This Friday, October 1st, as part of the Downtown Boone Art Crawl, the Watauga County Arts Council is pleased to announce two new exhibits. The opening gallery reception will be in the Jones House located at 604 W. King Street, from 6:30pm until 8:00pm. The public is invited to come to the reception and meet the artists as you view their work.

The Mazie Jones Gallery will feature the photography of Clayton Joe Young for the month of October. Growing up Joe spent a lot of time with his grandparents in rural North Carolina. With his mother’s parents he spent endless days hoeing weeds and planting vegetables. Once the chores were finished, his grandfather and Joe would walk to the nearby country store to sit by the potbelly stove, tell stories, and drink bottled Coca-Colas.

While Joe’s mother’s parents taught a hard work ethic, his father’s parents taught him how to enjoy farm life. They were farmers too, but they had farm animals: horses, chickens, ducks, and plenty of cats and dogs. His grandfather had a garden which he plowed with his horses but let the weeds go untended. Instead, they would go horseback riding through the woods or make chores into games like who could gather the most eggs. Joe’s grandmother would ring the dinner bell when it was time to eat.
           
These traditional ways of life and time spent with his grandparents were the inspiration for Joe to start taking photos about ten years ago. He felt that he had witnessed one of the last generations of farmers who were self-sufficient and lived like their forefathers. Joe wanted to capture this on film before it completely disappeared. If you too love to reminisce about simpler ways and times of your youth, you won’t want to miss the exhibit this month! Joe hopes these images give you the sense of excitement that he was feeling when he took the pictures.

Joe’s work includes photographs of some of our area’s best traditional musicians, craftspeople, and storytellers. They have been invited to this reception, so come by and meet some of them and possibly hear some tunes and stories.

             
This month the Open Door Gallery will showcase the work of artist, Kathy Dawson. Kathy was born in Asheville, North Carolina and grew up in Candler, just west of Asheville. She and her husband married in 1972 and have two children and three grandchildren. They moved to Mountain City, Tennessee six years ago and love this area. Kathy started painting about seven years ago and took some classes in Asheville, but is for the most part, self-taught. Kathy says she tries to capture the likeness of a person or animal and their personality in her portraits. She loves to paint old barns, flowers and nature in general.  Oil and graphite are the mediums she has worked with most often. But recently she has worked with watercolor and this has renewed her love for painting again. Kathy hopes people can look at her work and feel the love that she has for what she paints and enjoy it as much as she does!