Interviews: Artists

Sally Mann, Photographer

Can you talk a little about how “Deep South” came to be?

It turned out to be an accretion of different projects. Like all my projects, I didn’t think about what the end product would be – I just started taking pictures. It started with pictures of the farm – I’ve been taking pictures on this farm since 1972, but gradually I began to cast my net a little further out in the state, and then further South.

You’re also using new techniques?

The pictures of Georgia were taken with ortho [SP] film. One out of every 10 turns out at all; they’re so wildly overexposed – they develop really fast and much of the time the flaws you see in the book are the results of that rapid development. The Virginia pictures were made with regular film, black and white. The “Deep South” section is a mix of regular film and wet plate collodion photography.

Peggy Root, Painter

Born in 1958, Peggy Root grew up in Florida and North Carolina. She studied at Ringling School of Art and Design (1977-1980), and studied figure painting and anatomy at Lyme Academy of Fine Art in Old Lyme, Connecticut (1984-1987). Peggy has spent th...

Julyan Davis, Painter

Julyan Davis is an English-born artist who now lives in the United States. He was born in 1965 and received his art training at the Byam Shaw School of Art in London. In 1988, having completed his B.A. in painting and printmaking, he travelled to the...

Ward Nichols, Painter

Ward Nichols, already into the conversation before we started recording: …the coalfields of southern West Virginia. My wife was a North Carolina girl and I moved down here after being here often with her family, liked it, stayed, she died, and a good...

Jayne Avery, Potter

My name is Jayn Avery. I’m a potter, and a resident of Floyd 26 years.

And how did you find Floyd?

That’s the magical question! Someday we’re going to all write a book about it. In this case, I was living in upstate New York in a small town with a woma...

Carter Holliday, Potter

AUGUST 2006

My name’s Carter Holliday, and I’m 58 years old, and I’m living in Floyd, Va. on a beautiful mountaintop, with a beautiful meadow, and, uh, on kinda a warm, humid day.

…Well, tell me about this land. You said you bought it in ’92?

Yeah, I st...

Patti Best, Painter

DECEMBER 2006

For as far back as she can remember Patti Best of Canton, N.C., has had a passion for art. Best chose to put that dream aside while she devoted her time to being a full-time mother and educator - home-schooling her children for the past ...

Lee Sauder, Sculptor & Metallurgist

Lee Sauder, a sculptor and blacksmith/metallurgist at Woods Creek Forge on McLaughlin Street, first began working with iron 33 years ago at the age of 12. He apprenticed for Larry Mann, owner of Woods Creek Forge, and then went on to work in shops fr...

John Owen, Woodcarver

John Owen, a decoy artist, works from his home studio. A native of England, Owen retired from a 33-year career in the British Army in 1991 and moved, with his Lexington-born wife, to Rockbridge County. He first began doing woodcarvings as a hobby, af...

Martha Bruin Degen

Over the past 25 years, fiber artist Martha Bruin Degen has worked from her home studio in Staunton, where she has been expressing herself in a variety of artistic venues, including pen and charcoal sketches, printmaking and paper making. She chooses...

More Articles...

Blue Ridge Country