development, part of the heritage trail," said board member Menze.
That makes the timing right for Catch the Spirit's future plan: to build their permanent home on 52 acres near Kirbey Knob, on the line between Jackson and Macon counties.
"Our idea is to have a working farm," Garza said. "While the children do camp, they can learn what it means to follow a horse, get their feet in the dirt, and listen to the birds near the creek. They can do the things that we did as children."
In addition to housing the group's ongoing programs, the living heritage center would feature an ampitheater for performances and an international display of children's art.
Originally hunting grounds for the Cherokee, the property Catch the Spirit has its eyes was once the homestead of board member Vera Guise's family.
"These tourists coming in want to see the real mountain people," said board member Hooper. "But you can't get any more authentic than what we are."
For more information on activities during Catch the Spirit of Appalachia's 15th-anniversary year, see their Web site at www.mousetrax.org.
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