A conversation with Adam Perez

Transcript from episode twenty eight of the Good Folk podcast.

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SPENCER GEORGE: Hello folks. My name is Spencer George and you're listening to the Good Folk Podcast. Today I'm thrilled to introduce you to a wonderful friend of mine, Adam Perez, someone we have long been hoping to get on this podcast. 

I first met Adam when we were teaching in rural North Carolina schools, and we bonded over our similar frustrations with media portrayals of Appalachian culture, our complicated relationships to home, and our belief that art is a path forward for progressive change in rural spaces. Adam casts a lens on Appalachia that feels close to the place I hold in my own childhood memories—beautiful even when haunted by the ghost of its past. 

Adam defines himself as a photographic artist currently based in Greensboro, North Carolina. His work has centered around the heart of Appalachia and southern rural communities, seeking to uncover his own roots and connections to the vast historical region he explores and its storied but often heavily obscured past. By continuing an artistic process he started while photographing and participating in the 2019 Harlan County Coal Miners protest, Adam has grown closer to understanding himself and the deep well of emotion he carries for the places he calls home. 

This is a conversation about art and culture, about place and regionality, and about the drive for self-definition. It's also about the importance of connection and the role of community in shaping southern futures—something that benefits all of us no matter where in America you live. I hope you enjoy this conversation.

SPENCER GEORGE: You know, for the sake of everyone's time, we can go ahead and actually, like, get into the conversation, because a lot of that probably will be some life updates and things. But I'm so excited to finally get to do this and have you on here and to hear just about everything that you're up to. Because to all of our listeners who don't know him, Adam is just an amazing human, individual artist being and someone we have been trying to get on this podcast since we started, so I'm really happy that we were able to finally get the time for everyone, and to get to have you here. 

ADAM PEREZ: It only took like three years of convincing. Yeah, I just never tend to put myself out here in a public way like this. I'm not often very practiced at talking about myself or what I do with my artistic discipline. So yeah, this is all a very new experience for me. Thank you for having me though. 

SG: Of course. 

AP: Like, I am so happy to be here. Just very nervous. Yeah. 

SG: Well, we always like to think that—Vic described it once to a potential guest, and I've been using this ever since—as it's like you're eavesdropping on your cool friends at the coffee shop. So that is how we want this podcast to feel to anyone who is listening. You know, we're just people out here, and none of us know more than anybody else. We're just having conversations about art and life and the South and all the things I know all three of us are really passionate about. So I'm excited. 

AP: No, yeah, I'm definitely excited.

SG: My first question for you is kind of two-fold. So number one, where is home these days and where is home to you in general when you think about that word? 

AP: Home these days is actually in Greensboro, North Carolina. It’s a  city that ever since coming here for UNC Greensboro, I have actually really, really fallen in love with. There's a community here that I do really care about, and it’s amazing to live here and start surrounding myself with more of those people I care about, like CJ and Julie and Irvin, who all live here too. It's also been really great for me to get back into the music scene a little bit. For people who don't know, that's where I got a lot of my start with photography, just photographing bands that I knew and people I liked and people I cared about, and it's all kind of rolled from there, I guess. 

Home to me is probably Appalachia in general. I don't want to necessarily claim a state either of North Carolina or Virginia or Kentucky or Tennessee or West Virginia. A lot of my family is from all over, and I've lived all over in North Carolina and West Virginia and Virginia. I think Appalachia in general is what I like to consider my home. It's where my roots come from, especially with my family. And it is what the majority of my art centers itself around. 

SG: Talk to me a little bit about your art. I know you're a photographer primarily, but you do many other things. So talk to me about photography and how you got your start in that. 

AP: It’s really funny. Tori (our Good Folk podcast producer, also known as Vic) was around for pretty much the start of all of it.  I have now known Tori for six years, since 2016. Right, for college. I always kind of had an interest in photography, but it was specifically that. Not art. Not fine art. It was how my brain separated it. When I started going to UNCG, I had actually never taken an art class before. I didn't take art in middle school, didn't take art in high school. I was kind of there thinking, oh, I want a photography degree. I want to learn how to shoot weddings, learn how to shoot commercial. And then I found out that I fucking hated all of that. 

There were instead these, like, amazing educators around me. And they just kind of blew my world open to what it meant to be a photographer, what it meant to be an artist. I know I definitely would not be here without them. 

SG: I think it's a great answer that you're giving, which is kind of about the idea—I feel very similarly about my creative writing practice, which is that I had mentors and professors who saw what I was interested in long before I knew that that was what I was interested in. And even though I was in the right field, they guided me into the things I really cared about. I have to say here, because I know you as a teacher, and that is how we met. All three of us actually did that. When you think about this role of teaching and instruction in your practice, both the mentors and professors that you've had and then your own role of having been a teacher and worked a little bit, what does the role of instruction and teaching mean to you in terms of being an artist? 

AP: That's a great question. Wow. I think a lot of it did come from wanting to be able to pass down that same feeling that I was given from the educators before me when I was doing what I cared about, and it was clicking. It was unlike anything I've ever experienced. And I didn't have those eureka moments until educators pushed me to have them. 

One instance in particular for me, which you and Tori are familiar with, is my Black Pearls project, which was about a Harlan based coal companies mining strike. It was the Black Jewel Mining Company. They went on strike and I wanted to go up there and be a part of the tent city, but also to start photographing. To a college student, I kind of had this idea that I needed permission. Like, I was supposed to be told by someone how to do this, where to go. 

I went to my professor and I was like, how would I photograph any of that? She pulled me aside and she was like, just go. That's all you have to do. Just drive up there right now and photograph it. And I started going up there for weeks at a time. My roommate Irvin also came with me. He has been a creative partner of mine for a long time. It's in moments like that where I was pushed to do something that I just couldn't wrap my head around without having someone basically put the writing on the wall for me. I want to be able to do that for a lot of people. A lot of my students, they always talked about like, oh, I can't draw, I can't do this, I can't do art. And it's like, man, you're sitting here in an art class with an art teacher. If it can be taught, it can be learned. 

I always tried to explain the difference between talent and skill, and how quickly skill can catch up to talent, if you really work on that. I think really it just comes from wanting to find a way to give that to the students I've met that have it in them already, but don't exactly know how to access it on their own. If any of that makes sense. 

SG: Yes, it makes total sense. And like, oh my God, I'm so glad you bring it up this way. Because when we talk about art and, you know, this is primarily a podcast that we talk to artists, so many people that I will talk to come to me and they're like, well, I would love to be an artist. That's so great. That's so cool. But I don't have the training. I've never taken a class. I'm just full of all these ideas. I don't actually know how to do it. And the number one thing that I feel like I've been taught, and it's exactly what you're describing, is this idea of just go and do it. Like it might be bad, it might not be good. But we think so much about craft and practice and this idea that you have to go to the academy and get the degree and learn it there. And at the end of the day, what matters is not the classes that you sit in over and over again but the ones that teach you to go and do the ethical practice. It's like oftentimes what really matters is to just go and do it and start making those connections. Even the genesis of this podcast. Like, Vic and I deliberated about this for years before, we're like, you know what? We have no idea what we're doing, but let's just do it. 

I'm thinking about that with my own creative writing practice. You know, I've been working on novels and stories for years, or talking about them and thinking about them, and it's like you just have to start it and see where it goes. And it might not be perfect. So much of what I think about in my role as an educator and an instructor is encouraging that imperfection. Because you're right, talent and skill can catch up to one another. But what's not going to get you anywhere is not doing anything. 

Just thinking about, that feeling of, oh, I'm waiting for when it feels right and how there's often not one right moment. You're describing this kind of initial project that you started working on, or the one that we're probably all most familiar with, and in many ways it's like a creative collaborative ethnography. For people who don't know what ethnography is, I have to shout it out here. I'm a folklorist and very much in the world of anthropology, and ethnography, in my mind, is collaborative work with the community. It's been misconstrued or taken in so many different wrong ways over the years. But the approach that I have been taught from my many mentors about ethnography and that I try to pass on to my students is collaborative work to tell a story, and often that is putting the power to tell one's own story in the hands of the communities you work with. 

There are many different ways to do this. Academia has one definition and one way that they will teach you. But I think so much of documentary photography and so many of the photographers we talk to offer a different way to do it. And the project you're describing, to me, I'm like, this is an ethnography. I don't know if you think of it that way, or if you have any ideas on how you approach this collaborative work with communities and very specifically Appalachian communities. Adam and I have talked about this at length, but we both have pretty deep Appalachian roots and feel very strongly about the way Appalachia as a region—and southern Appalachia in particular—is represented and often misconstrued. 

So there's two parts to this question, which is that I'd love to hear your thoughts on collaborative work with communities, but also, how do you do that in a region like Appalachia, and what does it mean to do that there? 

AP: So for me, I think collaborative work within community— and I would agree, yes—but almost any of the projects I've done in Appalachia or more landscape based projects are still collaborative. A lot of it comes down to research, talking to people within the region. Just recently I did a shoot that was not in Appalachia, but I know I would not be able to pull off without a massive team of people around me. I had Irvin with me and probably eight other people just to get this shoot accomplished. I think in those moments where I'm collaborating with other artists, other people who are like minded in how they're perceiving the world and what's going on around them, I've never felt more alive. Like it's all coming together and it all makes sense and everyone's on the same page. 

I think for me, when it comes to communities like Appalachia…I have found a great amount of safety and beauty and solitude in a lot of the places that I've lived in Appalachia, especially as a child. I was a terror. So my parents would just simply open the back door and let me run off into the woods for hours at a time. And then they would holler into the mountains and I would come home. And a lot of the work I do now, I think, is centered around that feeling of safety and community I could find just by being out in the woods alone. It's weird to say community when you're out in the woods alone, but there is almost something you can feel in Appalachia, like a hum, especially when you are in the woods somewhere. 

Like where I come from, like Bluefield or a place called Jenkinjones. Jenkinjones now is maybe 90, 96 people. So it's a very, very, very small, tight knit community. I would say I've had a lot of success photographing those communities because I do come from them. It is just like, kind of truthful that people in Appalachia are not always the most trusting of outsiders, but I also think we should keep in mind that a lot of Appalachians have a good reason for that. And that's also what I want to talk about in my work, is how these communities have been failed. 

What I do with a lot of my landscapes or like the piece I have up in Artspace in Raleigh right now, it's essentially a little cabin with a hole in the woods that you can just see the cabin through. That cabin has been in Bluefield for as long as I can remember. I was just recently walking up there, taking care of my grandfather, and that's why I took the photo. And I want to show you this little cabin, this little area. I'm showing you a concrete reality that it exists, that it's there. I have my own subjective views and opinions on it, but I'm not necessarily telling them what you are. 

I do want to see what the audience is going to take from it on their own, and they can take from it abject poverty, they can take from it desolation or this or that. But there is a tremendous amount of strength and care and beauty and love and all of these places that I'm photographing. And for me, that's why I'm gravitating towards them. That's the kind of community I'm looking for. Yeah I don't know if that answers the question, I started rambling. 

SG: No, it absolutely does. And I'm thinking about this because I have a lot of conversations that are very similar. People say, oh, well, when you talk about, you know, what you're doing with Good Folk and wanting to show rural places in a certain way. I had someone once tell me I was a Southern apologist, and I was like, that doesn't mean what you think it means. 

AP: No. [Laughs]

SG: Yeah. Yeah. And I'm like, what I'm not trying to do is try to redeem this place or ignore that there is, you know, abject poverty and suffering and deep layers of violence and discrimination in this region and especially in places like Appalachia. But it is to show that within that there is also joy and love and resistance and community. 

I think that feels really important because sometimes when you talk about flipping the narrative a little bit, people assume you're doing it at the expense of not telling one story. The way that I see it is we have one story that has been told many times, often in very damaging and stereotypical ways. And it's not to ignore that. It's not to try to say it doesn't exist. Anyone who has family in Appalachia, who has driven through it, you know, you can see it up close. It's not something you have to look for. What is hard to me sometimes is that people will portray it as joy and community being the things that you have to look for that are harder to find. And I don't think that's true. I think that's a story that we get due to the many misrepresentations and stereotypes that we have, and it is our job as artists and individuals and people who do have those community ties, because you're absolutely right. 

You know, I want to go back and amend a little bit of what I said earlier, which is, yes, just do it, but don't just go and show up to a community and say, hey, I want to use you for my art project and take some photos and then leave. Right? Like, when we talk about collaborative work, yes, take the first step, do it, but also make the time and effort to seed those relationships and really understand what it is that is useful to the communities that you’re working with. So yes, make the art, but also do it in the right way. 

And I think there are two folds, two pieces to that. But what I see is the role of people who do have both the artistic practice that feels true to them, and the connections to communities that might be getting misrepresented. There is a little bit of a duty, I think, to work to showcase the joy and love and community. It's how I got into this work. I felt so many people were asking me questions or forcing me to defend the places I called home and I don't think they understood them at all. And so I felt like it was my job as a writer to do to do what I could to say, it's not that that isn't true, but this [joy] is also here as well. And we contain both of these, you know. It's not a binary. Appalachia can be both a little bit backwards and definitely, you know, poorer than a lot of other regions in this country, but also a place where I have felt more love and joy and community than anywhere else I've ever been. 

And I think that holds true both in America and globally. You know, we're seeing all around the world right now incredible stories of resistance and resilience and joy that are coming out of some of the most oppressive situations. And oftentimes I think the two really go hand in hand. 

AP: Exactly. No, I agree completely. One thing I feel very strongly about Appalachia and the South in general is I know so many people, especially growing up the way I did, where the only thing they could think of was to just leave, to get out of the South and get out of Appalachia in general. But then you are abandoning this beautiful, amazing place to the people who aren't caring about it in the same way that you are. Honestly. You hear it a lot of like, you know, for there to be active resistance to something, there has to be something oppressing that too. And one of the reasons I don't want to leave Appalachia, I don't want to leave the South, is because I know that in some ways, my existence there, or the existence of, say, other queer people in Appalachia is radical. So if you take yourself out of that equation, you are no longer resisting something that is there. It would be disingenuous for us to say it's not there.

But yes, I agree completely. I hate the idea of people thinking that's all that's there. I have met some of the most amazing, beautiful, kind, just loving people in Appalachia and, I don't know, I think it would be a shame for you to essentially discount all of those people because of preconceived notions. 

SG: And I think exactly what you're saying about the pressure that is put on people, especially, you know, people who often are a little bit more liberal leaning, who especially are queer. I always talk about metronormativity on this podcast, so I'm not even going to get into it, but there's so much pressure put on people who don't kind of fit a stereotypical image of what it is to be someone in both Appalachia and in the South. And oftentimes, you're absolutely right that the only alternative you're given is to leave, which for some people is the right move. I have [left]. I know many people for whom that is what they needed to do. They needed to leave in order to be able to come back with with the knowledge that they had. I think for me, I look at my life and I'm like, I probably did need to leave the South for a little bit to be able to come back and do what I'm trying to do now, but I don't think it should be the only option.

I find that one of the most infuriating things to me is when I see a lot of very liberal, quote unquote, blue states who will look down very specifically on anyone who chooses to stay. I remember Massachusetts advertising on billboards in Florida and saying, you know, come here, we have queer rights. And it's like, if we all leave, then what is left? And I think that's the thing that scares me. 

AP: Yeah. All I can really say is I agree completely. I agree completely. That is what scares me. The idea that we would then leave this just completely unique, beautiful, amazing place to people that will essentially tear it apart over time. I just don't think that's fair to the place. I don't think it's fair to the people that live there. 

I don't know. If I could go back to one of the projects I was talking about—I think for me, I wanted to document community and Appalachian communities in a way that—I was talking about this with someone recently—but that I am basically just photographing and making things because I already have that drive to make them, and I'm essentially putting them out there and believing and hoping that this is going to find its audience in the sense of it going to find the people that it will resonate with in such a way that it will, like, unlock that little thing inside them of like, oh, this is why I love the South. This is why I love Appalachia. This is why I love the people. This is why I love the beauty of it. The place, all of it. 

SG: I'm just thinking as you're speaking now about all the work that did that for me or that made me shift my thinking to have that awakening moment. Because it is absolutely real to to look at something and say, oh, that's the kind of work that's being done here. That's the story that I want to tell. I mean, I remember reading The Bitter Southerner for the first time and having my mind blown, being like, this has been around this whole time? And so part of the work that I try to do with Good Folk and part of the role I'd like to be able to play is finding the people who are doing it, finding the work that's being done, and making this community and this connection. 

We started the podcast because I was like, I am an artist in a rural place, and I know I'm not the only one, but I feel deeply lonely. So how can I find the other people who are doing this and connect us and create a community? And what has been so incredible and beautiful is to see the ways in which that really has happened. And, you know, even just the three of us in this call— you know Vic through a different route, I know Vic through a different route. For those of you who are listening and don't know, Adam and I taught at the same school in different years, so there's so many strange interwebs that get woven here. And it's really cool to see that bloom and my vision and hope is that, you know, we have that all across the region. People putting their work out there, having that moment of, I'm just going to do it. I'm just going to put it out into the world. And that we could serve as an awakening for someone else. And I think that is something I want to find ways to facilitate. 

AP: I definitely think that was one of the reasons I got into teaching. And I do want to touch on this idea of rural art, especially in how the fine art world can separate it. Because I remember on your last episode, you guys talked about craft art and the like ways that gets kind of differentially weighted, the way that kind of gets separated out. Something we've actually been talking about a lot at SECCA right now because of an exhibit we have up that is all textile based, is that a lot of that kind of talk around craft and folk art is derogatory. It is separating it entirely from the sense of you are an artist, you are a fine artist. You can only be these things if you have a classical education and a degree and you're working with materials and a medium we decide is fine art. And I fucking hate it. I get so upset about it. Because we're preaching to the choir. 

Right now, I'm in an exhibit that is full of nothing but art from rural communities and people who grew up there and are really, really putting their voices out there. And to be honest, that isn't something I've seen in the past couple of years. It is only recently that I have really seen this shift towards actually wanting to appreciate and find a way to respect rural art. I say find a way because I feel like so many people have to kind of fight the cognitive dissonance they have about those, again, those preconceived notions about the South and Appalachia and what it means to be rural. So they're like constantly fighting this cognitive dissonance just to learn how to appreciate something. 

I know that when we talk about those awakening moments, like, that's what happened to me. And Tori can 100% vouch for this. Even when we were in college, the beginning of my work around the South was not positive. I was specifically talking about how I grew up in just poverty and I was not approaching it from a very positive place. And then I had again, a professor who was sitting down with me, and he started talking to me, and he was like, I mean, is this how you really feel? 

And I had to examine that. I had to really analyze that. And I realized that what I was doing was pushing a perspective that was even being given to me by those around me in college at the time. Like, when I was making art about the South or Appalachia, it was seen as close to backwards, close to redneck, close to hillbilly. And it's like, well, what if I am all of those things? And what if that is the art I'm making? And yeah, I had that awakening moment that made me realize, like, oh, I'm talking about this in such a negative way when I don't fucking believe that at all. It completely blew my mind and completely shifted how I wanted to talk about the South and Appalachia in my own work. 

You know, I'm someone who very much loves the South and very much loves Appalachia, but I had to learn how to grow into that, just like you were talking about leaving the South so you could figure out how to do that. I had to grow into that love. And if I can find a way in my art to also help others grow into their love of a community they find themselves in, I really do want to do that. 

That was something I always told my students. Spencer knows, but the schools we taught at were very unique. I had a sixth grader one time tell me, why should I care about any of this, because I know that society, as we have it now, is not going to be the same in forty years. It will not exist in the way I know of it now in forty years. And I was blown the fuck away and I had to, like, kneel down at him and I was like, you're right. You’re right. But what I want you to take away from what I'm teaching you is that there's a larger, greater world out there that you can critically think about. And because you're learning how to critically think and because you're learning how to examine what's around you, you're going to be able to help your community much better than before. I'm not teaching you math because I like math. I'm teaching you this math right now because it's helping you stretch your brain power that you can then use to better a community around you. 

And that's what I always told my photo club, too. I remember on the last day of photo club, I told them that I knew I could be proud of them forever. From this moment on, I would be proud of them until the day I died, because I knew wherever they went, they were going to be key parts of a community that they learned to love and cherish and care about. That's what I want to be able to do with pretty much anything I do, I think. 

SG: I think you've just described my entire experience in much better words than I could have. All of this is just so, so true. And the constant thing I'm working against is people will think from the way I talk about the South right now that I love this place more than anything, and I always have. And I just wish those people had known me in middle school when I hated this place more than anybody I've ever met. [Laughs]. I thought my family was backwards. I remember getting made fun of for the accents that my family had. I mean, I don't have an accent, and it's something that comes up a lot. And there's a reason for that, because I trained it out of myself. 

AP: We have the exact same issue. I lost my accent on purpose. 

SG: Yeah, most people I know who hate this place more than anyone are often those who are from here and who are taught that they don't belong here, and that there is no way to love a place that does not want you. I've written about this extensively in the newsletter of how hard it is to be here in this moment, to be doing this work, and this goes back far and further and further than we're even talking about. But to be doing work in a place that you love, that you feel like doesn't even want you there half the time, and then to be doing that against a larger national backdrop where most of the people who are supposed to be your allies or people who you might agree and fall on similar lines of thinking with are going to critique and judge you for wanting to do the work in the place you call home at all. And so what I feel like I am always trying to do and wrap my head around is to think, I am not telling you to love the South. I am trying to teach the students that I work with to be critical, and within that to see that there is—like we've been talking about— both loss and displacement and joy and resilience at the same time. 

You know, the South has this reputation of being such an oppressed place because there are so many histories of resilience and of opposition. You see that all around the world. But you have to be critical and you have to learn how to think beyond that story. And it's exactly what I have carried into my teaching practice. To go all the way back to the art and craft thing—I teach a unit on material culture. For the last two semesters I've helped teach an intro to folklore course, and we do a big unit on material culture, and one of the first things that I will instill in them is the question of what is craft, to you? To which they'll say, you know, quilting and pottery and all the things we associate generally with rural places. And art and painting and photography are things you would go learn in a university. And it is fascinating to see these distinctions that fall across rural and urban lines. In their end of year reflections, almost always one of the biggest things that comes up is, wow, this really blew my mind to think about these things differently. And I think that's our greatest role both as artists and as educators. 

I think artists are inherently educators. I think all art is and should be political, but that's my personal opinion. But it asks us to think critically and to get people to think critically about the world, and to do that in the way that, yes, all we can pay attention to is this current moment, and the world is going to be different in forty years, and hopefully that's a good thing. But what we can do through art is process that. On a personal level and a social level, art is catharsis. I had to write all of my stories about reckoning with gun culture and redneck culture and the stereotypes that were put on me and the stories that, you know, were true in my family, but nobody knew about because we didn't want them to, before I could ever get to writing about this place from a place of love. 

And it doesn't happen overnight. And even now, I still struggle to say I love the South. People will say that to me, they're like, oh, you must love North Carolina. And I like jolt because it's like, well, yes, yes I do. But I also spent twenty years doing everything I could to leave this place. And it feels wrong and strange sometimes to say, yes, I love it and I'm going to stay. And just in my own family, my mom was the first person to ever leave the state, and there's a whole thing that I've reckoned with, where is coming back after she worked so hard to leave a failure? Which, again, that's my own personal bias, because all my mother has ever wanted is for me to come back home, right? So we're always working through these things and we're always unlearning them. And it does get easier, but it never gets through. But I think exactly what you're saying, art, and specifically community and building community around art are the best ways I know of to reckon with that. 

AP: No, I agree completely. I think that is something I'm trying to focus on more in my life right now, even now that I'm post teaching and am kind of finding myself in a completely different position than I was a year ago. I’m making very different work. And kind of tying back into the idea of collaborative process, I work a lot with my best friend Irvin, a great guy, and he and I have been talking a lot more concretely about the idea of artists collectives and residencies and all sorts of things like that, because especially for artists who are making work about their community, it is one of the worst things in the world to then have to tell them they have to leave their community to either present it or learn or like, you know, going to grad school here or there, wherever. This idea that you have to leave a community you already care about and you're already making work for to continue growing. 

And so I think for me, the last couple of years have really been trying to figure out how I can contribute to that and the grander space that I currently reside in. And I don't have anything concrete yet on that, really, but I know that it's something I want to continue pushing for and continue finding ways to integrate into my life. 

SG: What does it mean to you to be someone who stays? However you want to interpret that.

AP: I don't know, I really don't. I think for me… it's something so subjective for every person, because everyone's going to have their own reasons for staying too, and everyone's going to have their own reasons for leaving. Like earlier I talked about the idea of leaving the South and then essentially abandoning it to people. I don't want to give the wrong impression that I also think negatively of those people. I get why you would. Everyone's going to have their own reasons for staying. Everyone's going to have their own reasons for leaving. I think what it meant for me to stay was to try to figure out how to love this place. Like I knew I wanted to. I knew I really, really did. So staying was also figuring out how to stay, if that makes sense. 

I'm someone who has a very hard time walking a certain path if I don't have a landmark on the horizon to look at, essentially. When I was teaching and during school, I would talk about feeling like… if you're in a car in the middle of the desert and there's just absolutely nothing on the horizon, your brain can't really actually judge how fast you're going or how close you are to the horizon. And I felt like that constantly. But I had to remind myself that even though I feel like I'm not going anywhere, I'm not moving forward, there are steps being taken and they are leading somewhere. 

And that's what it felt like to stay. I felt like I was just taking those steps and steps and steps until I saw something on the horizon that also made me want to stay. 

SG: It’s why we run Good Folk. Because, for me, that was my thing. I was like, could I make the community—or, you know, the community's been there, I knew it existed, but it was like, could I use this as a pathway to bridge the connection, to create that vision of the world in which I want to stay? So my follow up question with that is when you think about this vision for an Appalachia and a South that makes you want to stay and, you know, now but also fifty years down the line, what does that look like to you or feel like?

AP: Openly queer, openly diverse. Which is not to say there's not places like that in Appalachia and the South that don't already exist. There are, and I've been a part of them, and I've seen the kind of good and power those kind of communities can have. So I think for me, it’s just finding a way to spread that network out. Because like you were saying, that community already exists. I don't necessarily think it's about creating a community. It's about finding a way to connect people that already exist and are searching for that community. 

For me, yes, it looks openly queer, openly diverse, sustainable. I think that's something I care about a lot. I come from a coal mining family. I was going to be a coal miner before going to college. So sustainable is another big thing for me. I want to find a way. Well, I know I can't find a way on my own, but I would like to see a way that Appalachia has and can sustain itself in a much more sustainable way, if that makes sense. 

SG: I work on Southern and Appalachian climate change, so it absolutely makes sense. And I just want to say I resonate so much with everything you're describing. I'm going through my own personal journey right now of trying to figure out, am I going to have to leave the South to continue to study the South at a doctoral level, which is a really tough choice and decision that I've been dealing with for the last few months. So all of this is really, really resonant for me.

I really love this vision of the world you're describing, and I hope we can make it happen and be, you know, just small little pieces of connectivity. With that point of connectivity, are there any artists or photographers—or I know you work very heavily as well with musicians. Are there any people who come to mind that you feel like are working right now on achieving that vision or, or contributing to it in the way that you feel inspired by? 

AP: Honestly, a lot of the people that you guys have already kind of featured.

SG: Thank you so much. We try. 

AP: [Laughs]. And I do mean that legitimately. I remember you connecting me even with a photographer not too long ago that I am actually forgetting his name right now. That feels very bad. 

SG: Jesse Barber.

AP: This amazing, fantastic photographer, who is photographing communities with such care and love. Just gorgeous work. Just incredibly gorgeous work. 

SG: I'm so obsessed with all of Jesse's work, truly.

AP: Yeah, the second you connected us and I went to his Instagram, I was like, oh my god, this is everything I care about. Like, this is amazing. 

SG: So go back and listen to our episode with Jesse if you haven't, we'll link to it here and shout out Jesse, we think you're awesome. 

AP: Yeah. No. Amazing. Really sweet too. When I got to talk to him, he was really nice. For music, a little bit of a shout out because they’re my roommate's band, but also Irvin and I have been doing a lot of their promotional work. That's what we've kind of been working on for the past couple months secretly. It’s a band called Slothh in Boone. Slothh are really great friends of ours. And they bring a kind of, like, heavy punk alternative energy to Boone and Appalachia that I also really appreciate. I am a very, very, very big fan of alternative bluegrass, alternative country. So I think really finding more ways to inject alternative culture into the South and Appalachia. 

SG: I'm all about—well, I know you and I listen to a lot of the same stuff, so I'm right there with you. I'm thinking about, again, this kind of art as catharsis. Like, I have resonated so deeply with a lot of the really, like, southern Appalachian folk punk that is reckoning with religion and violence and loving a place and hating a place and wanting to leave it and not leaving it. There’s a lot of that out there. You know, I made many a playlist when I was first even realizing that I missed the South, and it felt so strange to be away and to realize, oh, I actually even missed that place. And then just making playlists of all of this music. It's amazing to see artists across so many different mediums working through that feeling in so many different ways. 

And, you know, I don't know that we all need to reach the point of love to make good art. You know, I think you can make really incredible art out of that frustration as well. It's important to honor that [anger] and to work through that. And, you know, if you get through it and decide this is somewhere you want to stay, we're here. And if you don't, then we understand that experience as well. But yeah, Adam we will have to have you make a playlist of all the people you're listening to.

AP: Oh my God, you shouldn't have even said that. It will be hours long. I am a professional playlist maker. I love making playlists. 

But I had the exact same situation, honestly. When I realized I was missing Appalachia and missing the South the way I was, I made a playlist on Spotify called Soothe the Homesick Soul that grew to maybe thirty-some hours. I mean, it got pretty large and it is by far not my largest playlist, but it's probably still one of my most listened to. And I do find myself like constantly adding to that rotation. I'll even go back to it to rediscover artists that, you know, maybe I haven't listened to in a good while that I can then fold into new playlists. 

For me, I think a big journey of loving the South was music. I am a very musical person. I loved music maybe more than most anything. It's probably my most consumed form of media. There were a lot of artists that really kind of opened up that world for me, that I was like, oh, shit. Like, there's all these musicians talking about a place I love, a place I'm learning to exist in, a place I'm learning to care more about. And they're doing the same thing in their music. They are doing the same thing. 

I know everyone loves the dude, but absolutely my favorite coming out of Kentucky right now is Tyler Childers. I think he does an excellent job of blending a lot of that classical bluegrass feel with a lot of the more modern, angry and sometimes, like, violent ways of feeling about it. Um, especially like the song Long Violent History.

SG: Nose On The Grindstone. Specifically the live version. People say they like Tyler Childers and I'll ask them if they've listened to Nose On The Grindstone and they're like, no. And I'm like, go back and listen to it. 

AP: It’s probably one of his best, along with the song for me, Coal. I was actually the first person in my family to receive a college degree, to get out, whatever way that can be defined by some people. And I think finding a lot of that music really, really brought me back to the roots that I realized I was neglecting. Hearing the accents, the beautiful voices and accents in all of that music. 

You know, I do want to go back to the accent thing really quick, because I want to tell a little story about why this happened. Looking back on it, I was so upset. But I was probably in middle school and I had a heavier Southern accent at the time, and it was one of the first times I ever had to give, like, a big presentation, and I gave this massive presentation. I was so nervous. I felt like I did really good, and the only note my teacher had was that I sounded like a redneck, was that I did not sound intelligent. And looking back on it, it really, really affected me and I got rid of my accent completely. I really like felt that if I was someone that was going to be listened to or someone that like, people wanted to hear what I had to say, then it definitely couldn't be having a Southern accent with it. And looking back on it, I'm so angry with that fucking teacher. It's awful that you would say something like that. Yeah, I just wanted to get that story out there about why that happened.

SG: I mean, it's amazing how similar it is to my own story, actually, which is—I'm sure there are countless people. 

AP: I think it's a similar story to so many people I know,. I'm forgetting his name right now. But he's an amazing author in Appalachia. Silas. Um. 

SG: Silas House? 

AP: Thank you. Yes. Silas House, an amazing author. I remember reading about how someone called him a hick after he gave a speech, and I was like, fuck, dude. Yeah, that happened to me. Like, I see how this is a constant issue. 

SG: Yeah. I remember being in a school assembly and I was probably like seventh or eighth grade and someone was giving a presentation on Southern Mountain dialects as like a, oh, wow, look at these people who have accents that are dying out, right? Very similar to how people will talk about Gullah Geechee communities. It's all infuriating. But yes, they were going on and on about these accents and acting like nobody had them. And someone like, leans down from the row and they tap me and they're like, that sounds like your family! Your family sounds like that. And they meant it in a very derogatory way. 

It was the first time I remember that cognitive moment where I was like, oh, we’re different, am I different? For context, I grew up—my family's all in North Carolina. I grew up for the first like twelve years of my life in North Carolina and then moved to South Carolina and went through a private high school there, which was an incredibly jarring experience to have the two in opposition. But I remember having a moment where I was like, I am not Southern in the way that the people in this room are Southern and they see me differently. I remember they told me I could, um, waddle back to Walterboro where I belonged, because I had an accent back then, and I came from a different part of the South than what was understandable to the old money Lowcountry. 

That moment stands out so heavily in my mind. And I remember I went home and I said, mom, like, do we have accents? Do we sound this way? And she was like, if you ever want to go anywhere else, I don't want you to have the experience that I had in New York City when I got there with my Appalachian accent. So we are training this out of you. And to this day, she will still correct things I say. I love my mother dearly. Hi, mom. But she will correct when I say certain words. She'll say, don't say it that way. And I'm like, do you know how much I want my accent back? It’s amazing. I remember in New York I was working for StoryCorps, I was working for the mobile tour. They're an amazing organization. And the mobile tour is an amazing project. It's an Airstream trailer that goes around the country and records people's stories. It was kind of my first foray into folklore work, but my job when I was an intern was to call all the people who would come into the booth, and we were at that point in Tennessee and or we were headed to Tennessee. So I was calling to confirm appointments. And I remember I got on the phone with someone and I heard the accent and I immediately, like, broke into tears because it had been so long since I had even heard someone sound like anybody I knew. 

Those two moments, they really stand out in my memory. And I think it's important to recognize that isolated experience with realizing even in a region [you call home] you can be marked as different. I remember teaching in middle schools and, and even here in like rural North Carolina schools, teachers would talk about, oh, you know, those kids, they're from the mountains, and say it in a really derogatory way. And it still blows my mind. 

So I think the role in all of this with art is to not treat the South as a monolith, to not treat Appalachia as a monolith, to work through that frustration and that anger, and then find ways to use community and connection as we envision where we go next. And I'm grateful to be a small piece of that, and I'm really grateful to know that there are many, many others, such as yourself, who are out there doing that. I think, honestly, that's the only thing that can keep any of us going and doing it is remembering that there's others. 

AP: You know, I just want to touch on the frustration and anger, especially because I think, for me, I realize that a lot of my frustration and anger and the negative ways I was viewing the South and Appalachian and putting that out in my art was because I cared. Like, yeah, I'm not this frustrated and this angry because I don't care. Like this frustration and this anger is only existing because I feel so strongly about the South already. I’m finding a way to like, really transition that frustration and anger into not only something productive, but also not disowning it. I don't want to get rid of it. What was my beginning driving force? The frustration and anger is what led me to a much more positive and helpful place, if that makes sense. 

SG: I think to reframe it through the lens of care is actually just the best way to put it. And I'm so glad you brought us there as we kind of come to a close here. We feel all the things that we do because we care and it's okay to care. It’s okay to care about a place that you have been taught to hate, whether you are from here or you are not from here. And I think that logic extends across the board into so many different ways of connecting and ways of activism and ways of, you know, really reimagining a radical new future. And I just really love that. 

I want to kind of leave that to hang a little bit—that it’s because we care. And with that, I’ll lead you into what I know you know is coming, which is our question that we always end on. And I think it frames really nicely around this idea of care. So Adam, that question for you is what do you believe in? 

AP: I believe in community. I believe in a collaborative process. I believe that if you put yourself out there with genuine intentions and genuine care, then you will also attract an audience of people who think the same way and feel the same way and are resonating with what you're putting out there. 

I make art because I already have just this insatiable fucking drive to do it. Like, you know, I'll be walking through Appalachia for hours at a time for miles, taking photos of anything I care about, anything I see that catches my eye. Man. Yeah, I just believe in community and a collaborative process. Putting yourself out there in a way that is going to draw what you want. 

SG: I feel like all of us can really attest to the lived experience of that. And I want to add to that that it doesn't mean it happens immediately. I think all of us have felt very alone and very isolated in that care and in that love and in that drive for community. But I can look at…you know, I'm coming up on four years almost back in North Carolina, which is almost insane to think about that it’s already been that long. But to see what my life is now felt unimaginable four years ago. And so there's always a new future. And I think you just have to believe in it. So it's a great thing to believe in. 

AP: Yes. No, I completely agree. I look around at the people that I've managed to surround myself with and the community I've somehow managed to scrounge up around me, and I can't be anything but fucking grateful. Like knowing that all of these people are around me that truly care and truly support this like minded ideal and mindset we all have. I didn't think it was possible, honestly, back then. So having it now is a dream come true, and one that I have to constantly remind myself to be grateful for. 

Especially the past three years have been really challenging in the sense of sobriety. Sobriety teaches me gratitude in a way that I never thought I would truly understand. And every day I'm trying to put myself out there and look at a world that I know isn't always good, isn't always great, isn't always doing what I wanted to do. But I know there's something I can be grateful for. I know there's community and people and art and love and music and all of these amazing things that I can figure out how to be grateful for. 

There is a poem I really like that I am forgetting the exact name of the person who wrote it, but it's called “Two-Headed Calf”. It's a very popular poem. But it is essentially about this two-headed calf being born in the middle of the night in a field. And yes, like this calf will not survive. And that is sad. That is a crying shame. But right now, in that moment, it is looking up at the sky and there are twice as many stars as usual. And for me, I think that's also like, what I believe in is gratitude. I believe in finding a way to be grateful for all of those things I talked about—community, collaboration. 

SG: I love that poem, and I think it's about seeing the world up close in all its frustration and anger and intensity and all its joy and beauty. And I'm very grateful to be here and to know you and to be in conversation with you. So, Adam, thank you for being here and for joining us. It's really lovely to catch up. And for anyone who wants to follow your work and see the way in which you see the world, which is just a beautiful perspective. Where can they find you and find your work? 

AP: So my website is currently down. I'm remaking it post ArtistYear, so give me a little bit of time on that. But my Instagram is probably the next best place. That would be where you can usually find me. I don't post a ton, even when I probably should be. Like, I should have definitely been promoting this exhibition I’m in much more than I did. But yeah, I'm also always open for a chat. My DMs are open. Yeah. 

SG: Adam, thank you so much. It is lovely to be here and with you. And we will promote your art exhibit as best we can as well. And we'll stay tuned for the website. I am always rebuilding websites for a variety of projects, so I understand where you are. But thank you for being here. Thank you for this conversation. 

AP: [Laughs]. I hope there's literally anything usable. 

SG: Yeah, I think there are many, many pearls of wisdom and I, I feel really grateful to have gotten to kind of relaunch the podcast in this way. So I know our listeners will agree wherever they are. Wherever you are in the world, have a good day, good night, be good, stay good.

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