Festival News: 18th Annual “Greening Up the Mountains Festival”

Drawing thousands of visitors each year, Sylva NC’s Greening Up The Mountains Spring Festival is a celebration of renewal, of revitalization, and of the awakening of spring in the mountains. The festival will run from 10 AM until 4 PM on Saturday, April 25, 2015. 

This year there will be a an emphasis on presenting the quality of the local society - past, present and future - throughout the festival. The many musical styles of the area will be featured on two stages, providing the backdrop for a day of excitement and shopping. In the center of Main Street among the town’s unique small businesses Sylva will host over 100 vendors from fine artists and crafters, to heritage demonstrators. There will also be exhibitors from local schools, natural environmental organizations, and sustainability and wellness representatives. 

Children’s activities will include dance performances, storytelling, face painting, an inflatable slide, a mountain youth talent contest and a cub-mobile downhill race. Each local school will be represented, with many activities planned especially for the festival and the children of the area.

This year’s event also hosts the annual Greening Up the Mountains 5K Run, sponsored by the Jackson County Recreation and Parks Department. For more information on the race and registration, call 828-293-3053.

There will be many local handmade goods throughout the festival such as loom beading, fine art and photography, walking sticks, birdhouses, artistic bottle art, goat milk soap, lip balms, local honey, jewelry of all kinds, leather handbags, chair caning, quilting and much more. 

One local craftsmen, Bob Nichols, is a fourth generation carpenter, craftsmen and true artisan of wood. His great grandfather was a blacksmith and craftsman of furniture and art when it was too cold to build houses. When Bob was eight he began working alongside his father, with all kinds of wood, taking on the challenges of building structures, homes and magnificent pieces of furniture. Now, at 66, his education has been a lifetime of building, remodeling, and creating with wood. “I take reclaimed and found wood,” he says, “and bring the wood to the sawmill, then slick the wood by the grain. It’s a passion I feel as I work…it must be in my blood, coming from my family heritage.” Written up in Southern Living Magazine, Bob designs and builds Country French cabinetry, curly maple Windsor chairs, entertainment centers in walnut…and mantels, doors, cabinets, tables, desks and more—which are now scattered about the eastern United States and locally as well. At Greening Up The Mountains Spring Festival, Bob will be displaying some of these creations, while offering beautiful wood sculptures, imaginative slab tables, and other works of art you can carry home with you. 

One of the many hand-produced natural products you will find at Greening Up the Mountains, is called “Spread the Love Lip Balm,” which is a collaborative venture between Elizabeth Lilley and Danny Henderson. “We are both concerned with what goes in and on our bodies,” says Elizabeth, “and common lip balms contain many synthetic and harmful products. Spread the Love Lip Balm is created in small batches using only natural, safe ingredients.” 

Chair caning is fast becoming a lost art. Linda Owen Vinson, chair caner, says she learned to love the craft because her grandfather made a chair for her when she was around three years old, and then wove the bottom. When she saw her cousin David Ammons begin to bring the art of caning back into the family, she remembered how she loved that chair. Since she was a crafter in her own right, she experienced the desire to learn to cane so she could pass it on to her children. She will be representing David in this year's festival. “The different patterns fascinate me,” she smiles, “but the one I’m partial to is the split oak in the herringbone pattern. It’s the most common method of caning in the Appalachian Mountains, so that is what I will be demonstrating at the festival.”

For more information about the upcoming Greening Up the Mountains Festival,  contact Paige Dowling, town manager for Sylva, at 828-586-2719.