Fairmont's Home-Grown Revitalization

Several years ago I made a game of going around to nearby towns with my camera. I wrote a few “portrait of a small town” posts as a result, including this one about Fairmont. My photos reflected my mood at the time: I noticed a lot of sad, broken things.

Recently I was asked to take photos at Fairmont’s Hometown Market (my very first paid photo gig!), which is a new event put on by Mainstreet Fairmont. It was so uplifting to find a completely different energy from the last time I visited with my camera. This time around, the downtown felt positively vibrant.

The market was well-organized and well-attended. I could just feel how happy people were to be out and about.

There was beautiful produce and lots of home-grown plants.

Homemade baked goods, an ice cream truck, smoothies, and empanadas.

I couldn’t believe how many creative small businesses were showcasing their wares. Really well-done, niche goods, like homemade pet products, soaps, jewelry, pottery, and decor.

Can you believe the leaded glass in this building? It amazes me every time I see it.

Lots of local and WV-themed goods.

And just look at these onesies. I cannot resist a tiny baby tie-dye.

I just love that so many local people are clearly getting very creative in their spare time. Without this well-organized market, I’d never have known.

Inside the firehouse, the owner of a local flower shop had laid out hundreds of plants she was using to make 80 baskets to hang on the light posts downtown. She told me she is now carrying local pottery in her shop, which she fills with plants to sell. I love these types of symbiotic relationships.

So much has changed for the better in Fairmont since I last took photos there. There are multiple new businesses downtown, and lots of old buildings have been fixed up. The beautiful architecture that has existed for years looks charming and interesting again, rather than a sad reminder of better times gone by.

After working in the community development field for just three years, I can already see that the work is hard and slow. I therefore feel the need to take note and celebrate when people are able to band together to make the change they want to see.

This new market highlights all the work that so many people in Fairmont have been doing in the background for years. I like to think it’s also a harbinger of better days to come.

Morgantown murals!

Earlier this year, I started volunteering at Arts Mon (Monongalia County’s art council) and attended my first Arts Collaborative meeting. I learned about a cool pop-up art event that was planned for the courthouse square and that the Arts Collaborative had worked with the City and Mainstreet Morgantown to wrap downtown trash cans in work by local artists. But the thing I heard that got me all excited was this: Morgantown has a mural initiative.

Since that meeting not six months ago, five new murals have popped up downtown. And they’re good.

A local family painted a giant rainbow on one of their downtown buildings that sends a cheerful, open message as you head into town from the Westover bridge. If you cross that bridge and continue up Pleasant Street to the local co-op, you’ll see that it now has a giant cardinal on its outside wall. (All you West Virginia history nerds will recognize this as West Virginia’s state bird.)

The next and newest contribution is hiding in an alley on Court Street, which connects High and Spruce Streets across from the courthouse. I really like how that new mural works in harmony with the existing graffiti.

Court Street leads through to Spruce. As you continue North, you’ll pass Health Right, a free clinic that treats low-income and underinsured patients. The side of the building that borders a quaint alley called Wall Street now highlights four local leaders’ contributions to the community. In very pretty colors.

Next, cross the Walnut Street bridge into South Park to find the new image gracing the parking lot of Gene’s, Morgantown’s oldest (and arguably best) local dive bar. The Gene’s mural coordinates with a recently-painted rainbow crosswalk that adds a little spice to the whole block and continues that same message of acceptance.

As you can see from this Pinterest board I started a while back, I love the idea of art on buildings and in crosswalks and on benches and on park picnic tables. It takes the ordinary and transforms it into something happy and inspiring. And sometimes, it leads to real change.

Princeton, WV transformed its downtown over the past few years, and it all started with murals. That story about Princeton got me so excited, I ended up geeking out on creative placemaking and doing a whole lot of internet reading about what art can do for a community. (I have a few ideas.)

All this happened because a really committed group of Morgantown citizens got together to push through some red tape, acquire some funding, and make space for artists to express themselves in a way that everyone can enjoy. To those people I want to say thank you. You’ve given me some new hope. And to everyone else: Let’s keep this going.

It's not your mother's advent calendar!

Dani during the planning phase, next to the "original" advent calendar we used as a template.

Adrian's vintage Singer, which doesn't only look pretty--it works!

sparkly magenta leaf ribbon!

Dani plotting her trim choices

Adrian combined aqua felt with gold ribbon.

Marlin swooped in and created his own felt tree in no time at all (featuring a bright orange feather!). So cute.

Ideas for the felt ornaments

Did you have an advent calendar when you were little? The kind where you do one thing every day of December until Christmas? I haven't thought about these for years. My sister and I used to take turns with the manger scene version my mom had, which had a piece of burlap as the background (hung from a stick instead of a dowel rod to complete the rustic look), with a brown felt barn and a host of felt characters and animals to be applied each day.

My lovely friend Adrian has a secular all-felt version her mother made in the 70's, and this Sunday, Adrian hosted a spectacular craft party where she, her friend Dani, and I each made our own. You know you've found some kindred spirits when the size of each other's felt collections makes you feel WAY better about your own felt habit.

We had so much fun putting a modern twist on this 70's version. Key changes:

1. red sparkle felt for the background (I mean, obviously, right?)
2. a clean, modern tree with no obvious branches
3. a mix of new and vintage trim to decorate the tree
4. a plan to reinforce the ornaments with an extra layer of felt backing for durability

Not gonna lie--this project is big. We started at 2 and worked well into dinner time (when we took a break for an absolutely delicious meal of homemade crab cakes served on a bed of arugula salad, which Adrian's husband Don whipped up while we worked), and we're still not quite finished. But, we got the bulk of the work done. We decided to make the ornaments on our own . . . I foresee a little coffee table/couch sewing action in my future.  

Not only is Coban going to love snapping these ornaments-to-be on the tree this year, but I haven't had so much fun on a Sunday in ages. 

My calendar on the left next to Adrian's mom's version.

Don's homemade crab cakes, with special sauce. I was about to fight someone for the last one, but luckily he had another batch waiting. 

Porchfest: How about some live music on your porch?

Such a great day to whip out the popsicle shirt!

The day before I left to visit my sister Michele and her boyfriend Nick in Jacksonville, FL this past weekend, she gave me some bad news: they had sewer problems. As in, 'we can only flush three times a day and we have to shower outside' kind of sewer problems. Eek. When she mentioned this to my dad before I came, he said, "Don't worry. Jess can pee anywhere." (True story.)

Luckily, the plumbers were able to come out on Saturday. So while we were busy cleaning up the house for guests and sprucing up the front porch, the plumbers were out back working. We had to spruce because Nick and Michele were hosting a singer/songwriter on their porch at 3 pm as part of Jacksonville's Porchfest. So, we sprayed off the porch furniture, put new candles out, etc, and were basically ready for guests to stop by around 1 when the festival started.

I decided to head out to take some pics, and as I was walking back, I get a text from Michele: "I just heard a guy say he thinks this tree is gonna fall." Turns out when the plumbers were sawing through a very large tree root to install the new sewer line, the tree attached to the root began to sway. Working in construction has its perks, and in less than an hour, Nick had a crew of the fastest moving tree guys I've ever seen working away. So while Porchfest was in full swing with a band playing directly across the street,  a guy was climbing a sycamore in the side yard and taking it down, branch by branch. I must admit, it was almost as good a show as the band. Fortunately that band was loud, and while a few people definitely turned their heads and probably wondered why anyone would be taking a tree down right then, it all turned out fine.

Once that excitement was over, we got to go out and enjoy the festival. I had no idea I was in for such a treat. The streets were closed off, and for blocks around there were people in the street, listening to music (multiple porches had different musicians playing at different times), hanging out, and availing themselves of some seriously delicious food truck fare. (I had some spicy shrimp sliders, a delicious pasta salad, and a bite of the yummiest grilled cheese ever. Pretty sure the magic in that sandwich had to do with the sweet-spicy relish. So good.)

A lady I met told me part of the inspiration behind this particular Porchfest was to continue the neighborhood's long tradition of sitting outside on porches. (Springfield is an old historic neighborhood in Jacksonville that is slowly being revitalized.) Turns out porchfest as a concept originated in Ithaca in 2007, and now these types of festivals are springing up all around the country. Check here to see if there's one near you.  

Networking: It's not an evil word.

Artist Colony in Jerusalem

Metal sculpture detail

When I was in Israel a couple years ago, my friend and I wandered through a sweet little artist colony tucked away in the old part of Jerusalem. We walked down a set of stairs and through an open gate of sorts onto a small, slanted street lined with shops and work-spaces for various types of craftspeople. The picture above hangs on my living room wall, and lately when I see it I wonder who the artists working there are (Are they Jewish? Muslim? Christian? Is it a place where religion doesn't matter?) and how they're faring with the recent violence. What was interesting about this place though was that it seemed very much like a community rather than a tourist area--like a place where artists had gathered to benefit from each other's creative energy. 

I've never made my living as an artist or lived in a particularly artsy community, but the happiest I've been in a work-like space in the ten years since I graduated from law school was when I worked in a letterpress shop in Louisiana with Kathryn Hunter of Blackbird Letterpress.

It was the oddest thing, getting to do that. I had just moved to Baton Rouge from Bozeman, Montana, and I'd decided I wanted to learn about letterpress printing (this from reading a piece in ReadyMade magazine about a letterpress shop called Yeehaw Industries in Knoxville, which sadly has since closed). So get this. I googled letterpress printing in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and up came the website of a girl who not only went to undergrad in Bozeman, but who also made art quilts. And I had just gotten into quilting. (The modern kind, like this.) Sometimes these coincidences astound me. So I emailed Kathryn, went to meet her, and we became fast friends. She taught me how to run her giant hand-fed printing press, and together we made invitations, cards, bird flags, and other things to sell at the Baton Rouge arts market, and we got her Etsy shop up and running. I learned so much and had such a great time. 

                            A letterpress card Kathryn and I designed together. Love this guy.

That didn't seem like networking to me. That was just pursuing something I found interesting. If you'd asked me several years ago what I thought about networking, I'd have thrown up a little in my mouth. That word had this slimy, schmoozing connotation for me. But lately I see it completely differently--it's about connecting with people you genuinely like, who are doing work that you find interesting and respect, and keeping in touch in some way. 

                                           red hand by Sarah Seldomridge

Even so,  when  my step-dad suggested I start using my network a few months ago, my first reaction was: I don't have a network. But slowly I started thinking about the people I know--even casually--who are doing things I think are really great. And since I started paying attention, I see that there are more of those than I thought. I really like the idea of consciously seeking out a network of inspirational people, and I think this can be useful in several different contexts. The most obvious is to use it to build connections to help you get a different job. But lately I've been working on building a creative network.

                                            hot foot by Sarah Seldomridge

My lovely friend Sarah Seldomridge, who has been drawing and painting for the past ten years in Boston, (and recently had a two lady show there at Voltage Coffee & Art with her friend Amanda Laurel Atkins) has been giving me feedback and encouragement on my work. We actually set up a phone date before her show to talk about hers. And we're finding that it really helps.

       still life with jif by Sarah Seldomridge

Another artist friend recently asked me if I could be her artsy accountability person, and we've been emailing each other once a week to say what we plan to work on for the week and report on how last week's things went. It's been so helpful!

So whether it's for work or for fun, let's start thinking about who our people are and try to connect with them. Who knows what might happen?