Making Ripples: post-corporate adventures in Floyd County Virginia

What does the Jacksonville Center do for Floyd County?

It helps keep Floyd green

For 13 years, the Jacksonville Center has been supporting artistic endeavors and rural creativity in our region. It is an organization of dedicated volunteers backed up by an extremely small group of paid staff members.

It serves as a focus for creating and supporting new artists and artisans. There is no other activity in Floyd that is dedicated to that activity. The public schools offer art instruction and various artists offer internships, but until recently, there were few other opportunities for artists to learn new skills and display their works locally.

Not everyone is aware that some internationally renown artists and artisans teach courses at the Jacksonville Center. Some instructors drive long distances to help students develop their skills and launch careers.

One of the outstanding aspects of the Jacksonville Center Community is the way experienced and successful artists share their hard-won knowledge with newcomers to the field of art.

Hundreds of successful artists and artisans in the region are members of the Jacksonville center and some are members of the Board or manage the Hayloft Gallery exhibitions. Their actions inspire others to contribute to the Center and to take courses.

Every year, some students choose to become artists and artisans after taking courses from the professional artists at the Jacksonville Center. These new artists become contributors to the local economy and some return to teach at the Jacksonville Center as they gain professional skills and generate their own following of fans.

There is a synergy at the Jacksonville Center that keeps it going, even though the Center is perpetually strapped for operating funds. Grant money may pay for buildings and additions, but operating expenses are supported by donations from businesses and individuals. That is why there are so many volunteers who give time and money to keep the center open. It is one of the few places in the county where you or your children can unlock your creativity and learn skills from professionals in the field of arts.

But, even after 13 years of serving Floyd County, some people still don't understand why government grant money is provided to the non-profit Jacksonville Center for the Arts in Floyd instead of "deserving individual artists".

They really don't comprehend that the Jacksonville Center IS DESERVING INDIVIDUAL ARTISTS.

They also don't understand that grants aren't "given" away. They must be won through a carefully thought-out application process and after a lot of hard work. The grants are government's way of extending government services without adding the taxpayer burden of a staff of government employees and a local government office.

The few naysayers who say "stay away from the Jacksonville Center and support local independent artists and craftspeople and their displays in privately owned galleries and studios" do not have a clue what the Jacksonville Center does and must not be talking to the many artists and gallery owners who support the Jacksonville Center and donate time to it.

If you are an artist, you want your work in as many venues as possible and you want those venues to promote you and your privately owned studio as much as possible. The Jacksonville Center does this. It is open to all artists and is a resource that this county is very fortunate to have.

The next time you find someone criticizing the Jacksonville Center for "competing" with Floyd artists in any way, you might ask them exactly "who" is being affected. You will not get any specifics, only general grumbling.

The Jacksonville Center is non-commercial and is run by local artists and other volunteers. Anyone criticizing the Jacksonville Center as being "bad for local art businesses" has a hidden agenda and deserves being investigated themselves.

We need all of the cultural incentives we can muster to inspire us to unlock our creativity. The Jacksonville Center and the artists who support it are a driving force for self-sustaining economic development in Floyd County. Selling talent will help keep Floyd green. Selling only land leads to another, and less desirable future for Floyd.

Help develop local talent in all areas and help keep Floyd green.

Finding people who need and appreciate pearls

I have been incredibly fortunate to have discovered custom framing, an occupation that lets me create wow products for extremely appreciative audiences.

I get to work with customers and help them choose a framing system that complements and enhances their cherished works of art. The end result is far more meaningful than I ever expected. The final product is esthetically pleasing and emotionally satisfying for all concerned.

We all take a win on the final result.

The dynamics of this process are unlike any client relationship I have encountered before. I find it to be personally challenging as it calls upon every bit of design skill that I have learned. It is also mutually enjoyable for both the client and myself because each custom framing job involves working out an optimum solution to a complex problem with hundreds of alternative choices.

Occasionally a client will give me a work of art and ask me to frame it using my own judgment, but I prefer working with them so they can experience the creative thrill that comes from discovering the exact effects they are trying to achieve.

Combining colors and textures of mats and matching them to one of hundreds of moulding choices produces continuing surprises. When customers see what is available, they almost never adopt a cookie cutter approach of saying, "I'll take a white mat in a black frame."

Instead, we go at the challenge by finding a mat combination that brings out what they want in a work of art. Then we find a moulding that encloses the whole in a way that creates a sense of balance and completeness.

But, it doesn't end there! This is an iterative activity as most design processes are. We will reach a combination that pleases, then one of us will pick up another mat or moulding and say, "What if..." and we are off on a new path of discovery.

The process invariably ends when we all say, "Wow! Look at that!". This happens when the combination of art and framing elements coalesce into a harmonious whole that produces an emotional effect.

In essence, I act as a facilitator and make it possible for clients to achieve as much creative freedom as they desire.

This works whether the art is created by a professional or by a child. When it all comes together, we experience an emotional surge. We have created something together and the experience  becomes a bright spot in our memory.

As in all things, making it happen requires skills that I have been acquiring for many years. I am really happy to be in this place and time with so many people who love and appreciate art and are willing to preserve it.

This is work that I truly enjoy and I work with clients for whom I have a great deal of affinity.
It is for me the best of all possible career choices at this point in my life.

I am here because I finally learned the lessons I discussed in my previous article.

Why Parents Decide to Homeschool

One of the most important trends I follow is homeschooling. I think that active home schooling is a positive sign in any area.

Nerd Mom hosts this weeks Carnival of Homeschooling and explores reasons parents decide to homeschool.

I especially liked her comment, "The final reason to homeschool is to produce productive adults who are smarter than me".

Unlock your Talent - whatever it is

“FLOYD, Naturally!”, a lecture series sponsored by Floyd Friends of the Library presents David and Gretchen St. Lawrence on the topic of “Unlock Your Talent”.

That's tonight, May 17 at 7:30 p.m. at the Jessie Peterman Library, in Floyd

Gretchen and I are speaking tonight on the various factors involved in unlocking your talent and will be drawing upon the experiences of the audience to give the widest possible scope to this vital topic.

We have been very appreciative of our welcome to Floyd County and the encouragement we have received as we have become engaged in community activities.

We have observed the positive effects on our lives and the lives of others who have been exposed to the support and reinforcement that exists within the Floyd County community.

A community can be considered to be the sum total of the expressed talents of its members. Talent that is stifled or repressed contributes little to the well-being and prosperity of the individual or their community.

Talents that are unlocked become the basis of new businesses, happier lives, and this encourages others to unleash their creativity also.

We are addressing a wide range of talent including the ability to farm, to homeschool children, to create a business from scratch, as well as the ability to create art, to produce fine pottery, or to sing and produce music. All of these talents are necessary in a growing and vital community.

We feel that unlocking talent is something that anyone can do, given encouragement and some grounding in the factors that act as barriers to expressing talent.

We feel that it is as important to recognize and overcome barriers as it is to concentrate in the development of talent.

Floyd has an abundance of talent and we would like to see that wealth increase so that the creative character of Floyd is strengthened and is not drowned in a rising tide of cookie-cutter commercialism.

We feel that more talent, freely expressed, is the best answer to survival of this community as an economic unit. When you import franchises, for example, to generate jobs you have removed one more reason for visitors to stop here and visit.

If the state of Virginia becomes one endless strip mall as has happened in some beautiful areas of California, there is nothing that distinguishes on town from another. It is our creative economy which attracts visitors, new settlers and makes this part of Virginia such a great place to live.

We think that unlocking talents will let creative people find their own unique solutions to the problems of life and to community stability and prosperity.

If you are in Floyd, join us tonight for an engaging discussion. It will give us all something new to think about.

The 65th Carnival of Homeschooling is up on Alasandra

Henry Cate of Why Homeschool reminds me that another Carnival of Homeschooling has been posted today and it has been dedicated to Charles Darwin, with a link to free lesson plans for the Galapagos.

We have a lot of home schooled students in Floyd County and I am always impressed with their maturity and creativity.

In my opinion, one of the absolute killer benefits of homeschooling is that children can easily get more education in a couple of hours of homeschooling than they can get from a full day of public school.

No two and a half hour commute, no endless waiting between moments of real activity.

Home schooled kids probably get 4 to 5 extra hours a day to be creative and to help out around the home or participate in the family business. That can be a serious advantage to them and their parents in today's high-pressure world.

Read this weeks carnival and learn more about homeschooling and the people who choose to go that route..