Put ramekins on a baking sheet. Bake for 25-35 minutes, until puffed and golden. Remove from oven, and let stand for 5 minutes. With a flexible spatula, remove strata to
Editor's Note: This story originally appeared in the August 2014 issue. For current information on the Mt. Mitchell Crafts Fair, visit yanceychamber.com. What happened was that I started drinking coffee
Editor's Note: This story originally appeared in the August 2014 issue. For current information on the Mt. Mitchell Crafts Fair, visit yanceychamber.com. What happened was that I started drinking coffee
Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in the August 2014 issue. For current information on the Mt. Mitchell Crafts Fair, visit yanceychamber.com.
What happened was that I started drinking coffee out of a handcrafted, powder blue mug. After a week, matte-glazed pottery became the texture of my mornings. Now something peculiar happens when I walk out the door: I can hear an artist exhale when the weathervane on my neighbor’s rooftop whirls. I blink, and everyone driving, or waiting, or riding to work becomes part of a Norman Rockwell scene. It seems the scales have fallen from my eyes. Art is everywhere.
This new sensibility hit a real height when Ginger Johnson, director of the Yancey County Chamber of Commerce, started describing the Mount Mitchell Crafts Fair. I saw Burnsville’s town square burst with Americana: green grass, friendly potters, a bandstand under the shade trees.
Here, men and women sold coffee mugs and kitchen chairs, paintings, and lawn art. There was local artist Gene Albritton, who paints images of the mountains using mud from the mountains themselves. Albritton is one among the largest concentration of artists in the country — an assemblage of Yancey and Mitchell counties — who breathe life into our daily arts. Who make us think of mountains in mud-strokes and skies in paint while we go about doing what we do every day.
This is how it happened: A craftsman created a powder-blue mug, and in a quiet fusion, he mingled art with everyday life. Good mornings were cast as craft.
To commemorate our 90th anniversary, we’ve compiled a time line that highlights the stories, contributors, and themes that have shaped this magazine — and your view of the Old North State — using nine decades of our own words.
From its northernmost point in Corolla to its southern terminus on Cedar Island, this scenic byway — bound between sound and sea — links the islands and communities of the Outer Banks.
Us? An icon? Well, after 90 years and more than 2,000 issues celebrating North Carolina from mountains to coast, we hope you’ll agree that we’ve earned the title.
After nearly a century — or just a couple of years — these seafood restaurants have become coastal icons, the places we know, love, and return to again and again.
