If you’re the only child of an engineer father and a financial analyst mother, there’s a good chance that you and Heather Gordon might agree on something: “I think numbers are beautiful,” she says. A lover of algorithms and an “analog junkie,” Gordon strives to tell stories about personal relationships using geometry, numbers, and code — she transformed a portion of Crime and Punishment into the computer code ASCII — and asymmetrical origami shapes, some large enough to walk through. Never mind the math. Just appreciate the genius.
Heather Gordon translates numbers into oil paintings like Last Woman Standing (above), a data portrait of her mother, which maps the distances between all of the places she’s lived.
Split-rail fences don’t shout “keep out.” They lean, they shift, they invite. And in western North Carolina, they remind us that some lines are meant to hold, not harden.
Each May, spring climbs nearly 3,000 feet to the seat of Alleghany County. Here, as the rhododendrons blush, a beloved mountain town welcomes visitors with its food, art, and flourish of color and creativity.
Brief but delicious, soft-shell crab season is cherished by diners as well as the folks who work around the clock to put these native pinchers on our plates.
When it comes to poultry, the best is raised close to home.
