With partner Brad Campbell, I wrote the first edition of The Craft Heritage Trails of Western North Carolina and, years down the line, wrote two subsequent editions. This richly woven compendium of craft and art in the mountain counties of the state, commissioned and published by HandMade in America (an Asheville-based, but nationally celebrated non-profit), has inspired an active following—there are over 80,000 copies sold, presumably dog-eared, flagged and stuffed with scribbled reminders.
The book grew out of a strategy to build community between studios, galleries and visitors to the region and to make handmade work universally more accessible from an appreciative and experiential point of view. In short, it’s an outright celebration.
I sat in the original planning meetings for HandMade, led by Becky Anderson and Dan Ray, and feel extremely fortunate to have been involved in the unfolding of overall strategies and a ten year sequence of communications pieces.
Over that period, the handmade community has grown in leaps and bounds and the third edition of the trails book carries 200 fresh listings.
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