PEOPLE 



& PLACES 



The center deliberately bought the whim- 

 sical chair to disarm any reluctance in 

 its visitors toward art and artists. 



"Anybody can identify with that 

 chair," Phillips says, "especially local 

 men who save scrap metal and weld. 

 They saw immediately what that chair 

 was made of, and they appreciated the 

 humor and the skill." 



Phillips hurries from one item to the 

 next, eager to showcase the talents of the 

 artists and the center's activities. A flowing 

 sapphire dress sets off her silver hair and 

 testifies to her own artistic flair. Feather 

 seems a particularly fitting name, though 

 she explains it is not an invention of her pro- 

 fession. Her first name is Kathryn, but she 

 has been called Feather, short for her middle 

 name of Featherstone, since childhood. 



Pocosin Arts is the result of a conflu- 

 ence of several events in Phillips' life and 

 the region she calls home. Before opening 

 the center, Phillips taught art for seven years 

 in nearby Creswell. The prevailing attitude 

 among children reflected the area's eco- 

 nomic situation. 



"There wasn't a lot of confidence 

 about where they lived, about who they 

 were," she says. 



Phillips, on the other hand, was en- 

 chanted by her surroundings and her neigh- 

 bors. She left a public television career in 

 Boston to live on Martha's Vineyard, then 

 sailed south in 1972. 



The boat docked in Wilmington, 

 where she later married waterman Willy 

 Phillips. They settled in Bath and had a son, 

 Jake, now 14. But Willy Phillips couldn't 

 make a living crabbing in the deteriorating 

 waters in the Pamlico River. Attracted by 

 the Alligator River and its still-productive 

 waters, the family moved to Tyrrell County 

 in 1987. 



As the new art teacher in Creswell, 

 Feather Phillips had an outsider's apprecia- 

 tion for the area and latitude in lesson plan- 

 ning. "So I decided to develop a curriculum 

 that was based on this place and these 

 people," she says. 



In recent years, a regional effort to 

 promote nature-based tourism began gain- 



Lee and Smith making a broom 



ing momentum. Phillips wanted to make art 

 a part of it. 



"I felt that this fit," she says. "I was 

 working with the children, and we were al- 

 ways gathering our own grasses and digging 

 our own clay, or finding other materials to 

 make art from the environment, and thereby 

 having a better appreciation for the relation- 

 ships, the connections. And I thought, well, 

 maybe this would work for grown-ups too." 



A personal epiphany propelled Pocosin 

 Arts into being. Phillips was contemplating 

 her 50th birthday in 1994. "I thought, you 

 know, you have all these years and all these 

 experiences and you have something you 

 want to say. You're going to be 50, and 

 you're not going to live forever. It's time," 

 she recalls. She set to work on the grant pro- 

 posal for the center's initial funding. 



An environmental activist all her adult 

 life, Phillips says Pocosin Arts is a change in 

 tactics. She recounts displaying diseased fish 

 at water quality hearings in recent times, 

 protesting nuclear power in earlier years. 



"We always were ranting against some- 

 thing," she says. "Instead of reacting against 

 something, I decided to put forth a positive 

 agenda that had the same goal. I felt that if 

 this education program would encourage 

 visitors and students and the community to 

 appreciate the pocosin environment, to ap- 

 preciate the human community, the whole 

 package, then perhaps it would be less 

 threatened. It would be just a little harder to 

 say, 'Just fill it or dredge it.'" 



The Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation 

 granted $25,000 in the fall of 1 994 to launch 

 Pocosin Arts. After a flurry of work and 

 renovation of its current quarters, Pocosin 

 Arts premiered in October 1995. 



Governed by a board of directors, 

 it has flourished under other Reynolds 

 money, grants from the Kathleen Price 

 Bryan Family Fund, other organizations 

 and the state, plus individual and business 

 contributions. Its calendar is full of work- 

 shops and seminars. Remembering her 

 own overextended teaching days, Phillips 

 makes Pocosin Arts especially available 

 to teachers. 



The center features a pottery program 

 taught by Carol Lee, who experiments with 

 local clays. Lee shared the dreams and plans 

 for the center with Phillips before the found- 

 ing. She now shares a devotion to it. 

 "I never want to leave," Lee says. 

 An underlying philosophy of Pocosin 

 Arts is that art could, at least in part, salve 

 some of the region's woes. Nurturing creativ- 

 ity fosters success, Phillips says. 



"It isn't just a pot or a carving or a paint- 

 ing or a weaving," she says. "It's 'I did it. I 

 can do it again. Or maybe I can do some- 

 thing else.'" 



Art, she says, also can bring diverse 

 groups and cultures together. 



"People can communicate through art 

 who might not be able to otherwise," she 

 says. "Different cultures can communicate. 

 I saw it with children." 



And she believes the capacity to create 

 is universal, a common thread connecting all. 

 "It's part of the human package, creativity," 

 she says. 



Her own creation, Pocosin Arts, has 

 reached far beyond her personal dreams 

 for it. "It belongs to other people now," 

 she says. 



Pocosin Arts is raising funds to buy 

 the building it shares with the laundry, and 

 another one next door, so it can expand. 

 Meanwhile, Phillips is dreaming new dreams 

 for connecting culture to the environment 

 through art. 



"It's limitless," she says, "how this 

 creative setting can be used." □ 



Pocosin Arts is at the corner of Water 

 and Main streets in Columbia. The center 

 is open Tuesday through Saturday from 

 10 am. to 5 p.m. Call 252/796-2787. 



26 HOLIDAY 1998 



