Beth Davison and Jesse Barber | The Art and Evolution of Appalachian Documentary

On this episode of Appalachian Excellence: Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity, Karen Fletcher, director of grants resources and services in the Office of Research and Innovation, interviews Dr. Beth Davison, App State professor of interdisciplinary studies, and Jesse Barber ’22 ’24, a photojournalist and documentary photographer and an alumnus of App State’s interdisciplinary studies and Appalachian studies programs. They discuss their work on the South Arts grant-funded “In These Mountains” project and how they use documentary techniques to tell the story of the Appalachian culture and region.

 

Guests-at-a-Glance

Name: Dr. Beth Davison and Jesse Barber

What they do:  Dr. Beth Davison is a Professor in the Appalachian Department of Interdisciplinary Studies; Jesse Barber is a photojournalist and documentary photographer.

Connect with them: 

Beth Davison: davisonb@appstate.edu

Jesse Barber: photo@jesse-barber.com

 

Links

Boone Docs: https://www.apptheatre.org/events-and-tickets/boone-docs-2025

Find some of the films here: https://vimeo.com/user2646545

Beth Davison’s website: https://sites.google.com/appstate.edu/davisondocs/home

Appalachian State University’s Special Collections: https://collections.library.appstate.edu/

Jesse Barber’s website: https://www.jesse-barber.com/

Jesse Barber's photo coverage of Hurricane Helene

At least 213 dead as search-and-rescue efforts continue after Helene (Photo by Barber)
The Washington Post
‘Completely and entirely erased’: How Helene swallowed one mountain town    (Photos by Barber)
The Washington Post
Food reaches homes in flood-ravaged North Carolina by foot, horse and ATV  (Photo by Barber)
The Washington Post
Hurricane Helene barreled into uncharted territory. It won’t be the last.    (Photo by Barber)
The Washington Post
‘They are not slowing down’: The rise of billion-dollar disasters    (Photos by Barber)
The Washington Post
Photographers recall the Hurricane Helene scenes they’ll never forget   (Writing, Photos by Barber)
The Washington Post
North Carolina Photographer Points His Lens Toward Hope Amidst The Devastation Of His Home State   (Story on Barber, Photos by Barber)
Southern Living
Not By Ourselves: Showing Up in Western North Carolina   (Writing, Photos by Barber)
Southern Cultures
Chimney Rock As We Know It is Gone. Long Live Chimney Rock   (Photos and contributed reporting)
The Assembly
North Carolina grapples with holding election in hurricane disaster zone   (Photos)
The Guardian
After a hurricane, Democrats try to snatch rare victory in swing state North Carolina   (Photos)
The Guardian

 

Transcript

Karen:
Welcome to Appalachian Excellence, a show where we feature Appalachian State University research, scholarship, and creative activity that creates solutions and inspires change. We're here to bring you stories of incredible work happening right here in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. I'm your host, Karen Fletcher, where my day job has me working in the Office of Research and Innovation here at App State. And I've got my producer, Dave Blanks in the studio with me.

Dave:
Hey Karen.

Karen:
Hey.

Dave:
How's it going?

Karen:
Going good. I'm excited today.

Dave:
Me too.

Karen:
We've got two guests in our studio today, Dr. Beth Davison and Jesse Barber. Dr. Beth Davison has been a professor at Appalachian State University since 1997. Dr. Davison evolved from teaching sociology and research methods to becoming an award-winning documentary filmmaker. Now in the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies, she teaches documentary studies courses and produces films that have screened at festivals, museums, and on PBS stations. She's coordinator of AppDocs. Her ongoing collaboration with the National Park Service creates historical content for the Moses H. Cone Manor House here in Blowing Rock, North Carolina. As lead organizer of the Boondock Film Festival and co-principal investigator on the South Arts In These Mountains grant, she champions Appalachian storytelling through film.
Jesse Barber is a photojournalist and documentary photographer whose work appears in the New York Times, Washington Post, Rolling Stone and Wall Street Journal. Barber captures the soul of Appalachia through his lens. An Appalachian State University alumnus earning his Bachelor of Arts in 2021 and his master of Arts in 2023, his work explores themes of faith, memory, and resilience in mountain communities. Through photography, writing, and video, Barber documents the complex narratives of Appalachian life, giving voice to underrepresented stories and illuminating the region's rich cultural landscape. Jesse is currently collecting oral histories for the University Library special collections here at App State.
Although generations apart, both Beth and Jesse grew up in neighboring Caldwell County. Both have worked together on the South Arts In These Mountains grant, and we are lucky today to have them in the studio. As we said, we're really excited. So, hello Beth. Hello, Jesse.

Jesse:
Hello.

Beth:
Hi.

Karen:
We have a lot of collective talent between the two of you and so much to cover. So I thought we could dive in and talk a little bit about your work on the South Arts In These Mountains grant. I know that the In These Mountain grant has a goal of supporting projects that promote sharing, teaching, learning, preserving, documenting, and supporting the continuity of the folk arts and traditional culture of Central Appalachia. So tell us a bit about your approach documenting this culture and region and how you determine the stories to tell.

Beth:
Okay, I'm going to jump in. And we were super excited to partner with South Arts with this program, In These Mountains, which has been ongoing for I don't know how many years, but quite a while. And it has many different branches to it. And part of it is to perpetuate the traditional arts and culture. And our part is documenting that. And we have been working with South Arts, I'm not sure how many years, but I'm going to say at least five years if not more.
One of the early participants, a grad student, was Jesse and came in to help us with this program. And basically the funding we get for the program really goes for the most part to fund graduate students to go out there and document these traditional practices. So it pays for their tuition as graduate students, and they also get a stipend for the work they do, plus they get travel funds to go out and meet all these cool people.
So it's been a really fun grant to work with, although our graduate students do the majority of the work. And I am going to have to give a shout-out to the lead PI on that, Tom Hansell, and he's my colleague with AppDocs and a lot of things that I do. So Jesse worked with that grant for several years and has probably a lot of stories from that, but I really think it shaped his graduate experience here, being able to participate in that program. And like a lot of documentary work, it just takes you out in the community from behind the desk and you just meet amazing people who normally your paths wouldn't cross. And so if that's okay, I'm just going to, Jesse, let you talk about your experience working on that grant and some of the neat people you got to meet. And I will say that some of the work he did resulted in some products that were screened in film festivals or published articles. So a lot of cool things coming out of it.

Jesse:
Yeah, I guess I feel like I should tell like a meandering story of how I got connected with Beth and that turned into the In These Mountains work. So yeah, coming to App State, I was looking for a job. It was like maybe two months before the semester started, pretty late on the game on like getting into the, okay, how am I going to make money and everything. I saw the listing for university documentary film services, which has changed names now, but I was like, I'm just going to give this lady a call. And yeah, we talked a little bit on the phone. I was sitting on my mom's back porch of her house down in Sawmills and just talked about a little bit of the experience I'd had with cameras. I was doing photo work and I was getting a little bit into video work. I had no idea what folklore was. I didn't know that was a thing or I had no intention really of studying that and focusing on documentary work and yeah, that experience jump started this whole process of where I am today.

Beth:
I'm going to interrupt you. Is that all right if I interrupt?

Jesse:
No, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Beth:
I just a little backstory there. The reason he had to call me because he had applied online like you were supposed to, and I forgot to go check my applicants. So the two months elapsed and luckily he called me, thank goodness, because I might not have gone to see if anybody actually applied for that position.
But I also want to say that he came in as a very gifted photographer. So to the extent that he really excels in that area and he's really shining now and all the work he's doing with freelancing, that's not on us. He came with that gift, but we did help hopefully develop a little bit like you were saying in the video world his documentary skills.

Jesse:
Absolutely.

Dave:
Jesse, where would your path have taken you if it wasn't the documentary thing? Where were you thinking you were going?

Jesse:
Well, I mean, you want to make your parents proud and be like, "Well, I'm going to school to get a good job." So my path of getting a good job initially was in sustainable development.

Dave:
All right. Yeah.

Jesse:
And plenty of jobs out there for that, right?

Dave:
Certainly. Yeah.

Jesse:
But my advisor was like, I think you're in the wrong program. And I was like, hmm, yeah, maybe. Because I wanted to do more photo stuff within the sustainable development program, but the space didn't allow that to happen. So that's where IDS I landed there, was able to do more visual work. So yeah.

Beth:
And design your own degree.

Jesse:
Yes.

Beth:
And so a plug for interdisciplinary studies, which a lot of people don't know about, but it's an amazing opportunity to design your own degree if we don't have here at the university exactly what you're looking for, but maybe we have the classes, like documentary studies, you can put something together your own degree.

Jesse:
Yeah, I think that's like I came into the whole thing, I had my own interest and curiosities of what I wanted to look into and the methods that I wanted to use to explore those topics. So visual work was my method, and my research or interest was in everyday people's lives of how culture is formed and how meaning is made and how do we work and exist in a landscape.

Karen:
So what did you end up doing in this position that you got hired for?

Jesse:
So initially I was assisting a grad student. Her name was Chelsea Johnson, and she was doing interviews and I was just showing up and helping run a camera. And I just happened to do extra work because I was interested in cameras. So what was just an interview turned out to be, well, I'll make a little video. And so when she left the program, I stepped into that role of doing South Arts work and I continued that even though it wasn't mandatory, they just wanted audio interviews. I was just like, "Well, let's make this more. And while I'm here, like I'll run a camera and I'll get little detail shots or whatever."
And I think that relates to my interests. What I don't want is to do an interview and have it be locked away in like the archives. I love the archives, shout out to special collections App State. I love those people up there and what they're doing, of course, but I believe in the public access to archives and how do people engage with these materials other than just researchers and reading a transcript. So that's where my interest lies, I guess.

Karen:
Yeah. So how do you pick the stories? Who do you go out and interview? What areas do you end up in? Is that all a personal choice or is that part of the program, or...

Jesse:
For the South Arts thing, it was, you're given a list of a few, like maybe three per semester, and then you have to fill in the rest with people that you find. And it has to relate to Appalachian folklore, culture, so music or craft, traditional ways or all these sorts of like older Appalachian traditional crafts that have been around for a while.

Karen:
So do you have a favorite story that you came upon?

Jesse:
I guess it was really cool. I made a short film about mountain banjo makers here in Watauga County. So I interviewed one guy who was more of like the back to the lander kind of 'a 70s hippie movement. He found his way into the craft through that and making banjos that way. And then he led me to talk to another person who was more of like a, I guess you would say an old timer who had been in the county for a long time and just kind of did banjo building on the side while he did HVAC work and all these other things. And so that was a really interesting story to follow. And I loved the juxtaposition of who is carrying these traditions now versus who did before and how they're being passed on and carried out today. The old timer, Charlie Glenn, he doesn't build instruments to make money or doesn't hardly sell them. You have to pry them from him practically. And then John Peterson, he would make banjos because people would order them. So it's like a transactional thing. It's a different way of interacting with the traditional craft.

Karen:
Yeah. And even that could be a cultural shift throughout the years.

Jesse:
Which a lot of these crafts, cultural, traditional crafts, that's the one thing that I kind of walked away with was like, man, so many people have done these traditions for so long and there's no money out of this. And these are people that could use more funds to fund these sorts of... And that's why South Arts exists is to help fund these traditions to keep them alive because there's the traditional way of them being carried is no longer really there. The communal aspect of it, of like a small community, building banjos or making baskets is no longer thriving like it was before.

Karen:
Yeah. So the AppDocs program that you're co-director of, so that's been something that you evolved into as well as we noted in your bio that you started in a different path. So how did you get into that and what does that AppDocs program look like here at App State?

Beth:
Okay, my journey. Wow. I have been reminded by friends from high school and college that I always had an aptitude for documentary and enjoyed watching them and were moved by them, especially in college. So I always had an interest in them and I guess I talked to the extent that I convinced my associates from my earlier days that that was something I was going to do. But then I went off to college and I got discouraged. The place I went to college really didn't have a big communication department.
I remember one semester though working and my memory of it was this heavy battery pack and this heavy camera, and I know this is audio and you can't see, but I'm a small person and it was heavy. So I got discouraged by the technology of pursuing it. Not only did you have to carry around this heavy equipment, but to edit anything, you would have to go to a studio. And so it just really wasn't accessible. So I got distracted and I went into the field of sociology and did my graduate work there. And I am very grateful and I enjoyed it and I enjoyed the research process of it, but then the technology changed, it became more accessible. So it was a game changer in my life as well. All of a sudden the cameras were much lighter. You didn't have to drag around this big battery pack. You could be a lot more mobile, even for a small person like me, and you could edit on your own personal computer.
So when that became available, I looked around for workshops and it ended up going not too far away to The Center for Documentary Studies at Duke and got a certificate there in documentary studies. But really having the passion for it and the motivation, production takes a lot of work. A lot of work. You really got to want it. So I think I always had it within me. It was just waiting for the right opportunity to come out. And a lot of that opportunity in my case depended upon the technology and accessibility at this time. So I had the desire and the more I did it, I wanted to do it even more. So I started in sociology, encouraging students to do multimedia projects and would guide them and teach them the basic foundations that they could put together a video. So that's where it started.
And I was in a field of sociology that really, gosh, I'm trying to think of the right way to... They weren't necessarily set up to appreciate the latest and greatest in technology and dissemination of sociology and research and stuff like that. So I was kind of frustrated by not having the outlets in that field. And I started working with interdisciplinary studies first as a director of the interdisciplinary studies program. And once I got my foot in the door over there, I just got more and more involved and eventually was able to become an official faculty member over there and transfer my line and to do documentary stuff full-time and for the university.
So AppDocs, we go out in the community, we work with community partners to tell their story, but we also involve students. And at the beginning we would go into classrooms when invited and teach the basic foundations of documentary work, how to hold a camera, how to record good audio, which is huge and very important and how to tell a story. And so we would do that with classes from across the campus, from business to English, but now we do less of that. Kids these days, they come with knowledge to a certain extent, which they didn't have at the beginning about videos and how to do those. So now we do more community stories and community partnership work with AppDocs.

Karen:
That's great. So talking about this evolution of even the equipment that you were talking about was really heavy and getting into it's easier to edit and to do the things that create documentaries, how do you see that even evolving in the future and the storytelling, like you were talking about how even the cultural differences between the banjo makers, how do you see some of these stories evolving and how we capture that in the future?

Beth:
I'm going to jump in first because this is great because we actually have very two different approaches. So I am always up to the latest and greatest. I've been experimenting with AI, AI tools are baked into the production, post-production process now. I'm also getting into motion graphics and animation and taught a course this semester and really enjoyed that with students. So I am bringing the latest and greatest technology to my productions, which is going to be opposite of Jesse, who you're going to hear is a little bit more of an old school. But I love his approach. It's definitely very different.
But I will say having just finished this semester with students in both an animation class, but also just an intro to production course, a lot of students are relying on their cell phones now, and it's a game changer in terms of the quality of production for what they're doing for their classroom projects. It's great. And the technology has saved their audio, which before might not have been usable, but we're able to salvage that now. And so the technology has really transformed a lot of the work I do, especially with students. So I am chasing that, the latest and greatest in keeping up. But Jesse, again, a very different, almost opposite approach, but beautiful what he does in the work he does. So if you don't mind telling us about your approach.

Jesse:
Yeah, I would say verite, verite, verite. And it's just like that's my only way of understanding of how to make a documentary is being with the person and filming them. And that is what you get. The footage I get with them is like, that is the story. And I don't do a lot of the graphics and all these sorts of things, and I've seen a lot of people doing AI, but it just doesn't seem conducive for what I'm doing, which is being with people. That's the whole thing is being with other people and sitting down with them, hearing their story, trying to capture it and getting other little details that might help illustrate that story. So that's the only way I understand how to.

Beth:
And I love how you, in the past referred to your work as a slow boil, and that's perfect because it is meditated and it's beautiful. It really, I mean, you are in the moment, and I love when you, between the dialogue show where the camera is and the surroundings. Because of that, because being in the moment and taking your viewers there, you also build trust. And I have heard people talk about your work after you've come through and done some audio that how they connected with you. That's a gift that he has as a documentarian. But I think it is because you are very much in the moment and you take your time and you really see them and you really hear them.

Jesse:
Yeah. Yeah. And I live and work and make my "art," I guess, in this region that I live. So it's like you want to be sure that you can return to these places. And if you want to make more visual work, it's like, well, you got to keep your reputation clear with folks because that's your access-

Dave:
You don't want to burn bridges. Yeah.

Jesse:
That's your access to the art you're trying to make.

Dave:
Well, and one thing leads to another. So if you're in a conversation with one person and you did make a bad impression or you seemed insincere or something like that, they're not going to lead you to the next person and you're not going to find that old timer.

Jesse:
No, yeah. Yeah.

Karen:
How do you take these regional stories and present it to a national audience?

Beth:
Well, I do think that's very important for what we do. We are celebrating the Appalachian region by telling these stories because the Appalachian region, as many of us are aware of, has often had the stereotypes or the single story that we're all just about the bluegrass music and our backwards ways. And even though there are some great stories along those lines, there's so much more, there's a myriad of stories. And so my work is to bring out all the amazing diverse stories from the Appalachian region, and I do that through AppDocs. I do that through the Boondocks Film Festival, which is a great venue for telling different stories from the Appalachian region. I mean, that's an important part of my work, not only doing documentary work, but celebrating the Appalachian region. And I think that's important to Jesse too, but he more than me right now, has a national audience with his freelance work. So Jesse, I'd love for you to talk about representing this region that you grew up in, that's a part of you and how you represent that to the national audience.

Jesse:
Right. Yeah, it's been difficult. Photographing this place during the hurricane, the first few days after the hurricane hit, there was a lot of adrenaline. Of course, I drove all over the place. I was in Marion and then Swannanoa and then Ashe County. But yeah, I saw through friends what was happening on the ground and I was like, oh, that's a story. I'm going to go after that. But I had a national media outlet being like, "Well, I don't know. We're going to have you over here." And it's like, no, I'm going over here. I kind of went rogue on it and everything.
And I just feel like as a local person, I saw more complex stories happening that I just feel like a national audience just wouldn't get it. They won't understand. There's too much to... It's like a joke you have to explain. It's like the joke doesn't land because you have to explain it too much. So there was too many local nuances happening that, yeah, to look for national, what's the word they use, news value, the national news value wasn't enough for them to tell that kind of story. And so that's a frustrating hurdle to jump through is like, and I'm sure you run into this too, you have a great story, amazing story, wonderful people you know, wonderful people you're connected with, great visual content, very good visual story. But where do I tell it?
People would want to read this, but it's all about what funnel wants to take your story. Is it a magazine, is it a regional magazine? Is it a national magazine? That's the hard thing with freelancing is being in contact with stories and just feeling frustrated that no one wants to bite on these stories that you run into.

Karen:
Yeah, I'm sure there's so many stories that you could tell and obviously have a flair for the storytelling part of it, so a different arena to play in. Absolutely.
So let's talk a little bit about the Blue Ridge Parkway work that you've done, Beth, and a little teaser about this mini theater.

Beth:
Sure. So if you are traveling on the Blue Ridge Parkway in our neck of the woods in the Blowing rock area, you will come upon the Moses H. Cone Manor, and I encourage you to pull over and spend a little time there. And the manor stands out for so many reasons, but it really stands out because it goes against the story that the Blue Ridge Parkway has cultivated, and that is of a simpler time with the picket fences and the frontier person in Homesteads and all that stuff. So it definitely was telling a story of a certain time in our history going back in time, but then you come upon this lavish estate with this mansion, which when it was built in 1901, was one of the biggest houses outside of Biltmore and the Vanderbilts in the state. So the fact that it became part of the Parkway and was preserved, which is great, it's just really interesting.
One of my favorite signs on the parkway near the Manor house is it says, Cone Manor ahead, and it's got a little cabin with smoke coming out. And I just think that's hilarious because again, that mansion, it's contradicting the cultivated image of the parkway and the story they're trying to tell on the parkway.
So about a quarter million people visit a year, so it gets a lot of traffic, mainly recreational. There's 26 miles of carriage trails that people walk on, hike on, so there's a lot to do there. But in the Manor House, you can get information about the park service about the Blue Ridge Parkway, there's the Southern Arts Guild, we can buy amazing crafts. But in recent years, there's also now a mini theater where you can learn about the history of the Cone Family and the Cone Estate. And that is thanks to Appalachian State University who awarded a Chancellor's Innovation grant to build a mini theater there.
And it's super cool. The furniture was designed by an applied technology class that went to the Manor House and studied it historically, the architecture. And so the design was based off the house to match the interior. It holds about 25. And then I, with other people on campus, produced the documentaries that are on a loop that you can sit there and watch. And I've got another one in the works that we're going to be rolling out and including on the loop starting this spring and summer, another story.
So that's kind of cool because when you do this work and it's a lot of work to do production work, you want to do it so that it will be seen, there will be eyes on it. And I can't think of anything that I do that is seen more by people than what is shown at the Cone Manor, those historical documentaries about the history of that area, because literally thousands and thousands and thousands of people are watching those. So that's pretty cool.

Karen:
So yeah, again, taking that, the focus of rural America and presenting it to that national audience that comes through. Absolutely.

Beth:
And I will say that my very, very first documentary that we don't screen at the mini theater because it's too long, it's 50 Minutes, was about the Cone family. And I go there myself pretty much every day, if not five times a week, I'm somewhere on those trails, we're hiking and walking our dogs, and I just got to thinking about the place, the history, and was curious about the Cones and who they were and how this landed up in public hands, all this amazing acreage. But it took me five years, my very first documentary took me five years to complete. So you really got to want it. You got to be motivated and persevere. And that one's called the Denim Dynasty. It's available online, but the cones really are, I'm so glad I started with them, they're a fascinating family.

Karen:
Yeah. So what are some of the other titles of the documentaries that are showing in the theater?

Beth:
So the Moses H. Cone Estate, so that one's about 12 minutes and has some reenactments thanks to the theater department, lending costumes and students. So that was fun to work with that crew. We also have the Family Legacy, just an eight minute about the cones and who they were. But the new one's coming out this spring is about the art collecting sisters, Claribel Cone and Etta Cone, spinsters that hung out with Gertrude Stein and collected this amazing art that included Picasso and Matisse. At the time, they were just thought of as really kind of crazy to waste all their money on this art that was emerging and was not appreciated at the time. So they just amassed this amazing collection. Really is priceless that there again, it was eventually donated to the Baltimore Museum of Art, and it's in public hands, just like the Cone Manor itself. So it's about their legacy and their art collection and hanging out with the greats at the time.

Jesse:
Yeah, I feel like, I just want to say, what you've done with the Cones I relate to with a lot of the stories that I've continually documented and stayed in touch with is like working in this region, our job as documentarians is to inform people, but also make connections of these vast networks that affect our daily lives. Or we are constantly around every day, but we just never like, who built that or who lived here. You know, all these sorts of things. So it's like that's our job is to be curious about these little connections of people that made up these places that we live in, I guess.

Beth:
There are stories everywhere, everywhere as you look. And a good example of just that point, and I shared this with my students, one of my favorite student productions was about the duck pond and it's called the DUCKumentary. But that's something that on campus we walk by all the time and there's amazing history there. I mean, why are so many ducks there and you know who's feeding them?
And so the student went and she did amazing research and a lot of good, especially historical documentaries, you have to spend a lot of time researching. And she found that the ducks had an Instagram page and they all had names, and she talked to a biologist about duck behavior. She found that there was one person, Dr. Daniel Bird, who for many, many years just took it on his own to feed those ducks. And just recently the university has taken over to officially take care of the ducks that he was doing. And another student this semester actually did a follow-up documentary on that. But that's a good case in point. There's stories everywhere that our work, we hopefully get you to stop, think and appreciate and look around and take a deeper look.

Karen:
Can you see the documentary somewhere?

Beth:
Yeah, the AppTV showed for many years the documentary. And then I'm going to send the recent production that my student did this semester, I'm going to send it to AppTV. So look on AppTV, I think you might find it.

Karen:
Excellent. All right. I feel like we could tell stories all day. I had love to stay and do it, but as we wrap up, Jesse, what is one of your best moments in the documentary program here?

Jesse:
I would say the first bigger, I guess, documentary I made was Wild and Scenic about Wilson Creek. I got connected with Wes Wall who worked here on campus. He's a watercolor painter, lives here in Boone. I mean, I made that documentary, it's like about him and the efforts they were doing to clean up the river. And I've just stayed in contact with Wes all this time, and he's been like a mentor for like being an artist and what does that look like and how do you make art and make a living on all these sorts of things, balancing life. So he's been a really great mentor and friend to have. I think that's the wonderful thing is like all the connections I've made that I continue to stay in touch with that have made life richer.

Karen:
Yeah, that's a great way to end. Although I wish we didn't have to end, but I just want to give you a big thank you for both of you for being here today. So thank you Dr. Beth Davison and Jesse Barber for sharing these amazing and impactful work that you're doing, documenting this area and telling the story of our very own Blue Ridge Mountains.

Jesse:
Thank you so much.

Beth:
Thanks for having us. This has been great. It's been fun.

Karen:
If you liked what you heard and are interested in learning more about the work being done at App State, subscribe on your favorite platform so you never miss an episode. This is Karen and Dave saying thank you for listening to Appalachian Excellence, featuring Appalachian research, scholarship and creative activity, creating solutions, inspiring Change.

Dave:
Bye, Karen.

Karen:
Bye. Dave,

Jesse:
What was your big question?

Dave:
Oh, yeah, it was going to be what documentary inspired you is what I was really wanting to know. Did you know that Matisse's grandson makes pottery outside of Asheville?

Beth:
No. I did not.

Dave:
And there's a documentary about him.

Jesse:
Dang.

Dave:
And it's pretty cool. He works at this place called East, or he founded-

Jesse:
East Fork.

Dave:
East Fork.

Jesse:
Oh wow.

Beth:
Oh my gosh.

Dave:
It was Matisse's grandson.

Jesse:
Holy moly.

Dave:
Isn't that nuts?

Beth:
Now he visited the Cone Sisters not here in Blowing Rock, but in their Baltimore.

Dave:
Why do y'all keep saying here in Blowing Rock? Karen said here in Blowing Rock, and then during the thing we said here in Blowing Rock,

Beth:
It's eight miles away.

Dave:
I started getting weirded out. I was like, wait, wait a second. Are we in Blowing Rock and I'm just-

Beth:
Sorry.

Dave:
... just now figuring it out? No, it's okay. I get what you mean.

Beth:
Here in the high country-

Dave:
We can't use this anyway.

Jesse:

We're not in Blowing Rock.

Dave:
It's all right. I'm just interested.

Beth:
No, that's really cool. I didn't know that.

Dave:
Yeah. Isn't that?!