Mural pays tribute to North Carolina's varied musical heritage

The incomparable David Menconi recently wrote a feature on the mural at Chapel Hill's Pepper's Pizza that pays homage to the various musicians North Carolina has produced.

Just inside the restaurant's front door, a painted outline of the state with portraits of native North Carolina musicians takes up a large expanse of wall. Seventeen notable natives are there -- from Carrboro roots-rock madman Dexter Romweber to Tryon R&B singer Nina Simone, Kannapolis funk giant George Clinton to Newland jazz drummer Max Roach.

Scott Nurkin, who paints murals when he isn't playing drums for the band Birds of Avalon, has been working on the art piece since before Pepper's opened in its current Franklin Street location in 2007.

It remains a work in progress, with at least a dozen portraits to come. Nurkin has partly finished portraits of Dunn guitarist Link Wray and Chapel Hill blues woman Elizabeth Cotten in his studio. Ryan Adams, Kay Kyser, Charlie Poole and Shirley Caesar are also on the way. ...

Click here to see some photos of the mural.

Quick hits: Skylight highlighted, and a artists mourns for her husband -- and fights jetties

Ayden's Skylight Inn in the spotlight again
"The spotlight is once again on Ayden's Skylight Inn barbecue restaurant," says the Daily Reflector. "The Pitt County purveyor of pig, East Carolina-style, will hit the big time in the Big Apple this weekend as part of a popular festival that celebrates roasted pork.

"A short documentary film about the local restaurant, titled 'Leave It to Cleaver: The Story of North Carolina's Skylight Inn BBQ,' is scheduled to be shown at 4 p.m. Sunday as part of New York's seventh annual Snapple Big Apple Barbecue Block Party. According to the Web site, bigapplebbq.org, the film 'showcases the Jones family of Ayden, N.C., whose restaurant The Skylight Inn carries on a family tradition of whole hog barbecue that has continued in an unbroken line since the 1830s.'

"The film was created by filmmaker Joe York and the Southern Foodways Alliance at the University of Mississippi. ..."

Fight groins (jetties)
My mother alerted me to this blog, whose aim is two-fold: to honor the passing of the artist's husband (shown) AND to help lead the cause against ocean groins.

Says the Sierra Club (via the blog): "For the third year in a row, legislation is before the NC General Assembly that would punch a hole in North Carolina’s long-standing ban on hardened structures that keeps our beaches public & natural. We need your help today if North Carolina’s public’s beaches are to be protected for tomorrow. Please oppose SB 832, Coastal Resource Commission may permit a Terminal Groin, by Sen. Julia Boseman.

"The natural beauty and economic value of North Carolina’s public beaches and inlets exists today in large measure because our state leaders long ago adopted a conservative management policy that bans the use of hardened structures—seawalls, jetties and groins of any kind—from our coast. ..."

Quick hits: Hurricane names, 49er gridiron, EC in photos and longleaf pine art?

Hurricane names released
My "grandparents" could cause havoc this year. After all, two of the latest round of hurricane names include a "Bill" and an "Ida."

Those wacky weather people. They've also included a "Joaquin" and a "Peter" to be followed by "Rose."

Click here for the full list.


UNCC remains on track for football
"A tough economy and some disappointment in the number of prospective buyers who have followed through with a commitment to buy football seat licenses is not slowing the Charlotte 49ers' efforts to start a football program in time for the 2013 season," says the Charlotte Observer.

"Although circumstances have changed since September, when the school's board of trustees first approved moving ahead on football, athletics director Judy Rose said Tuesday that the 49ers remain on track for a program that would begin in a temporary on-campus stadium and eventually move to a new, on-campus facility.

"Any of Charlotte's football goals are contingent on the selling of at least 5,000 FSLs. As of Tuesday, just over 1,700 had been purchased. ..."

Old photo collection preserves Elizabeth City's history
"For 84 years, Cecil Richardson Jr. has lived in the area and amassed a local photo and newspaper clipping collection that fills more than 75 three-ring binders.

"Some of the photos he’s taken himself, including his shots of the night the wooden blimp hangar burned in Weeksville in the 1990s," says the Daily Advance. "Others he has collected from various residents and labeled with the address or names of those pictured. He knows most of the people in the photographs and can give background stories to places that recent Elizabeth City residents don’t even know existed.

"Cindy Williams, an owner of MMT Printers, wants to help Richardson preserve this knowledge and is collaborating with Richardson to make a photo book that would be available for sale. ..."



Craftswoman makes art from longleaf pine needles
"What can you do with pine straw? Well, there's mulch. And then there's ... mulch.

"Melanie Walter has another use: She makes baskets out of pine needles," says the Star-News.

"She has baskets on the display at the Asheville Art Museum. Her baskets won a third-place ribbon at the Orange Street ArtsFest on May 23. And she has received an invitation to show her work at the prestigious Ann Arbor Street Art Fair in Michigan.

"Most of her sales come through Port City Pottery & Fine Crafts, a crafts cooperative with a store in the Cotton Exchange. Her baskets are also available at the Sunset River Marketplace in Calabash and at the Cameron Art Museum. ..."

Quick hits: News from one end of the state to the other

Fewer visitors to the Smokies
"Chip and Michelle Goodman enjoyed a quiet morning around the fire at Cataloochee Valley campground in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

"At 9.5 miles to the gallon, the rig [they drive] isn’t cheap to drive," says the A C-T.

"That didn’t stop the Goodmans from making the 300-mile trip down the Blue Ridge Parkway and to the park for a vacation. But the couple did scale back just a little.

" 'We were planning on going to Florida,' Chip Goodman said. 'We were going to the Keys and we changed our minds.'

"For the Goodmans, the change in plans put them in the Smokies, where they had a bit more elbow room than they would have found a year ago.

"With gas prices setting record highs this summer, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park says visitation is down 5 percent at its main entrances.

"The Blue Ridge Parkway is down 5.4 percent with 9.3 million visitors so far this year. ..."

Penland School a mecca for artists
"My image of a mountain crafts school has always been of a collection of old buildings in which people, almost all of them on the sunset side of 50, use traditional techniques to produce traditional items — the sort of stuff that graced Appalachian homes in the days when you made it yourself or did without," writes Bill McGoun for the Asheville Citizen-Times.

"I had suspected that the Penland School of Crafts, northwest of Spruce Pine in Mitchell County, would be different, and a recent visit confirmed my suspicions. Most of the students I saw are still waiting for their 30th birthdays and some of the buildings are new both in age and in style. And, while the techniques may be traditional, the products most certainly are not. ...

"Penland grew out of a weaving program established in 1923 by Lucy Morgan to help mountain families make extra money. Today, there are classes in books and paper, clay, drawing and painting, glass, iron, other metals, photography, printmaking, textiles and wood. There are one- and two-week classes in the summer, one-week and eight-week sessions in spring and fall.

"There is no permanent faculty, thus each class is unique. For instance, this summer there were 14 different glass classes with a total of 20 instructors. Subjects included beads, Venetian figures, lampworking, glass sculpting, goblets and working sheet glass. There will be a beginners’ class this fall and sculpting and imagery classes next spring. ..."

Nags Head a top-10 'car-free' destination
Sherman's Travel offers to places to vacation where you can "[l]eave the pump behind." In fact at some of these spots, cars are "optional -- or altogether banned."

North Carolina's Nags Head made the list, which can be found here.

N.C. cities are arts destinations

According to a press release, AmericanStyle magazine's annual readers' poll has ranked several North Carolina cities as among the best in the country for art.

Charlotte came in 17th (among 25) in the large-city category; Raleigh was No. 24 in mid-sized cities; Asheville was second among small cities; and Chapel Hill was ninth among small towns.

"In each winning city, there are artists, elected officials, arts councils and art lovers who have made a commitment to developing that city's galleries, museums and studios," said AmericanStyle publisher Wendy Rosen. "These cities recognize that cultivating the arts is good for their economy, but that is just the beginning. Look at some of our small-town winners: no matter its size, no matter how remote it is, a town can have an arts identity that generates good will, local pride and contributes to economic development."

A nice rendering of Cape Hatteras

Cape Hatteras Lighthouse is one of the most recognized lighthouses in the world. Area artist Lin has sketched a wonderful rendering of Cape Hatteras.

"My reference photo (I live four hours from the lighthouse!!! LOL)," she writes on her View From the Oak blog, "showed a sunny summer day, so I thought, also fitting for our predicted showers today, to add a bit of a storm approaching.I'd like to do this again on a larger sheet of paper so I can extend the lighthouse."

Check out more of Lin's sketches and art here.

'Sir Robin (Clay Aiken) bravely ran away'

Clay Aiken has admitted recently that he thought Monty Python was a person, not the legendary British comedic troup.

Aiken has been forgiven, apparently. After all, he has scored the role of "brave" Sir Robin in Broadway's "Monty Python's Spamalot," the play based on the great movie "Monty Python and the Holy Grail."

"One of the reasons that it intrigued me was that it was so different," Aiken told the Associated Press. "Nobody I think would have expected me to show up in 'Spamalot.'"

Aiken, 29, has taken over the role of Sir Robin, the cowardly knight that [Eric] Idle once played on film and David Hyde Pierce originated when the Tony Award-winning musical debuted in 2005.

"I think I'm probably just like the character -- kind of chicken, afraid of everything and likes to sing. This particular character becomes a knight because he really just wants to sing and dance. He's so surprised when he finds out there's fighting involved. That kind of silly stupidity? -- yeah, that's me."...

Associate director Peter Lawrence says Aiken has been no idle diva; the singer asked to be treated like any other company member and has been surprisingly fearless.

"Clay really surprised me. When you meet him, he's this sweet kid from North Carolina with an accent. And you think there's no way he can do Cambridge material. And then he does," says Lawrence. ...

Aiken, who got a degree in special education from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, was teaching grade school kids with autism before he tried out for "Idol" in Atlanta. He was a former member of the Raleigh Boys Choir, and occasionally sang at weddings and at church.

"There's not really a market in North Carolina to sing for a living. There's not that career path for people. So I never really assumed or had any dreams or aspirations to sing," he says.

That changed in the seventh grade when his mother took him and a friend to a local production of the musical "Big River," starring Martin Moran as Huckleberry Finn.

"It was the first time ever that I looked on stage and saw people -- you know, adults -- singing. And I thought, 'Wow, wait a second. You can actually sing for a living?' " he recalls. "From that point on, I kind of allowed music to be a part of my what-I-want-to-be-when-I-grow-up scenario." ...