Getting to Know Amber Bateman of the Watauga Arts Council

Q&A with Amber Bateman New Executive Director of Watauga Arts Council By Keith Martin

Amber Bateman recently became the new Executive Director of the Watauga Arts Council, the first change in leadership at the organization in nearly three decades. Founded in 1981, their goal was “to create activities and events that shared their love of the community, to educate children, to continue the tradition of artistry and craftsmanship in the High Country, and to provide artists with the assistance they need to grow and develop their voice.”

As a way of introducing readers to this dynamic addition to the High Country cultural community, CML posed some questions to Bateman after her first few months on the job. The following is edited only for length and clarity.

CML: Your predecessor, Cherry Johnson, spent 28 years in the position, and her Ashe County counterpart, Jane Lonon, retired after 38. How does it feel to inherit their legacies? Bateman: I am very grateful to both women and proud to be following in their footsteps. They made some incredible strides for the arts in the High Country and their dedication paved the way for Jeff [Fissell, her colleague in West Jefferson] and me. Jane achieved great success in transforming Ashe into an arts-centered county. Everywhere you go, you see the arts, and I look to Jane as an example. I would love to make a similar mark on the Watauga County landscape. To make the arts more visible and easier to experience both within city limits and throughout the county, all the way to rural areas. If Jeff and I work together we can do great things to unify the efforts of Watauga and Ashe Counties, further solidifying arts as a destination of the High Country.

CML: Many of our readers know your name from the founding of Quiet Givers and helping to start the Back2School Festival. How are they doing and what will your role be in both organizations moving forward?

Bateman: I handed over both organizations to very capable leadership years ago so I could focus on my family. Those projects were not mine but the community’s; I was just the builder and both are doing well... beautiful examples of the power of a united community. When we work together, it can make a much greater impact on the lives of those around us. Both were built with intention, and I made sure we were not duplicating efforts but actually filling a gap in services. I hope to do the same with the Arts Council.

CML: I understand that at heart you are an artist. Tell us about your background and that creative side?

Bateman: While I would have loved a career as a professional artist, I’ve been too busy with family or other projects to really pursue it. In my free time, I dabble with clay, inks, and painting. I sell what I make but I haven’t built an official business out of it. Maybe in the future. My husband Charlie and I incorporate visiting arts districts, galleries and museums in our travel plans every time we travel together or as a family. We gain so much inspiration from those outings. I think our exposure to other arts initiatives in other cities has fueled my desire to bring that back to Boone. I have been commissioned for works in painting, photography, drawing, woodturning, and clay.

I was awarded a scholarship through the Watauga Arts Council to attend a summer session at Penland School of Crafts. The process of applying for that grant, interviewing for it, and then actually getting to achieve that goal was really transformative for me. I was told the money for that grant program “dried up,” but I would love to raise funds to begin awarding more emerging artists those same opportunities.

CML: Please tell us your vision for the Watauga Arts and the strengths and challenges you see in the organization?

Bateman: I desire to reenergize arts in Watauga County, to be identified as a region rich in arts and culture where artists feel like stakeholders rather than just an accent to our identity. I want to celebrate all forms of art, advocate for more public art, sculptures, and murals where our galleries thrive… a place where artists and art lovers abide and are invested in infusing creativity into the lives of those who live and visit this beautiful place.

The Council needs to be an agency that bridges the gap between the artists, arts organizations, and local leadership, businesses, and the tourism sector. If we listen to each other we might realize we have similar visions and find ways to collaborate to work toward the same goals.

CML: How has it gone so far, and about what are you most excited?

Bateman: Things have gone well! I have really enjoyed getting to know board members and volunteers of the Blue Ridge ArtSpace. While some things have gone slower than hoped due to COVID, others have moved so fast they have taken me by surprise.

One unexpected surprise was getting a space in downtown Boone. In my first month here, I reached out to the owners of The Local, a restaurant on Howard Street. They leased a space on King Street but it was vacant, waiting for them to start another restaurant, but those plans got pushed back due to COVID. I asked if we might be able to use the space until they start renovating. Without hesitation they offered us the space, rent free, until they were ready to turn it into a restaurant. Jean Borhman, Colton Lenz, and Alaina Walker made one of the most significant donations to the arts that we have seen in a long time. We named the space King Street Art Collective.

I am excited to get started, to start meeting artists, musicians, performers, to start networking with local arts organizations, to unify all these smaller efforts and display it in a way that people can really see the arts in our region. I am excited to meet with local leaders and find ways we can work together to enhance this beautiful place we call home.

For more information, visit www.watauga-arts.org.

THE BIG PICTURE SHOW

A Call to Spy a Different Sort of War Story

By Elizabeth Baird Hardy

In 1941, by the time the United States entered World War II, the conflict had already been consuming Europe for years, as the forces of Adolph Hitler’s Third Reich prowled across the landscape, consuming countries in their path.

To combat the looming threat of the Axis powers, Great Britain’s Special Operations Executive (SOE) ran an espionage campaign that worked to undermine Nazi domination in Europe. Operatives were sent into regions that already were under Nazi control or were in imminent danger from Hitler’s forces. Wireless (radio) operators were responsible for transmitting messages to and from London and operatives on the ground who were building underground networks to collect information and conduct sabotage. While recruiting individuals to take on these dangerous missions, the SOE realized the potential of using “lady spies.” Women were less likely to be searched, could go places less accessible to men, and, thanks to the stereotypes of the era, were often underestimated as being incapable of serving as undercover agents. Playing on those assumptions, the SOE used a number of female agents in its effective but costly efforts to save Europe from the Axis. IFC Films’ A Call to Spy (alternatively titled Libertie: A Call to Spy), released in the U.S. in October 2020, tells the remarkable stories of three of the women whose efforts and sacrifices were crucial pieces in the SOE’s efforts and the eventual triumph of the Allies.

While there were scores of women crucial to the efforts of the SOE (including 114 who gave their lives to the cause) the film focuses on “spymistress” Vera Atkins (played by Stana Katic) at SOE headquarters and two of her field agents, American Virginia Hall (Sarah Megan Thomas) and wireless operator Noor Inayat Khan (Radhika Apte). All three of these women overcame enormous obstacles to support the Allied cause. Atkins, unbeknownst to many of her colleagues, was Jewish and sometimes regarded with suspicion. Noor was Muslim and a pacifist. Virginia Hall, later to become the spy the Nazis most feared, had lost the lower portion of one leg in a hunting accident and walked with a slight limp due to her wooden prosthesis. These obstacles sometimes made it challenging for them to heed the “call” to spy, but certainly did not impede their incredible accomplishments.

Each of these remarkable women had a vital role to play, and A Call to Spy beautifully showcases all three of them, without ever resorting to heavy-handed “girl-power” lectures or Hollywoodglamor posing. Rather, the film shows the amazing jobs these women did, whether behind a desk, a radio, or enemy lines. The film shows how vital these women, and those like them, were to the Allies’ success.

The film was written by Sarah Megan Thomas, who also plays Hall with understated grace and grit. Stana Katic, familiar to television audiences from Castle, portrays Atkins with both period-appropriate restraint and unusual capability. Radhika Apte may be less familiar to American audiences, although she is well-known internationally; she brings Noor to life as both beautifully human and hauntingly courageous. The other performances in the film are strong as well, including those depicting real people.

There have been some liberties taken with timelines in order to create cohesion for the story. Although both Hall and Noor worked for the SOE and with Atkins, they did not actually know one another. However, the film does not over-romanticize or otherwise tinker with the characters’ lives in order to make them more like twenty-first century people. Their stories are incredible ones that do not require movie-business alternations, although a number of fictional characters and stories have been based on these women and their heroic efforts. As a result, although the film is gripping, it is not a blockbuster thriller, jam-packed with action sequences. Nor is it an introspective lecture. Rather, it is a fascinating introduction to real people and events.

While the film depicts harrowing and terrible events, based on the actual ordeals and horrors of the war, these events are portrayed with sensitivity, rather than sensationalism. The film is thus appropriate viewing even for those who might be unable to stomach Saving Private Ryanlevels of realism, while avoiding sugarcoating the facts of the war and the very grim prospects for survival faced by the SOE agents and their civilian allies and networks. Moments of humor, including Noor’s struggle to carry a wireless almost as big as she is and Hall’s self-deprecating jokes about “Cuthbert” (the name she gave her wooden leg) are appropriate bright spots in a sometimes grim story. While there are some errors in the operation of firearms and explosives, these minor filmmaking missteps, like the intentional artistic liberties taken to create a cohesive story from three separate lives, in no way detract from this film’s excellence or from its power to tell the stories of these heroic women. As 2021 marks sixty years since the events that begin the film, and the entry of the United States into WWII, A Call to Spy is a great way to get to know some perhaps unfamiliar figures in that crucial story.

A Call to Spy is available on a number of video-on-demand streaming services, including Amazon Prime. It is rated PG13, but younger viewers may be able to cope with the peril the film portrays, especially if there is an opportunity to discuss how real human beings underwent the ordeals depicted in the film, heeding the Call to Spy in spite of the cost.

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Book Nook

As the winter weather drives you into your favorite “nesting” zones, be sure to equip yourself with a cup of cheer and a good book. Whether on your cozy couch or in your warm and aromatic kitchen, our Book Nook reads are perfect choices for the season.

A Smoky Mountain Boyhood: Musings, Memories, and More

Jim Casada, Author —Reviewed by Edwin Ansel

I’m sitting in the kitchen with Audrey, my one and only. I’m reading Jim Casada’s A Smoky Mountain Boyhood, a vivid account of life in the High Country in the 1950s.

“He says his mom put up two hundred quarts of apples every year.”

“I put up three hundred quarts back when I had my garden,” replies Audrey. “But this is just the apples,” I say. “She also canned the beans and peas and tomatoes and all that.”

“Hmph,” she says. Audrey’s competitive that way.

At Casada’s boyhood home there was always a jar of stewed apples on the table, or applesauce, and there might also be an applesauce cake, or a cobbler, or fried apple pies. And, as he recounts in loving detail, cookies with raisins and black walnuts that he’d collected himself. Pumpkin pie. Country ham, cured by his father, from a hog that they’d raised out back. Rabbit or quail that Casada may have brought home from an afternoon ramble with his gun. Fried squirrel served up with biscuits, sweet taters and “kilt” greens. And if it was Sunday, “yard bird” raised by his grandfather and roasted to a rich toasty brown by his grandmother, along with giblet gravy and cracklin cornbread cooked in a cast iron “spider” and slathered with butter they’d churned at home. And this is just any given day in December!

Much like his family’s table, A Smoky Mountain Boyhood is itself a buffet. His account of living close to the land, and living well, caught my attention right away, but there is so much more going on. He brings you right in the house as his guest at all the family’s celebrations, from New Year’s Day to Christmas. He introduces you to his people, and especially Grandpa Joe, who was both “unquestionably quair” and also his great friend and mentor. He’ll teach you how to shoot marbles. What it’s like to hang out with the whittlers and tale-tellers at “Loafer’s Glory.” The importance of the pocket knife, and its care and feeding. And there’s the joy of the words themselves. Tanglefoot. Honeyfuggling. Quair. Words that may not be in your dictionary, but that are good and valuable and that Casada uses without apology.

Looking back at this idyllic boyhood it’s natural to make comparisons, and to regret the things we’ve lost. I’m wary of nostalgia, though. Like a swig of that tanglefoot, it’ll make your head spin. Resisting that temptation reveals the truly great virtue of this memoir. It’s practically a handbook on how to raise up a boy, even today. It’s not necessary to duplicate Casada’s boyhood—Audrey’s grandson won’t be shooting rabbits on our hillside, it just wouldn’t be neighborly. But we can pass down to him the spirit of it. The joy of exploring a field or a wood, on his own. Hefting real tools and using them so far as he’s able. Getting up wood with the men. A Smoky Mountain Boyhood makes the case for this kind of modern boyhood, for which I say, “Thanks Jim!”

A Smoky Mountain Boyhood: Musings, Memories, and More is published by the University of Tennessee Press. Signed and inscribed copies are available through the author’s website at www.jimcasadaoutdoors.com; the book is also available at the publisher’s website, utpress.org, barnesandnoble.com and amazon.com.

Canvas and Cuisine: the Art of the Fresh Market

Jorj Morgan, Author | Susan Fazio, Artist —Reviewed by CML Staff

Accomplished cookbook author Jorj Morgan and gifted artist Susan Fazio are best friends who love to travel. Morgan seeks out farmers’ markets, restaurants, and fresh ingredients around the world. Fazio always packs her easel and paintbrush, painting city scenes, landscapes and of particular interest, fresh food.

So it was natural that they decided to partner on their new book, Canvas and Cuisine: the Art of the Fresh Market. Created in the spirit of a coffee table book, this culinary collection features over 130 recipes that lead readers by the hand through the aromatic streets of France, Italy, Vietnam, England, Russia, China, and beyond. The friends traveled and collaborated for years on Canvas and Cuisine, and their recipes, paintings, and stories come to life on its pages.

The book is divided into digestible sections, all illustrated by Fazio’s oil paintings: Bulbs and Flowers; Fruits, Fungi and Leaves; Roots and Seeds; Stems and Tubers; Meats and Cheeses; Fish and Fowl; and Breads, Pastries, and Sweets.

Each recipe transports your taste buds to exotic locales, a welcomed escape in a time when travel and dining out is limited. And peppered throughout the book are Fazio’s renderings of the open air farmers’ markets and quaint villages, “so lively, you hear flamenco music coming from that cozy tapas bar around the corner,” says Morgan.

And that’s what this book is: full of life. You’ll want to share it with your friends, who, even if they don’t cook, will appreciate the art and the armchair tour of places many of us yearn to see in person.

Canvas and Cuisine: The Art of the Fresh Market is available from Barnes and Noble, Amazon or directly from the author’s publisher (Dorrance Publishing Co.). Proceeds from sales will be donated to Hospitality House of Northwest North Carolina (www.hosphouse.org), and The Boys and Girls Club of Hendersonville (https://bgchendersonco.org).

Jorj Morgan is the author of several books that include subjects ranging from entertaining, to cooking, to health and wellness. View her titles and subscribe to her free cooking blog at Jorj.com.

Susan Fazio’s work can be found in the Silver Fox Gallery and Main Street Theater both in Hendersonville, North Carolina. Her paintings are also found in designer studios, including Dianne Davant Studios in Stuart, FL, and Art Cellar in Banner Elk, NC. View her works at www.suefazio.com and on YouTube.