This Side of the Mountain

This Side of the Mountain George Brosi A distinction is often made between folk art and fine art with folk art being the artistic creations of "the folk," people who are relatively unschooled, while fine art is created by sophisticated people who have been professionally trained to be artists. Mattie Lou O'Kelley was one of Appalachia's most famous folk artists in the field of painting. A native of the North Georgia Mountains, she created landscapes that were brilliantly beautiful even though she didn't understand some of the simplest concepts that more privileged visual artists learned early in their training. This same distinction is often applied to artists of the written word as well. In the interview that begins on page 35, Fred Chappell often claims not to be knowledgeable about many different aspects of literature, but the reader realizes he is being modest and that he is, in fact, so well-informed that he understands how much more there is to learn. A professor of creative writing who has studied the works of literary artists all over the world, Chappell epitomizes the tradition of fine writing by Appalachian natives that first flourished in the 1920s in the work of Thomas Wolfe, who had studied at the University of North Carolina and Harvard, and Elizabeth Maddox Roberts, who studied at the University of Chicago. Both Mildred Haun and James Still, writers whose careers commenced shortly afterward, studied at Vanderbilt and attended prestigious graduate schools. In contrast, one of the greatest writers (despite his political and personal shortcomings) ever to come out of our region, Forrest Carter, never graduated from college. Obviously, classical training cannot, by itself, make a person without talent into a great writer, and the lack of it cannot keep some talented writers from being great. Appalachian Heritage seeks to publish a wide variety of literary and visual artists from all kinds of backgrounds. In fact, we particularly enjoy seeing some of our writers pass from the "ranks" of the folk and become fine artists, although we admire those who have no opportunity for classical training. We don't try to figure out into which category our writers fit. We simply look for creations that speak to us, are meaningful and well crafted, that come alive and awe us. 10 ...