“Happy Art Day!” is the greeting Sarah Cornette gives students when they arrive at the Mary Scroggs Elementary School art studio. Visitors are greeted with a brochure. The choice-based arts education here is so different, adults need help making sense of what they are seeing. Every aspect of the studio supports “design thinking.” Cornette believes… Read More →
Vitamin O: Poet Jaki Shelton Green
By Alicia Stemper/Vitamin O for the Orange County Arts Commission Jaki Shelton Green, named the inaugural Piedmont Laureate in 2009 and inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame in 2014, is obviously a poet. But she is also a story teller, writer, teacher, creativity coach, and change agent in the lives of others…. Read More →
Vitamin O: Builder and Woodworker David Hinkle
By Alicia Stemper/Vitamin O for the Orange County Arts Commission David Hinkle designed and built the new bee hotel, a habitat for solitary bees, in Gold Park on Hillsborough’s Riverwalk. Solitary bees are “awesome pollinators” and the unsung heroes of our food supply. Hinkle estimates that only 5% of people know what a solitary bee… Read More →
Vitamin O: Sand Sculptor Damian Hoffman
By Alicia Stemper/Vitamin O for the Orange County Arts Commission For Damian Hoffman, it all started with being “bored out of my mind.” He was sitting on Sunset Beach, waiting for his infant son to wake up. He piled some sand, used a kid’s castle mold, and then took a shovel and cut straight down,… Read More →
Vitamin O: Kit FitzSimons
By Alicia Stemper/Vitamin O for the Orange County Arts Commission Kit is the ninth generation of men named Christopher (no middle name) FitzSimons although “I don’t have a number. My father was the 4th – they renumbered halfway through.” This ability to change direction and keep moving forward is a metaphor for Kit’s work in… Read More →
Vitamin O: Blacksmith Mark Eichinger-Wiese
By Alicia Stemper/Vitamin O for the Orange County Arts Commission In Mark Eichinger-Wiese’s required blacksmithing class at Emerson Waldorf (EW) School, he gives students a piece of hot metal to push around. Through his work with them, “they get history, math, physics – they get it all.” Mark was exposed to blacksmithing from his grandfather,… Read More →
Vitamin O: Extraordinary Artists
By Alicia Stemper / Vitamin O A special group of Extraordinary Artists meets every other Friday night in Chapel Hill. These artists, led by the team from HappyMess Art Studios, get together for creativity, community and a chance to celebrate the artist within each person. Most of the young adults have autism; several of them… Read More →
Vitamin O: Wilton Dubois
“Where in the world can you go and have the opportunities you have here in the United States?” asks musician Wilton Dubois. From Trinidad, a country smaller than Delaware, Wilton came here looking for a better life. Dubois later played steel drums with Trinidad Tripoli, a band brought to the states by Liberace. The band… Read More →
Vitamin O: Kathy Gunn and Midway Community Kitchen
There was no real model for a business like the Midway Community Kitchen, but Kathy Gunn was far more concerned that there was no real model for many children to learn cooking skills. Home economics programs have largely vanished from schools and cafeterias are heating up prepared foods, not cooking for students. “Where do kids… Read More →
Vitamin O: Emily Buehler on bikes, bread, and books
“It’s a bike, made out of bread, coming out of a book and taking flight. So that’s my life in a nutshell,” tweeted Emily Buehler in May 2017, essentially writing her own dose of Vitamin O. The tweet, describing a bread sculpture tribute to the Wright Brothers, distills Emily’s career journey and personal transformation. After… Read More →