White House Drawing Room

WHITE HOUSE DRAWING ROOM

Home
Tag Archives: Feature

White House Drawing Room

John Hutton says he can teach anyone to draw U.S. presidents and first ladies. We put him to the test.

By Maria Johnson

Photographs by Mark Wagoner

A Friday afternoon.

A few cans of seltzer water.

A half dozen No. 2 pencils.

A projector.

A teacher who knows what he’s doing.

And a half dozen good-humored students.

Welcome to art class, O.Henry style.

Recently, we drafted a sketchy crew, in the best sense, to mosey over to the magazine’s office in Greensboro’s Revolution Mill.

Our recruits accepted the invitation — OK, it was more of a plea sweetened by the promise of snacks — to test the skills of John Hutton, a professor of art history at Salem College in Winton-Salem.

Hutton claims that he can teach anyone to draw a U.S. president or first lady, and he’s willing to put his executive powers on the line, with good reason.

Last year, his book, aptly named How to Draw U.S. Presidents and First Ladies, was published by the White House Historical Association and won the 2025 American Book Fest Book Award for Best Children’s Novelty and Gift Book.

The workbook gives step-by-step instructions for rendering the 45 men who have served as president.

The book also depicts 47 women — most of whom were actually married to a POTUS.

Two presidents — Woodrow Wilson and John Tyler — were widowed and remarried while in office. They’re shown with two wives each.

One prez, James Buchanan, was a lifelong bachelor. His niece, Harriet Lane, served as the de facto first lady, socially speaking, so she graces Hutton’s pages just as she graced 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Back to art class. On the day we gather, Hutton is full of fun facts for our students, who are friends and office neighbors of the magazine.

Participants include State Farm Insurance agents Margo and Archie Herring; Susan Sinnott, office manager of Alem Dickey Keel Interior Design; Pam Garner, president of Triad Sales & Recruiting Solutions; Harsha Mirchandani, development director for College Pathways of the Triad; and Moe Miles, who, with his wife Autumn, owns and operates Greenlove Coffee.

As they arrive, everyone wants to make one thing clear: In no way does their drawing ability reflect their professional prowess.

1Notch a “V” just below the second horizontal line on the grid, he tells them. That’s the tip of the nose.

Add flared nostrils and keep your pencils moving upward.

This brings you to the eyes, which land smack dab on the first horizontal line. Start simply: dot, dot. Brows undulate above that.

Now, drop down to the mouth. Abe’s lips fall just above the bottom line.

At this point, the faces on everyone’s papers — as well as the image that Hutton projects on the wall — bear no resemblance to Abe.

The magic happens when Hutton instructs his pupils to add high cheek bones — “question marks,” he calls them — and the sidelines of a lean face.

Suddenly, six Abes emerge.

And so do astonished smiles on the faces of our of budding artists.

They can draw.

The mood loosens as Hutton guides them through Abe’s wrinkles.

Obviously, Abe lived preplastic-surgery era, several people observe. His elevens — worry lines between his eyebrows — also indicate that the late unpleasantness might have been even more unpleasant, cosmetically speaking, owing to the absence of Botox.

A few lines later, Abe’s face is fully fleshed out with his wavy hair, large ears and real-deal bow tie. No clips-ons for No. 16.

He looks fit for a play-money penny in each of the students’ drawings.

“Everybody does it a little bit differently,” says Hutton.

Except for Margo and Archie’s Abes. They’re essentially twins.

What is it they say about married couples? After a while, their drawings of Abe Lincoln start to look alike?

Chitchat flows between our newborn Picassos as Hutton brings up the second subject of the day:

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, the wife and later widow of John F. Kennedy. She also founded the White House Historical Association.

There’s another piece of trivia worth preserving.

In sharp contrast to Lincoln, Jackie was a style maker, setting fashion standards with her bouffant hairdo, flip curls and pearl chokers.

Hutton flashes his example on the wall and instructs his students to start again with the nose.

“She has a broad nose, but not as broad as Abraham’s,” he says. “Her eyes are going to be well below the eye-line. They’re fairly wide set, much more than ordinary.”

Jackie’s lips, he points out, are rather full, and her mouth turns up slightly at the corners.

“That’s what makes her look friendly,” he says.

By this time, our students are getting friendly with each other.

“Do you need an eraser?” Harsha asks Susan.

“You don’t have any left,” Susan teases back.

They speculate about whether Jackie’s lips were plumped by filler.

When Susan draws one of Jackie’s bob earrings next to her jaw, Harsha joshes that it looks like a cyst: “She’s got to get that thing drained!”

Pam texts her husband to ask what he’s doing at work. She sends him pics of her sketches to flaunt her fun.

Moe is so impressed with his work that he considers adding it to the Greenlove menu.

Next to a decaf Lincoln latte perhaps? A caramel Jack-iat-O.?

These reluctant creatives — who initially wanted to leave their names off their papers for fear of being ridiculed — now want to show off their works.

“I have skills!” marvels Archie, looking at his handiwork.

Margo asks Hutton if he’s ever met an unteachable student.

Every ounce the teacher, Hutton refuses to say yes.

Learning is a process, he says, and the important thing is to stay at the process.

“I try to help them do it better,” he says.

In the end, the class gives Hutton thumbs-up on his teaching ability.

“I think your method is highly effective, the way you break it down,” says Harsha.

Class is dismissed and everyone leaves clutching sketches worthy of the White House — refrigerator. 

Well, Hello, Dolley!

Try your hand at drawing Greensboro’s
own Dolley Madison

She was the OG of FLs.

Before anyone called the first ladies “first ladies,” Dolley Todd Madison, who spent her babyhood in what’s now Greensboro, shaped what people would later regard as the role of a first lady.

She was married to James Madison, who would become the country’s fourth POTUS, but before that, she handled the White House social life of their friend, Thomas Jefferson, whose wife had died before he assumed office as the third U.S. president.

Dolley, who famously threw small parties called “squeezes” — think what you will — was known as the D.C. hostess with the most-est, which is probably why the Hostess snack cake company once had a line of Dolly (with no “e”) Madison baked goods.

Raise your hand if you remember raspberry Zingers.

Anyhoo, Dolley was on-point, stylistically, and more than a little rebellious for her time.

She made turbans with tassels a thing.

She dipped snuff.

She also turned the White House into a veritable Baskin-Robbins on the Potomac, generously dishing out the frozen confection that Thomas Jefferson, a former ambassador to France, first introduced to the White House as a taste of continental culture.

Let’s face it: if Dolley were around today, the girl probably would be pierced and tatted, though maybe not for her official portrait.

Which brings us to an actual portrait of Ms. Madison. Because no one posted pics — or even took pics — back in Dolley’s day, paintings are the only way we have of knowing what she looked like.

If you want to try John Hutton’s method for yourself, pick up some colored pencils and use the grid we’ve provided to create your own version of DM. Feel free to take some creative liberties and send your best sketch to cassie@ohenrymag.com or drop your work in an in-feed Instagram post and tag us in the image: @o.henrymag.

The winner will receive a copy of John Hutton’s book and a place in a forthcoming issue.

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

Step 4

A Full-Circle Journey Home

A FULL-CIRCLE JOURNEY HOME

Home
Tag Archives: Feature

A Full-Circle Journey Home

After many moves, the Lacenskis return to where their story began

By Cassie Bustamante

Photographs by Liz Nemeth

When Jordan and Evan Lacenski were looking for a more family-friendly home after their son’s birth in 2020, they saw a sleek, black, midcentury Modern beauty in Hamilton Lakes. But, says Jordan, “My husband and I had never paid anything like that for a house and we were like, ‘That’s insane!’” Then, a Zillow listing caught Jordan’s eye: an abandoned house with an overgrown yard in New Irving Park. A vision of what could be hit her. With her knack for design — and a great general contractor — a clean-lined gem, just like the one that had been beyond reach, materialized.

Today, the Lacenski home, built in 1985, has a bold, black, white and wood exterior that lends to a Modern vibe. What was once empty is now full of life: with Evan, Jordan, Everett, their 5-year-old son, and Austen, their almost 2-year-old daughter, plus the family dog, Bullet. Seeing the original Zillow listing, you understand what an ambitious dream Jordan had for the diamond in the rough. The listing images, as it turns out, are still online. “I hope they never take it down,” she says, because the photos remind her of just how far their home has come.

Thanks to both having parents with jobs that relocated them, Jordan and Evan originally met as middle schoolers in Greensboro. When Jordan was entering the seventh grade in Cleveland, Ohio, her father took a job in the furniture industry that meant a big move to North Carolina. Not wanting to leave her friends behind, 12-year-old Jordan “went outside with my sleeping bag and my goldfish” and told her parents she was staying put. Naturally, Mom and Dad won that battle.

Evan, on the other hand, was used to moving. His father worked as a criminal investigator for the IRS, a job that required frequent relocation. In his nearly 40 years, Evan, a Green Beret veteran, has lived in 19 houses total. “I got to meet lots of new people,” he says, “but I wouldn’t want it for my kids.”

He was a quiet kid, Jordan recalls, but a part of her friend trio, which consisted of her, Evan and their friend, Ian, aka “Spanky.” She’d safely placed him in the friend zone until “he wrote me a love poem,” she says, a poem that he still knows by heart. Yet, she wasn’t convinced — “and then he moved.”

Their paths diverged and wouldn’t physically cross again for several years. And yet, through the wonders of social media, they kept up with one another and remained Facebook friends. When Jordan was a student at Northwest Guilford High School, her father lost his job. While she’d had big dreams of attending college out of state — even as far as Hawaii — her dad encouraged her to apply to affordable in-state schools. She enrolled at N.C. State, where she began studying art and design. “I thought I was going to be an architect.” Until: “Math — maybe not.”

Tuition money ran dry after a few semesters and, while her father eventually found a new job, he moved out of state and her parents divorced. After taking a semester off, she enrolled at UNCG. “And I loooooved UNCG,” she says. She found the faculty especially approachable and empathetic, on top of being innovative. She recalls one particularly tough life moment when she — in tears — asked her professor for a project extension. “I am sobbing and then I am saying I am sorry,” Jordan recalls. “And she said, ‘Why would you ever apologize for being a human being? Human beings cry.’ It was the first time anyone had ever said that to me.”

At UNCG, she pivoted to studying communications and graduated in 2008, right on time for the Great Recession. Since then, she notes, she’s also experienced a global pandemic while pregnant. “We’ve just lived through it all.”

Eventually, Jordan landed a job in her field. With craft beer coming heavily onto the scene, Caffey Distributing created a new position. As the the local beer distributor’s first craft brand manager at the age of 25, Jordan says, “The amount of business that I got to learn because I was sitting in the room with all these C-suite dudes was wild.” Financially secure, she got a dog, a beagle named Siler, and purchased her first home, a foreclosed condo that she and friends painted together while sipping wine. “I was so proud of it,” she says.

Meanwhile, after graduating from the University of Oklahoma on an ROTC scholarship, Evan was stationed in Germany with the U.S. Army. But he’d never forgotten about his middle school flame after all these years and distances. In fact, when she went through a breakup, “He sent me chocolate lava cake to cheer me up.” She recalls Skyping with him afterward while her mom, Sandi Reasoner, was off screen, whisper-yelling to her: “Are you kidding me? Tell him thank you. He is so cute!”

As luck would have it, Evan ended up taking the Special Forces Qualification course at Fort Bragg and, while there, offered — several times — to take Jordan to dinner. A former relationship with someone in the military made her apprehensive about accepting. Plus, she says, “Army spouses have to make a ton of sacrifices, often at the expense of their own careers and ambitions.” After repeatedly turning him down, she eventually agreed, “and that was that.” A year after that first date in 2012, they were married.

Soon after, Evan found himself stationed at Eglin Air Force Base, and the couple hauled their belongings and their two dogs, Cider and Lucy, a great dane, to the sunny, seaside town of Destin, where, Jordan quips, it’s “spring break all the time.” They bought a house, and, as if two dogs were not enough, Jordan came home one day to find Evan on the phone with people at Animal Planet. Soon, Cheech, a rescue he’d seen on Pit Bulls & Parolees, joined their canine brood and the family subsequently appeared on a 2014 episode featuring his homecoming (a real tearjerker — grab the tissues if you watch!). “He had a human soul,” says Jordan wistfully. A wall in their bathroom serves as a memorial to those three dogs, filled with their pictures.

After a year in Destin, Jordan landed a job as the director of marketing and communications for Destin Charity Wine Auction Foundation. While Evan was deployed much of the time they spent in Florida, Jordan launched a side hustle, SheWolf Collaborative — a “non-agency agency” for women in the marketing industry to come together and work collaboratively, no matter where in the country they lived.

Finally, after eight years of service, Evan could take a desk job or transition out. His last deployment to Afghanistan had been tough and he’d lost a teammate, Andy. “Everett’s middle name is Andrew after Andy,” says Jordan. “They were a really tight-knit squad, so I think that changed his perspective and he opted to get out.”

Evan enrolled in the Army’s program that provides counseling, employment and workshops to transition to civilian life, but pivoted when, on family vacation in Montana, he noticed Svallin, an organization that trains protection dogs. He knew of a veteran who trained dogs for them and the idea appealed to him.

Once again, the Lacenskis moved across the country to Bozeman, Mont. There, says Jordan, SheWolf blew up. The area itself is entrepreneurial and the women who live there thrive on collaboration, “like sunshine for everybody.”

Evan’s dog ranch job, however, did not pan out as planned. “He basically was supposed to manage a ranch in Montana and one in South Africa, where dogs were trained to counter poach,” says Jordan. “And that never happened, so half of the salary that we expected him to get never happened.” Back to transitional training he went, where he learned to work in medical device sales. When he was ready to start applying for jobs, one opened up in Greensboro, of all places, and, in 2017, the couple found themselves back where they began.

They moved into a brick Tudor on Walker Avenue, but, once Everett was born, knew a change needed to happen. “He was downstairs, we were upstairs,” says Jordan.

With the help of Matthew MacLanders (“our realtor since I bought that first condo”), they visited what would become their home. Jordan and Matt were going a mile a minute, talking excitedly about what could be done to the house. “And my husband is standing there holding Everett,” quips Jordan, “like, ‘What are you talking about?’”

Jordan brought over her pal, Jodee Rupell, a “total badass” who had loads of remodeling experience. Jodee suggested not just renovating the kitchen, but moving it entirely. Jodee also pushed up her sleeves and got to work: “She was out here one day with her husband’s tractor and hedge clippers at 7 a.m.”

With a design of her own making in place, Jordan reached out to several general contractors for quotes. “And we ended up with the company that actually renovated the Hamilton Lakes house, Donny Root, Building Roots.” With a renovation loan secured, the bank allowed just six months for work to be completed, so Donny, his brother and his nephew worked on the house almost every day and became like family to the Lacenskis.

Jordan sourced materials herself for much of the renovation: tile from Floor & Decor, cabinets from Kitchen Cabinet Worx, light fixtures from “a smorgasbord of Wayfair and all that.”

Entering through the original double front doors, which the couple updated with paint, one of the first things you see is a disco ball hanging in between the entry and kitchen, which are now part of an open-concept central space. The family hung it for New Year’s, but loved it so much that it became a fixture. “At 1 or 1:30 p.m., it does its thing,” says Jordan.

“Only in the winter,” adds Evan, because of the sun’s placement.

Previously, the entry housed a dated grandfather clock where you’d expect to find a secret passage leading upstairs — just like the one in the 1980s sitcom Webster. Now, the wall is open and freshly updated with visible stair railings that have been given a modern look inspired by an image Jordan spied on Pinterest. Donny ran with it, Jordan says. “They just figured it out and they built that.”

The bright, modern kitchen now faces the backyard, where they extended the deck — the “brilliant idea” of Jordan’s mom, who let the family and their dogs crash with her during renovations. (Sandi, as it turns out, loves to spend time on that very deck, sitting by the pool in the summertime.) Light, warm wood cabinets pair with cool, gray, chevron backsplash tiles and white quartz countertops with gray veining. An island with a waterfall countertop offers seating for casual family meals.

Where the kitchen previously sat now serves as a playroom for the kids, complete with three Nugget play couches — “You can’t have enough Nuggets,” says Jordan. The family uses them to build forts, even opting to create “dinner forts,” where they sometimes eat meals.

Just off the playroom is the very thing that sealed the deal. “What sold me was all these windows,” she muses, gesturing to the home office’s wall of tall windows. These days, both she and Evan each work at home frequently, so they have their own desk spaces, with a small desk for Everett in-between the two. Jordan has taken on a new role as director of marketing for ExecBrand Authority, but she’s also pivoted SheWolf away from being a marketing collaborative, turning it into an inclusive space for women from all walks of life. Because she herself was seeking community, she decided to create a platform for it, offering outings, such as kayaking, watercolor lessons and Mahjong, plus opportunities to give back. “At the end of the day, every time I do something outside in community or adventurous in community or creative in community, I always leave happy at the end of it,” she says.

On another wall in the office, Jordan had hoped for builtins, but when the exterior landscaping cost more than she’d expected, some corners were cut. Instead, Jordan painted a series of three freestanding cabinets in a dark-green Annie Sloan chalk paint. Evan’s drum set and 3D printer also take up real estate. Evan, says Jordan, has multiple hobbies. His latest? Ice hockey.

On the opposite end of the main floor, the living room features a large, cushy sectional stuffed with pillows, perfect for cozying up and lounging. A soft, fuzzy, blanket on the sofa welcomes Bullet, the 115-pound gentle giant who serves as door greeter and crumb picker-upper. An array of art climbs the wall behind the couch, a collection of the family’s treasured pieces, including a watercolor painting of Evan and Everett by local artist Alisha Wielfaert. “Art is the way to my heart,” says Jordan.

Before, the room was still in its 1980s heyday, complete with a bar. “Cabinets came out to right here and ran the whole length to that window and in the corner there was a sink,” says Evan. “It was really weird.”

“Because people were partying!” quips Jordan. “At their houses!”

Just off the living room, the couple added a screened-in porch, where Evan’s cold plunge and sauna sit. Once that was constructed, less natural light flowed into the living room, so they brightened it up by painting the wood-paneled ceiling white.

Heading upstairs, another gallery wall, now visible from the home’s entry, adorns the wall. This one features family photos taken throughout the years, most by Winston-Salem photographer Jo Lindsay. “We just added photos of Austen,” says Jordan. “She’s officially part of the fam,” she adds with a laugh, noting that life with two young kids keeps one too busy to keep up with actually printing, framing and hanging said photos.

At the top of the landing, Jordan has assembled a smattering of Tin Nichos, whimsical, colorful 3D shadowboxes crafted by local maker Jayme White, to splash color onto the white wall. Jordan’s collection includes a “cereal killer” and a woman who inspires her, Lucille Ball.

While downstairs features a guest room, the family’s bedrooms are all upstairs. “And where we used to be on different floors, now we are all real close,” says Jordan.

Everett and Austen each have a playful mural in their bedrooms. Everett’s is a mountain scene in rich earth tones, cool gray-greens and tans that Jordan painted herself. And his dresser and nightstands are hand-me-downs from Dad, given a fresh look with chalk paint. “We just repurpose what we can, you know,” says Jordan.

Austen’s wall was a collaborative effort between Jordan and local artist Kara Lewis, a former art teacher at Greensboro Day School. Using “an old-school projector,” Kara painted the black flower outlines and Jordan added splashes of color. Jordan selected flowers that hold special meaning, including hydrangea for abundance, heartfelt emotion and gratitude, and ranunculus for charm, admiration and joy, among others.

In the primary bedroom, Jordan got a wild hair to paint the wall behind their bed. When Evan saw it finished, she recalls, “Evan said, ‘You just said you want to paint that 10 hours ago!’” In her own words, Jordan often takes an idea and runs with it from “zero to 100.” Now, the wall anchors the space in a warm rust, a mixture of two colors “because one was too red brick and one was too Arizona.”

On the opposite wall, next to a dresser Jordan scored at Red Collection, an array of hats surrounds an arched mirror, some from their time in Montana. “This one,” she says, “this is my pride and joy.” Even though there’s a Stetson in her collection, the hat she’s holding was crafted by the Montana Territory Hat company. Underneath its rim, it’s been branded with the word “howl,” a nod to SheWolf.

Of course, Everett saw his mom and her pal writing on the wall and wondered if he could join in the fun. So, on the space that hides behind his bedroom door when it’s open, Jordan wrote “Everett’s Wall” at the top and let him go to town on it. Now, “Everett is very proud of his room.”

The en suite bathroom was completely renovated. A new, modern tub was installed and long, wooden shelves built by local woodworker Amanda Marley float above it on the wall. But Jordan’s favorite added feature? A skylight just above the shower. “No one can see you except for the birds,” she says.

What was once an empty, dated house is now an inviting home filled with art and life, perfect for a modern family. In fact, Evan says, when they first bought it, they had it appraised. Two years later, they had it appraised again. Little did they know, they’d end up with the same appraiser. He called Evan afterwards to ask who had designed it so he could recommend them. “And I was like, ‘My wife did it,’” says Evan. “And he said, ‘That is literally one of the best renovations I have ever seen of an original home. Tell her that she should pursue a career in this.’”

Jordan lets out a squawk of a laugh. While reinventing herself as someone who updates and redesigns houses may not be in the cards, there’s no doubt that she’s made their New Irving Park fixer upper — and Greensboro — into a home she never wants to leave.

“We’ve seen a lot of the country, and we’re here, I think, longterm,” says Evan. Plus, every time he returns from travel, he finds himself saying, “I am happy to be back home.” 

I’ll Show You

I'LL SHOW YOU

Home
Tag Archives: Feature

I'll Show You

The magical aspect — and real-life pressures — of live entertainment

By Cynthia Adams   •   Portraits by Liz Nemeth

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, which opened at the Little Theatre of Winston-Salem February of last year, is where set designer Fatima Njie discovered how much fun it was to be involved in a process she calls “world building.” She made a checklist and pinned it to a vision board, filling in the details to complete Ma Rainey’s world. 

Sometimes Njie’s best ideas come at 2 a.m. — which is exactly what happened when, as an undergrad at UNCG, she worked on Dontrell, Who Kissed the Sea. “At 1:46 a.m., while at the computer,” she says. “Suddenly, I thought, ah, this.” 

And sometimes inspiration finds her while she settles in with a coffee, observing, “being around people going about their day.” Often, that’s at Camino Bakery in Winston-Salem, “where I can people-watch in peace.”

Odd moments inspire her, so Njie (pronounced “Jie” with a silent “N”) keeps a notepad handy. 

In fact, such random moments influenced her work last spring on a bare-bones-budget, teen production of Twelfth Night for Creative Greensboro and Shared Radiance.

Under creative director Chappell Upper, she had creative carte blanche, which thrilled her.

The vision for her set designs occurred last spring during a fly-on-the-wall moment. 

Sitting beside two women lost in conversation, “I was eavesdropping,” she admits. “One of them had just gotten engaged. I got to hear all her wedding plans. She was really happy. How she met him — it was all so great.” Njie, meantime, flashed to Twelfth Night, naturally, a play “in which everyone gets married.” 

Inspired, she set to work designing heart-shaped walls (staged at the Hyers Theater). “A house over here, and a house over there,” Njie describes. “One of the houses looked like a broken heart. Another house was a full heart.”

Taking artistic license, she reimagined Shakespeare’s play through the pop-art lens of modern romantic comedy.

“Especially with Olivia, who has lost her brother and her heart is broken,” Njie explains. “I depicted her home/set as incomplete.” All of which, she confesses, grew from eavesdropping on strangers.

If you’re young, ambitious and making theater your life’s work, which Njie is, you must rise to the moment, no matter what — and quickly — using every single resource to create a convincing world.

Sometimes, armed with little more than fabric, a glue gun, some paint, wood, nails and her imagination, Njie needed to manifest the best possible set. Regardless of the budget or project, her vision had to support the plot and the characters. To Njie, it was just another challenge posed by working offstage instead of onstage. Having consciously chosen behind-the-scenes work over acting and modeling, Njie realized that working in tech and design was just as creatively appealing as acting but also practical. “It not only paid more, but it was in more demand.”

No auditions and less uncertainty, too.

Today, Njie is a working designer for sets and lighting at Creative Greensboro (which calls itself Greensboro’s “office for arts and culture”) and assistant technical director for lighting and sound at Temple Theatre in Sanford. She is a calm, collected and resourceful 20-something who dresses like the model she once was. 

Wearing her hair down in loose curls with a black ensemble, including a long duster/coat and high-heeled boots, she easily looks the part of a posh character herself, ready to walk onstage.

In fact, she is a sometimes actor, but she is an aesthete who has proven her skills wielding an array of creative tools. While her work won’t be celebrated at curtain call, Njie invests weeks before opening night working with props and the various tools of stagecraft and artifice that conspire to make a production believable. 

For Twelfth Night, she transformed a sad-looking chaise. “I made a chair to go with it . . . it wasn’t that good,” she insists. But it worked and was used in later productions. 

These are early days for her budding career, but Njie is one to watch, according to Sherri Raeford, head of performing arts company Shared Radiance, who has worked with Njie on at least five productions. 

“She’s one of the most versatile theater artists you could meet,” praises Raeford. “I’ve worked with her as an actor, a hair designer, a stylist — in so many capacities — and she always does quality work.”

While a teen in Durham, Njie first tried on the nickname “Jewels,” a name she ditched by the time she entered college, adopting Fatima, a version of her given name Fatou (a popular West African name derived from Fatimah).

For good measure, Njie exchanged her middle name, “Secka,” for “Venus.”

Njie is unashamedly ambitious for her future, having earned a degree in media studies and theater from UNCG in 2022. 

Raeford mentions Njie’s 2024 nomination for a Broadway-World Charlotte Award for set design. As for which production, Njie had to think, given she easily creates six or seven in a single year. 

“It was for Then There Were None, the Agatha Christie work.” 

But now, Njie still thinks her best work so far was seen in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, a 2025 production of the Little Theatre of Winston-Salem directed by Tomeka Allen.

“I think that was my best work since Dontrell, Who Kissed the Sea.” 

Each set differs vastly. Her work on Romeo and Juliet at the Stephen D. Hyers Theatre in the Greensboro Cultural Center required sets to be minimal, heavily relying upon Njie’s lighting skills.

“With Ma Rainey, there was a much bigger space.” Her designs reflected that.

A fondness for painting and skills in photography and video editing add to her versatility. After all, she’d always possessed the creativity required for that work. “I liked painting, and had been painting since I was 2 years old.”

Before she was born, Njie’s family immigrated from The Gambia, a place where her mother’s own ambitions were tamped down and she became a stay-at-home mom. Born near Atlanta in Fulton County, Ga., her family moved to North Carolina, living first in Farmville and then Wilson. By sixth grade, Njie was completely taken with the world of drama.

Her mother wanted her “to be successful, because . . . she did have dreams and goals, but never went after them.” But Njie had defined goals which her mother nurtured, moving so that her daughter could attend better schools, ultimately to Durham. “Durham has a big theater, an arts community. A lot bigger than Wilson would have had.” 

“Man, I really liked being on stage and making people laugh and smile — and, you know, making an impact. Live entertainment has some sort of magical aspect to me.” 

By high school she began modeling, already imagining an acting career.

She found work at the Durham Performance Arts Center and a second job at a diner nearby but was laid off from both during the pandemic. “I loved that job [at the diner], too,” she recalls wistfully.

“I didn’t love modeling,” she says flatly. She was appalled by the “ridiculous standards to keep up with and how dangerous it can be.”

Nowadays she might miss a meal or two during a theatrical deadline — but not to meet an agent’s demands to be skinnier, Njie stresses.

Njie moved from the Triangle to study theater at UNCG. 

“Nobody knew what was going to happen to live entertainment,” she says. She chose to concentrate her energies upon the technical aspects of drama and media studies.

It was a practical decision that allowed her to use her various talents.

At UNCG, freelance designer Tab May became Njie’s mentor after seeing her work in September 2022 for Dontrell, Who Kissed the Sea. “He saw the set and said, ‘Wow, this is gorgeous!’” Njie beams. She felt pride in what she had done, posting on Facebook, “The curtain closes on Dontrell, Who Kissed the Sea. I can say with confidence this was the best set design I’ve ever done, because it’s the first.”

“I didn’t eat for 26 hours trying to finish everything on time. I worked hard,” she says, putting every skill she had into bringing the story to life.

Later, May supported Njie’s interest in filling his old job at Creative Greensboro when he left to work in technical design in Winston-Salem, introducing her to Todd Fisher, performing arts coordinator at Creative Greensboro.

“I never had an interview,” recalls Njie. “I sent Tab my cover letter. A week later, I learned I was welcomed to the team.” May’s endorsement, it turns out, was enough.

The role at Creative Greensboro became Njie’s first “official” job in set designing. 

Young enough to understand the difficulty in getting a professional footing, Njie keeps close to other young theater hopefuls. She volunteers as a lead practitioner on workshops for teens interested in the arts, a joint project of Shared Radiance, which adapts and stages Shakespearian dramas for youth productions, and Creative Greensboro

“Pop art is fun,” Njie says. 

For many theater goers, the set itself becomes a leading character. She lights up at the idea. “That is a compliment!” 

At Temple, where she enjoys working with technical director Austin Hendrick, she’s gearing up for a spring show. “My next design will be Bright Star . . . kind of close to my heart. It made me cry and I’m not a crier,” she says. 

As always, Njie “will live and breathe that show until it is over. Theater is just like that.”

Each show teaches her something new, a trick, hack, or something they don’t tell you in school. Valuable information from “being in the real world, as they say.” 

As for her dreams, funnily, “they change a lot.” When “young-young,” Njie wanted to join a touring company. Or Saturday Night Live, but she decided she wasn’t funny enough.

“But now, I think I’m in the place where I have my support system. There’s something for me here,” she says happily. “Companies and people I like working with.”   

And she has added a new dream, “a grand dream of restoring Creative Greensboro to its former glory . . . pre-COVID.” Not single-handedly, she adds, but she wants to play a supportive part in a huge comeback. 

Meanwhile, Bright Star, written by Steve Martin and Edie Brickell, will open at the Temple in April.   

“The story is about family — and that is a subject that is close to my heart — set in two time periods. A woman having a child out of wedlock is looked down upon,” Njie continues. As with her other productions, Njie’s honing her craft. Her goal with this one — and with every subsequent show? “I want to not just be good, but be the best.” 

“I’ll show you, which is kind of how I approach it,” Njie says, rising up from her chair with a former model’s poise. 

Who would doubt her? 

Poem January 2026

POEM

Home
Tag Archives: Feature

The Other Side of the Mirror

“Let’s pretend the glass has got all soft like gauze . . .
And certainly the glass was beginning to melt away,
just like a bright silvery mist.”

    — Lewis Caroll, Through the Looking Glass

 

There’s always a reason I’d rather stay home,

as I brush my hair, gaze into my reflection, sit

before the dresser where I combed my curls

as a girl, forever getting ready for the life

that hadn’t arrived yet. Mirrors remained

unfazed, as I exchanged one image for another,

changed my hairstyles and hats, traced fingers

along a scar, abandoned myself for imperfections.

I have come close to escaping into another world,

always about to leave or about to live, my eyes

child-like, clear as glass, considering what time

it must be . . . to keep from disappearing

into my own unbreakable stare.

— Linda Annas Ferguson

Dream Home

DREAM HOME

Home
Tag Archives: Feature

Dream Home

A Loewenstein lives on in Irving Park

By Billy Ingram • Photographs by Amy Freeman

When newlyweds Daniel and Kathy Craft set out in search of their dream home, one both idealized yet narrowly defined, it may have seemed like that impossible dream enshrined in song. What they had in mind was a place that offered a warm hearth and an enriching environment where they could raise a family, but the type of home they desired wasn’t being built anymore, and the remaining ones were being eradicated at an alarming rate. They were longing for a Loewenstein.

In those rare instances when Triad realtors happen across a listing for a “Loewenstein,” the name is spoken in revered tones. There were other mid-century architects crafting magnificent homes locally and across the Southeast, celebrated artists held in just as high regard — Charles C. Hartmann and Harry Barton being obvious options — but for sweeping super-structures limited solely by one’s imagination and, only occasionally, the laws of gravity, Edward Loewenstein was, and remains, in a class unto himself.

The unfolding of the 1950s ushered in an era of unprecedented prosperity buoyed by an abundance of unrealized real estate, an atmosphere where there could be no greater testimony to a family’s success than the home they had designed and constructed for themselves. And no address came packaged with more prestige for platforming those affluent architectural assertions than a cautiously expanding Irving Park neighborhood street encircling the Greensboro Country Club, established in 1909.

A disciple of the Modernist movement typified by Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Neutra and other avant-garde West Coast architects, Edward Loewenstein graduated from Chicago’s Deerfield Shields High School and MIT with a B.A. in architecture in 1935. He established his Greensboro architectural firm in 1946 after having served during WWII and marrying Francis Stern, stepdaughter to denim impresario Julius Cone. He was determined to break away from the Arts and Crafts, Mission Colonial and Tudor Revivals going up north of downtown.

After completing a dozen or so conventional dwellings, as luck would have it, he was approached in 1950 by a young couple, Wilbur and Martha Carter, who had three children and a hankering for a homestead that would instill an air of distinction on their heavily wooded, 1.28-acre lot facing Country Club Drive and extending back to Cornwallis.

Given a choice between two wildly divergent designs, one a Georgian Revival fitting snugly into the neighborhood’s stately but somewhat staid motif, the Carters chose the more radical schematic Loewenstein presented them with. “I think there were other houses in Greensboro that had Modernist tendencies, but it seemed he was the only one at the time that was [dedicated to] it,” says Patrick Lee Lucas, author of the definitive book on Greensboro’s Modernist maestro: Modernism at Home: Edward Loewenstein’s Mid-Century Architectural Innovation in the Civil Rights Era.

Following the precepts of international modern style, the Carters’ house was defined by a flat roof, an open floor plan, curtain windows and minimal ornamentation. Architects of the time were guided by the “rule” that “form follows function,” which prompted designers to consider what a building should achieve for the user before what it should look like. Blueprints called for a horizontal, L-shaped structure fronted with a low-pitched roof atop a screened (eventually glass) solarium, which featured bluestone flooring that stretched into the central living room. Obscuring an already sunken, single-leaf front door, an 8-foot-high brick wall extended from the front yard into the home for a short way to distinguish the bedroom corridor from communal space.

Toward the rear, hidden storage and built-in bookshelves abounded, and at the base of the windows inside the den a brick planter was enclosed. Back-to-back fireplaces were embedded in a load bearing wall facing both the living room and den. The spacious kitchen was floored in 9-by-9-inch, brown-and-marble-patterned, vinyl-asbestos tiles made by Armstrong. Employing industrial-use tiles and natural stone floors indoors were uncommon home accoutrement. The children’s rooms were connected via a Jack-and-Jill bathroom.

Rather than clearcutting, as was the custom, all of the imposing oaks on the property remained in place. “Loewenstein seemed particularly adept at using underutilized lots in Irving Park,” Lucas points out. “These were the tree lots that no one wanted or they were sold off from a bigger parcel as the neighborhood further subdivided.” Gravitating toward rugged grounds with unusual features, says Lucas, “Part of his goal, both from a Modernist sense but also from a sensitivity to the environment, was to build around the trees.”

“Of all the houses that he designed, it’s the most unusual in that it has two living rooms next to one another,” Lucas notes. “One was essentially an outdoor room, so it meant that there were times of the year it couldn’t be used because it was just so cold and hard to heat in the ’50s.” The resulting perception was an innate spaciousness that gave the sense of being outside while inside the home, its wide-open interiors defined not so much by walls as where people chose to congregate.

The Carter abode was such a radical departure from the norm it was practically an affront. “Some of the neighbors were like, what? And others were like, this is cool,” Lucas states. “So there was a little tug of war in that sense.” In correspondence concerning what he referred to as his “Dream Home,” Loewenstein lamented that he “received violent comments in both directions from neighbors and friends.” The Carters themselves were pleased as “they wanted it to be not something traditional,” Lucas reiterates.

Vindication arrived after the house won an American Institute of Architects North Carolina Design Award in 1951, was featured in Architectural Record in 1952, and then bestowed a 1955 Merit Award from Southern Architect magazine. Resistance to Loewenstein’s futuristic fancies melted as a subsequent Modernist home was taking shape on Princess Anne Street in nearby Kirkwood, where homeowners petitioned the Greensboro Zoning Commission to allow for a departure from the contemporary Cape Cod conformity sanctioned by its neighborhood planners.

From the beginning, Loewenstein was the first in North Carolina to hire Black architects. “Some had employed African American draftsmen before World War II, but he was the first to do it in a major way,” Lucas points out. Many, like Clinton Gravely and W. Edward Jenkins, went on to great acclaim in Greensboro with their own firms. “It was a form of protest or nonconformity in terms of the way that he operated, employing these guys who wouldn’t have an architecture firm to work for because there wasn’t one that would hire them.”

Lucas posits that marrying into the influential Cone family allowed Loewenstein to buck the system “and probably not suffer the consequences of other societal forces relative to how the rest of us had to operate.” Hailing from Chicago, where race relations were far less volatile, Lucas muses, “Maybe he was doing what he was doing and just let the chips fall where they may.” Or, perhaps, being the only prominent Jewish architect in North Carolina, it was a logical extension of his own status as an underdog.

With Loewenstein’s reputation and workload steadily growing across the Southeast he took on a partner, Robert A. Atkinson Jr. In 1950s in Irving Park alone, the firm of Loewenstein-Atkinson was responsible for ground-breaking Modernist designs such as the sumptuous Ceasar and Martha Cone house on Cornwallis (demolished for a cul-de-sac in 1994), the Sidney and Kay Stern residence at 1804 Nottingham, UNCG’s 1959 Commencement Home at 612 Rockford, the John and Evelyn Hyman home at 608 Kimberly Drive and the game-changing Robert and Bettie Chandgie hybrid two blocks away at 401 Kimberly.

Embracing Modernism allowed for a lessened emphasis on interior decoration. “What we’re going to do is just celebrate nature without having to actually reproduce it inside,” Lucas maintains about the minimalist philosophy, creating frameworks adaptable to any aesthetic. One can’t help but wonder what it was like back in the 1950s, before suburban street lamps dulled Irving Park’s nighttime skies, the warmth inside these homes contrasting with nature’s soaring flora bathed in moonlight refracted through panoramic glass apertures.

In 2004, with three kids in tow, the Crafts became only the second owners of Loewenstein’s self-described “Dream House” he had crafted for the Carters, but not without considerable effort. “We’d been looking for years,” Kathy recalls. The journey home began when they were newlyweds, but didn’t end until seven years later. “We were 28 years old and we just couldn’t turn around and buy a Loewenstein at that time.” Still, they researched, attended open houses and watched frustratingly as, one after another, Modernist monoliths fell out of favor and were leveled in favor of developing the land they occupied.

Fate stepped in after the Crafts met Lee Carter at what had been his childhood home. Kathy knew after just a few feet into the front door that this was the one. None the less, Carter wasn’t exactly a motivated seller. Witnessing what had happened to other comparable properties, he only, months later, made the decision to allow the family home to change hands, but with one stipulation — that it not be desecrated or demolished. “It was sort of destiny, it was the right timing and it was the right house,” Kathy says.

In the suitably spacious backyard, the Crafts discovered the Carters had installed a small horse stable and utility building. Structural alterations undertaken by the Carters decades earlier, overseen by Loewenstein, included decreasing the width of the wall alongside the front door while increasing the length of the roof covering the solarium. In the 1980s, brickwork inside and out was painted white. A pantry door off of the kitchen still retains the Carter family’s important names and contact information scrawled across it, reminders of a time when only five numbers were required to dial neighbors.

Foundational tweaks the Crafts have instituted are minimal. All of the window panes have been replaced and the vinyl-asbestos kitchen flooring was removed in favor of a terrazzo-like porcelain tile. After seven decades, a smattering of those old growth trees have been uprooted by necessity, flooding the home with natural light. “I never turn on a lamp until the sun goes down,” Kathy says.

In the early 2000s, Kathy owned the Eastern Standard Gallery located in downtown’s Southend community, where she showcased, among many other exemplary artists, her brother-in-law Michael Coté’s furniture. In fact, he constructed their intricately inlaid wood dinner table. “He was not trained, never schooled. He just picked up woodworking and made that table,” says Kathy. Redeploying the matching high back chairs for accents, the Crafts instead assembled table-side a half dozen transparent, Baroque-influenced Philippe Starck Ghost Chairs with curved armrests. As actress Katherine Hepburn famously attested, “Men are unhappy sitting at a dining room table if their chairs don’t have arms.”

Behind that table, imbuing an Asian influence, is an a four-panel vintage Baker Furniture screen that Douglas Freeman painted for Daniel’s birthday in 2010. A happy match with what the Carters had acquired in 1964 and left behind that adorns the den, a Japanese byōbu from MoMA depicting Heian-period courtiers leading a formal procession. “That is actually paper adhered to the wall, then framed,” Kathy explains.

The solarium is punctuated by a painting awash in muted tones, “an abstract of the marsh by Walter Greer,” says Kathy, “a well-known artist from Hilton Head Island. Dad loved his work.” Nearby are two Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Barcelona chairs and an ottoman, reflexively reflecting an overall retro sensibility to the decor, embellishments emblematic of a sense of playful permanence and space-age proportionality this home embodies.

The Crafts’ three children have graduated college and scattered to careers in various locales, but this in no way feels like an empty nest. If anything, a welcoming environment for a potential influx of grandkids.

The mid-century Modernist movement was, for many, an optimistic harbinger for the wondrous World of Tomorrow promised us by the 1939 World’s Fair, Disneyland and Reddy Kilowatt (“Live better electrically!”). Finished in 1954, Loewenstein’s own home on Granville Road features a driveway long and wide enough to land a flying car comfortably, should it come to that. 

In his waning days, Frank Lloyd Wright was quoted as saying, “The longer I live, the more beautiful life becomes. If you foolishly ignore beauty, you will soon find yourself without it. Your life will be impoverished. But if you invest in beauty, it will remain with you all the days of your life.” Loewenstein was more laconic: “Dedicated architects die unhappy. They never get to unleash creative juices because of pressure to please clients.” He gets right to the heart of what gives the Carter House its cultural significance, so cutting-edge for the period — nobody knew enough about the direction the upstart architect was headed to get in his way.

In the end, Loewenstein’s instinct for “bringing the outside inside” backfired in terms of longevity. Eventually, some would argue inevitably, the spacious landscaping these houses were integrated into far exceeded the commercial value of the structures.

“It used to be,” Lucas says, “if you were one of these Modernist houses designed by this weird guy, Loewenstein, no big deal. We’ll just tear it down and build something bigger there.” Now the name conveys a level of esteem in the way Rolex, Ferrari and Tiffany have become synonymous with style and stature. “Most of the calls I still get are from realtors trying to prop up their property with a Loewenstein connection. So it’s kind of moved on in that regard.”

As realtor Katie Redhead related to me a few years ago about the current marketplace mindset regarding Loewensteins, “We started seeing homes that were in Westerwood, a house on East Lake Drive — let me tell you, those houses went off the charts, people went nuts. Right now we’ve got such a high demand, if one did come on the market, I think it would be well received.  And I probably wouldn’t have said that 10 years ago.”

As for the Crafts, they won’t be selling any time soon.

Throwing Stones, Sweeping Ice

THROWING STONES, SWEEPING ICE

Home
Tag Archives: Feature

Throwing Stones, Sweeping Ice

In the Gate City, curling is very cool

By Ross Howell Jr.  •  Photographs by Bert VanderVeen

Did you know you can hone your viewing skills for the 2026 Winter Olympics right in downtown Greensboro?

Most Tuesday evenings from November through January, you can bundle up and head out to LeBauer Park’s seasonal skating rink, where teams with monikers like Curl Jam, Of Ice and Men, Rolling Stones and Sultans of Sweep compete in the Greensboro Curling League.

I’m guessing that your experience with curling is like mine — you’ve watched it on TV every four years. Maybe this will help.

Think of playing cornhole on an ice rink, where you slide the bags instead of throwing them, mix in checkers or chess, where your opponent’s pieces can block your move, factor in the chance that you might slip and bust your butt, and you’ve pretty much got curling. Well, sort of.

Alternating individual players slide (“throw”) heavy, handled objects (“stones” or, familiarly, “rocks”) across the ice (“sheet” or “rink”) toward a ringed target (“house”), winning points for the stones that remain closest to the center (“button”). Teammates assist the throwing player by scrubbing (“sweeping”) the ice in front of the stone with brushes to influence its path and speed toward the house.

Got it?

To refine my vague understanding of the game, I drive over to Old Town Tavern on Spring Garden Street to meet the team that the tavern sponsors — Gate City Curling.

When I walk out on the patio, I’m greeted by Chris “Skipper” Ratliff, the team captain, who works in the financial aid and scholarships office at UNCG.

Turns out, Gate City Curling is one of the original teams in the Greensboro Curling League.

Around the time of the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea, Chuck Burch, manager of the Greensboro Ice House, an indoor skating facility on Landmark Center Boulevard that features two National Hockey League-size ice rinks, put out a call on Facebook for people who might be interested in seeing a demonstration about curling.

Ratliff saw it and convinced his friend, coworker in financial aid and now teammate, Spencer “Wildcard” Smith, to join him at that first session.

“We go, they do a brief demonstration and ask, ‘Who’s interested?’” Ratliff says.

“Spencer’s and my arms shot straight up,” he continues. “We started the team from that.”

Initially, there were just six teams that played a couple of matches during the season.

Teammate Raina “Queen” Barnett, who works in the registrar’s office at UNCG, recalls the humble beginnings of the league.

“The stones were actually stainless-steel salad bowls filled with concrete,” she says. One bowl was inverted over the other and joined at the seam with layers of painter’s tape.

“The handle was PVC pipe,” she adds. “It was all very backyard. We’d get brushes for sweeping the ice from Home Depot.”

“Yeah, you could break the handles putting too much force on them,” quips team member Angel “Viking” Fuentes, a general contractor who’s a native of Mexico City.

“And we still use Sharpies to draw the circle targets on the ice,” Barnett adds.

Backyard? I’ll say.

An Olympics-grade curling stone made of the rare, quartz-free granite found in only two quarries in the world — in Scotland and Wales — will carry a 5-figure price tag.

But, despite its salad bowl origins, the sport has caught on.

For the 2025-2026 season, the Greensboro Curling League boasts 16 teams of four to five players each. The season lasts for weeks and culminates with a two-day tournament, where the championship team is awarded the Mitchell/Walden Memorial Cup, named in honor of the late Katelyn Mitchell and Rob Walden, who were original members of the league. The winning team’s name is inscribed on the cup and the members hold it for a year, much like the Stanley Cup in professional hockey.

And the stones these days are greatly improved, thanks to a grant from the Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro.

“Ours are recreational league stones like they have in Canada,” Ratliff says. And these stones aren’t cheap, either. They’re priced at around $500 apiece.

While they enjoy the new trappings, both Ratliff and Smith emphasize that their matches are not like what you see on TV.

For example, Gate City Curling has never competed inside a covered facility, not even the Greensboro Ice House. In fact, the team relishes the special challenges that curling outdoors presents.

“Charlotte has a curling league, but they’re all indoor like you see in the Olympics,” Ratliff says. “That’s just not how we do it,” he continues. “We battle the elements. It’s a lot more exciting.”

“The ice changes constantly, throughout the night,” Ratliff adds. “It really comes down to which team can adapt first.”

Teammate Kevin “Hammer” Shoffner, who’s the marketing manager for Habitat for Humanity, chimes in.

“It might be 60 degrees one week,” he says. “Then, all of a sudden, we’re back to freezing.”

“One thing we’ve learned is that you can’t curl in the rain,” Ratliff adds. That’s because there’s no grain on the ice to slow the stone.

“And you cannot curl in the snow,” says Barnett. Its accumulation impedes the glide of the stone.

“A heavy snow we had years ago was terrible for curling,” Shoffner says.

“The stone wouldn’t go five feet,” Ratliff remembers.

As locals know, snow in the Piedmont often turns to slush: “It was like throwing on cat food!” Smith laughs.

“That’s what’s unbelievable,” says Fuentes.

“Even in the worst conditions,” he continues, “you just get out there and think, ‘Oh, yeah, I’m doing this!’ The weather doesn’t matter.”

Another attraction for Gate City Curling members is the sense of community they feel participating in the league.

“It takes a unique person to go outside at 9:30 at night in 30-degree temperatures and stand on ice,” says Ratliff.

“You play other sports, people can be hyper competitive,” Shoffner comments. “But this is organic. It’s not super pressure, we’re out there having fun.”

Fuentes offers a different take on this quirky community.

“What I get the most fun out of is telling people that I play curling,” he laughs. “And people go, ‘What? Curling? No, really, that can’t be real.’”

“There’s definitely shock value,” says Barnett. “People say, ‘What? Curling? In Greensboro?’”

While the teammates enjoy the notoriety and the relatively laidback competition, they’re still in it to win it.

Shoffner is known for his powerful throw and is usually designated to throw the all-important last stone, called the “hammer,” which can displace all the stones in the house.

Smith is the team’s rock, paper, scissors champion, the game by which the team determines the order in which individual members throw their stones and what color stones the team plays with.

Barnett has perfected the crucial first throw, reliably placing a stone to set up the team for a potential point.

Fuentes is the team’s finesse guy, known for finding his way to the button.

Ratliff handles the team’s promotion while consistently ranking among the top three sweepers in the league.

“We’re a pretty well-oiled machine because we’ve been doing this for seven years,” Ratliff explains.

“If we get that win on a Tuesday night, I got a little spring in my step on Wednesday,” says Fuentes.

“I may be the most competitive on the team,” Ratliff says. Since he’s captain, you’d expect that.

“I don’t know anybody who goes onto the ice and doesn’t want to win,” Barnett claims. “We still have that drive, but it’s not so competitive that it sucks all the fun out.”

“Friendly rivalry,” Smith concludes.

In competition, there are nuances that are missed by the uninitiated. Most of us would note the loudly barked directions and sometimes frantic sweeping, but we would probably miss the hand signals teammates use.

“There’s a lot of noise out on the ice at any given time,” Shoffner says.

Not only is the outside lighting dim, the Sharpie-drawn house is barely discernible from the thrower’s position. So hand signals can be critically important.

“Sometimes, you throw it and you think you’ve got it in the house, and you’re like, ‘Yeah, I’m on the button!’” says Smith. “And your teammates are like, ‘Dude, you’re 5 feet away, what are you talking about?’”

“You cannot do it by yourself,” Barnett emphasizes. “Even if your eyesight is perfect, you cannot see.”

“If you’re the one throwing and your teammate is sweeping,” she continues, “it’s like an optical illusion.”

“Your teammates are really your eyes and ears,” Barnett concludes.

So what’s the future look like for Gate City Curling?

Already, Monday nights on the rink have been set for novices to try their skills and maybe develop new teams for the Tuesday-night league.

“What I’d like the community to know is the Greensboro Curling League is a thing,” Ratliff says. “It’s been run by some really cool, independent and dedicated people who came together, created it and have run it successfully for seven years.”

“For me, seeing curling growing and having ice hockey come back to Greensboro is exciting,” Shoffner says. “It’s not exactly a movement, but there’s a rise in winter sports.”

“It’d be great if the Gargoyles had us out for a little curling exposition on the ice at half time,” says Smith.

“News 2 did a live feed of the tournament one year; maybe they’d do it again,” Ratliff muses.

“We already do one,” Smith says. “It’s just a tripod and a camera, right?”

“Yeah,” Ratliff answers. “I slipped on the ice and broke my tripod.”

Smith grins.

“I’d forgotten you fell,” he says. “Thanks for reminding us.”

“Breaking a tripod instead of a collar bone, that’s better,” Fuentes says with a laugh.

Curling in downtown Greensboro may not be the Olympics. But it’s plenty entertaining. And if you show up on a wintry Monday night to give it a try, or on a Tuesday just to hang out by the rink and watch, you’ll warm the hearts of some very dedicated people.

Barbecue, Bourbon, Boutiques

BARBECUE, BOURBON, BOUTIQUES

Home
Tag Archives: Feature

Barbecue, Bourbon, Boutiques

A journey into Jamestown

By Danielle Rotella Guerrieri

Photographs by Laura Gingerich

On a crisp, chilly day with a deep indigo-blue sky overhead, I maneuver my car through a couple of smooth turns into historic downtown Jamestown. Oak and cedar behemoths line my path before being replaced by skinny, black rod-iron light posts, all protecting the quaint village center, comprised of nine one-or two-level buildings. Historic Jamestown, a mere 12 miles from downtown Greensboro, is one of the oldest established communities in the Triad, a hidden gem tucked between Greensboro and High Point, offering enough locally owned eateries and boutiques to make it worth blocking out a whole day on your 2026 calendar.

Since the COVID pandemic ended, Jamestown has been focusing on revitalization in the form of newly emerging shops and eateries — an impressive transformation I’ve witnessed in the short four years since I lived there.

Excited to explore, I meet my friend, Janna, for a full day of shopping and exploring. But first, we fuel up on caffeine at Kindred Coffee. Engulfed by the smoky, rich, chocolatey aroma as we walk in the door, we’re greeted by owner Greg Pittman’s friendly face behind the counter. Pittman and his mom, Marsha, opened Kindred in late 2022 after their online coffee subscription and Cause Roast coffee truck business took off.

“We wanted to create a space where people felt loved and cared for when they’re here,” says Pittman. Jamestown didn’t have a dedicated coffee shop at the time, so it was an easy transition to shift their coffee operation to the space at River Station Twist. After sipping my cuppa espresso, I’m rarin’ to go.

At Second Chance Closet, a boutique-like thrift store that opened in the former Wells Fargo building in 2024, all proceeds go toward Chance Walters Ministry, operated by owners Kacie and her husband, Chance Walters. “The reason we succeed,” says Kacie, “is word of mouth and being part of such a tight-knit community.” Filled to the brim with clothing for all ages, it doesn’t look like a former bank until you veer to the right and notice the formal wear section housed in an old vault. Janna finds a long, alabaster sweater coat for $12.99, and I snag a funky, avocado-green, animal-print sweater for $6.99 — deals we definitely can’t pass up.

Guilford + Main, a large clothing and home goods shop that opened in 2021, is owned by Lisa Perdue and run by her daughter, Alexis Turner. Silver Gallery, its sister store, has been a shopping staple at Friendly Center in Greensboro for 25 years. But, notes Turner, “We have more space here than Silver Gallery, so we can carry more things.” A pair of earrings, gold spikes glimmering on a cream-colored loop, draws my attention, while Janna picks out a few $5 silver dangles from their sprawling bracelet bar.

Strolling back down Main Street, it’s hard to miss Jamestown artist John Firesheets’ enormous sea-blue mermaid-and-squid mural painted on the side of The Soap Lady. Flanked by inviting black front porch rockers, Soap Lady’s creaky screen door announces our arrival to owner Susan Stringer, who’s greeting us with a genuine ear-to-ear grin. In business in Jamestown for 27 years, Stringer expanded to her larger storefront in 2012, where she’s been selling her handmade artisanal soaps and lotions ever since, and has added pottery, soy candles, cards, and many other locally crafted goods to her inventory. Stringer makes all the soaps, body wash, shower gel, sugar scrub, lip balm, body powder and bath bombs using an olive oil base and other natural ingredients. “We have a lot of people going through issues like cancer and radiation, and they can’t use fragrances,” says Stringer, “and using a real soap makes a huge difference.”

Our bellies soon start growling, so we stop for lunch at Southern Roots, one of several eateries on Main Street. Full Moon Oyster Bar, Simply Thai and Black Powder Smokehouse are just as enticing, but walking into Southern Roots is similar to breezing through your favorite aunt’s sunlit beach house — you feel right at home. But, please, keep your shoes on! Owner Lisa Hawley uses her family’s Southern recipes, supporting local farmers and sustainable agriculture. As Hawley puts it, “Our food is prepared with love.”

Our charming waitress, Sydney, takes our orders. Janna can’t resist her favorite gluten-free meal: flat iron steak with a bourbon glaze, cheese grits and Crowder beans, while I select a cup of chicken-and-dumpling soup and a chicken salad sandwich half on buttery, toasted sourdough.

Satiated, we walk a few doors down for a sweet treat, as the mix of sweet and savory scents emanating from Cakes by B’s Blue House Bakery tickles our cold noses and lures us inside. There, we find owner Bridgid Murphy, who co-owns it with husband Bob, whipping up her rosemary goat cheese quiche. Murphy has been satisfying the town’s sweet tooth in her adorable blue house for the last 10 years, preparing everything from caramel-and-pecan-pie bars to savory gluten-free cheddar biscuits. “Our quiches and chocolate chip cookies are incredibly popular,” says Murphy. “We also have a fun one called ‘What the Heck.’“ What the heck, you’re wondering. “It’s devil’s food cake,” she says, “with cookies-and-cream filling and vanilla buttercream on top.” When she first opened, she aimed to have a bakery that doubled as a community haven, and she delivers with baking and decorating classes, meet-the-candidate events during election season, food truck festivals and a trunk-or-treat every Halloween. We snag a batch of Murphy’s famous chocolate chip cookies before our next shop.

Feeling like we entered a high-end art gallery, we step into Bottone Home, a design and decor store with “home vibes on point” owned by Kody Bottone. After we ooh and aah at the exquisite leather chairs, funky modern vases, smooth-edged end tables and enormous wood sculptures, Bottone tells us the shop opened just last year and the company also manages interior design projects. My eyes are immediately captivated by Greensboro artist Erin Beck’s paintings, featuring broad brushstrokes of deep burgundies, vivid emerald greens and auburns, beautifully capturing florals, nature and still lifes. Her paintings make a vibrant splash against Bottone Home’s modern, neutral furnishings.

As 5 o’clock looms, we head up the street to meet our husbands for drinks and dinner. Crafted cocktails call our names as we enter Barrell & Co., where we’re struck by low lighting and smooth jazz and the calming, clean, soothing aroma of tobacco mixed with vanilla. Opened last year, owners Ket Jones, Matt Lokercome and Paul Lothakoun designed the space for enjoying elegant cocktails while phones take a back seat and conversation takes hold. Old fashioneds and smoked fashioneds are ordered, although, not being a huge bourbon fan myself (yet!), I sample a few varieties, courtesy of Jones, and I discover I just might like Eagle Rare.

Black Powder Smokehouse is our dinner pick — a high-energy barbecue restaurant so good they opened a second location in Asheboro. The smoked turkey breast, jalapeno sausage, and pork spare ribs beckon, but we opt for the ever popular, beef brisket, barbecue pork and chicken. Opened in 2019 by pitmaster Keith “Big Brisket” Henning, in a converted 1920s gas station, the establishment features beautifully preserved old gas pumps and massive garage doors that open for outdoor seating on warm days. Four sauces line each table, from house signature sweet sauce to “The Heat,” a hint of fire for spicy enthusiasts. Between us, we share crunchy, cool coleslaw — an excellent heat cleanser — golden-to-perfection tater-tot casserole and an elevated take on mac-and-cheese, smoked gouda kicking it up a notch.

As a yawn stretches across my face, we make plans to return another time for drinks at Potent Potables followed by live music at The Deck. Bags and belly full, I start my short drive home, the historic Jamestown street lamps flickering and fading in the rearview.

Jamestown History

Laid out as a community in 1792 by prominent Quaker George Mendenall, the official town of Jamestown was chartered in 1816 and named for George’s father, James. At Mendenhall Homestead, the home of George Mendenhall’s son, Richard, built in 1800, I’m accompanied by two tour guides, Will Ragsdale and Jay McQuillan, members of the Historic Jamestown Society. McQuillan serves as president, and Ragsdale is the grandson of William and Mary Elizabeth Ragsdale, who previously owned the property and later donated it to the Historic Jamestown Society, which they helped start.

Walking through a sunken summer kitchen in the original part of the house, I imagine Richard taking off his wide-brimmed hat to duck into the cramped room. He expanded the home before marrying Mary Pegg in 1812, adding a parlor and sitting rooms downstairs, as well as bedrooms upstairs, which, in addition to the couple’s seven children, sometimes housed their many out-of-town visitors.

“Quakers welcomed any travelers in; it was part of their makeup and religion,” explains Ragsdale, “Quakers were also focused on education and human rights, believing that women were just as capable and able to learn and do everything men could do.” A black-and-white photo from the 1840s shows the first faculty of Guilford College, half of them women. The school was founded by Quakers, including members of the Mendenhall family.

Stored in the property’s Bank Barn, the Stanley Murrow false-bottom wagon serves as a reminder of how Quakers helped transport enslaved Black people to freedom in the early to mid-1800s. May we all take a note from the Quakers and support those in need through compassionate service and think of everyone in our community as a “friend.”

A Culinary Course in Community

A CULINARY COURSE IN COMMUNITY

Home
Tag Archives: Feature

A Culinary Course in Community

Tina Firesheets and Ling Sue Withers weave women’s stories into supper

By Cassie Bustamante

Photographs by Bert VanderVeen & Nancy Sidelinger

When Tina Firesheets first watched the documentary, Bite of Bénin, an idea took root. “I don’t let go of an idea,” says Firesheets, who describes herself as a “writer, daydreamer and creative thinker.” She immediately texted longtime friend Ling Sue Withers. Thus began the conversation that would eventually turn into disCOURSE dining, culinary experiences for women, by women, where culturally diverse dishes are served with a side of sensory storytelling.

“I reached out to Ling Sue because we both love food and we both love culture,” says Firesheets. Plus, she adds, “If you want to get anything done, you want her to be involved.”

“I sat down and watched [the documentary] in one night,” says Withers. “And I cried.”

The film centers around North Carolina Restaurant & Lodging Association (NCRLA) 2023 Chef of the Year Adé Carrena. Carrena, a Durham-based chef whose Neo-African chops won her the top spot on Food Network’s Chopped last summer, currently serves as culinary director of Triangle Central Kitchen, a nonprofit dedicated to turning food waste into culinary training and community meals. She was adopted at the age of 10 from Bénin, West Africa, because her birth parents desperately wanted a better life for her. Instead, says Withers, Carrena and her younger sister were adopted into a “horrible” household in America.

Carrena’s story of adoption — and eventually healing — especially moved Withers, a Chinese American “Air Force brat” with family in Taiwan who grew up in the tiny town of Maiden. Like Carrena, she, too, had also experienced “a lot of childhood trauma.”

Firesheets, who grew up in Western North Carolina, was adopted from Korea; her adopted mother was Japanese and her father white. She, too, felt a connection with Carrena. At the time, she had been working as associate creative director for Pace Communications and had been introduced to Carrena through a project Pace was doing with NCRLA. “We just kind of bonded that day because we’re both adoptees and we both kind of had traumatic adoptee experiences,” says Firesheets.

Both Firesheets and Withers felt a strong desire to spread Carrena’s message. “It’s really about healing and how she healed through food and how food helped her reconnect to her country and her family,” says Firesheets.

At the root of it all, though, was the shared passion the disCOURSE founders have for food — and not just food, but unique culinary experiences meant to be savored.

Once, as a birthday gift to Withers, Firesheets took on planning an Atlanta excursion, although Withers is by vocation a professional planner. Withers is a festival organizer who has worked with the North Carolina Folk Fest since its inception and has also amped up her resume with Greensboro’s Solstice Festival and the Piedmont Blues Preservation Society. “Taking a trip? I will make you a spreadsheet,” she says. “Pregnant? I will make you a spreadsheet.”

But, this time, Firesheets took on the daunting task of creating a spreadsheet for the spreadsheet queen herself, filling it with must-visit restaurants, including notes about where they needed to eat while the food was fresh and where they could load up their coolers to haul it home. “I knew then,” says Withers, “lifelong — life-long — friends.”

On another trip, the two visited the mountain town of Sylva, where Firsheets introduced her pal to her favorite restaurant, Dalaya Thai Cuisine, owned by James Beard Award-nominated Chef Kanlaya “Gun” Supachana. In the dead of winter, the place was hopping, no indoor seating available. Undeterred, the two claimed an outdoor seat. Who cares that they could see their breath? Next thing they knew, other diners followed suit and soon the patio was as packed as the dining room. Worth the bitter chill? Definitely. “Her food is so stinking good,” says Firesheets.

At home in her Greensboro kitchen, Withers, too, is an excellent cook. Firesheets admits that she’ll “drop anything” to attend one of her pal’s famous dinner parties. “If I had plans elsewhere, I would just cancel.”

Fueled by their shared love of food and ignited by Carrena’s story, the two women jumped into action. Firesheets had formerly been involved with Ethnosh, an organization that hosted ticketed events highlighting local and mostly immigrant-owned restaurants until COVID shuttered its operations in 2020.

Less than four years later, disCOURSE began plotting its very first event featuring Chef Adé Carrena at Machete, which owner Tal Blevins generously allowed them to use, in January 2024.

Venue and chef locked in, the two women began reaching out to potential guests, hand curating a group of women who exhibited, according to Firesheets, “diversity in culture, professions, experiences.”

On top of that, says Withers, their theme mirrored Carrena’s own story: healing. And they wanted “to bring together women to have a serious connection.” So, they skipped the alcohol — opting instead to serve mocktails — played the documentary and gave Carrena the floor in between dishing out her Neo-African bites.

“We had an idea of what we would like to accomplish,” says Firesheets, “but she leveled up the storytelling.”

It was Carrena’s idea to incorporate an African handwashing ceremony before food was served. “Most people had never experienced that,” says Firesheets.

Ashley Madden, who was in attendance at that very first event, believes ritual is important to women in general. “Just to have that experience and to start with that cleansing, everyone is starting with a fresh slate,” she says. “I thought that was really beautiful.”

Madden also notes that she came away having made new friends — a mother and daughter who were seated at her table — and she was introduced to a chef she wasn’t familiar with prior. “Ade [Carrena] has gone on to do Food Network and I feel like I am just in her corner,” she says. “I am just cheering her on.”

During that first disCOURSE dining event, Withers, who prefers to be in the background observing, watched as women made connections and held thoughtful conversations around various subjects. “It’s exactly what we had wanted.”

But that begged the question both women wondered aloud. “How are we going to top that?”

Just a few months later, in May 2024, they hosted their second event, a kimchi tasting at Potent Potables in Jamestown. The chef was Eunice Chang, owner of The Spicy Hermit, a Durham-based company that creates traditional and seasonal kimchi using fresh, locally farmed produce. (Kimchi is a traditional and often quite spicy Korean form of pickled vegetables.)

To make the meal more substantial, Withers pan-fried sausages from Moonbelly Meat Co., a woman-owned business based in Durham. And this time, the women introduced alcoholic beverages.

“We did a kimchi michelada [beer paired with lime, salt and hot sauces] because The Spicy Hermit also has a kimchi bloody Mary mix,” says Withers, adding that it “was really awesome.” A couple other cocktails and mocktails were on the menu, too.

The Spicy Hermit event also introduced occasional workshop add-ons. After a February 2025 event featuring an array of dumplings by Durham-based Sister Liu’s Kitchen, Chef Cuiying Liu, who came to America from China in 2013, taught attendees to handmake their own. Madden opted for the add-on and admits that hers weren’t quite as good as Chef Liu’s. “Although mine were great because I made them,” she says, “but, gosh, it just made you appreciate what goes into that!”

To build on the sense of community disCOURSE was creating, Firesheets and Withers began adding conversation cards to tables. For example, at their May 2025 event featuring Durham based Chef Silvana Rangel-Duque, the Colombian owner of Latin-infused, plant-based Soul Cocina, one card read: When Silvana moved to Colorado in 2009, she began cooking because she really missed Colombian cuisine. What dish do you miss from home (perhaps from your childhood)? Are you able to recreate it?

Of course, as any entrepreneur can tell you, growing something from nothing is often a case of two steps forward and one step back.

And disCOURSE has not been without its setbacks. At their 2024 summer event featuring Greensboro’s Shafna Shamsuddin, owner of cardamom-infused frozen dessert company Elaka Treats, they ran into some technical difficulties. “We could barely get it scooped in time to serve it,” says Withers. “It was starting to melt already.”

In the end, Withers said they had a blast but learned something: “We’re skipping summer!”

Then there was the 2025 closing event, which had been planned to a T for October 19. The chef was none other than Winston-Salem’s Jordan Rainbolt, owner of Native Root, who uses indigenous ingredients of the Southeast. Rainbolt, whose own native roots are Cherokee and Choctaw, had been the 2024 finale chef, hosted at Moonbird Sanctuary. Firesheets and Withers describe that event as “magical.” But, for whatever reason, this time around, the tickets just weren’t selling as anticipated. They were going to have to cancel.

Was it a tough decision? “We made it actually in about 5 minutes!” quips Withers.

“I didn’t see it as a failure or disappointment,” adds Firesheets.

While most things have worked out for disCOURSE dining, Firesheets says that they don’t stress when it doesn’t. “It’ll be what it is. Even when things didn’t fall into place with this last one, you know.”

Now, they’ve got their eyes focused on the future — the immediate future, that is, as they take it “season by season.” They’re currently on the hunt for a coastal Carolina chef. “We just need to find her,” says Firesheets.

So, why bring in women from outside Greensboro when there are many talented female chefs right under our nose? “We wanted to bring chefs from outside the area so that women here could hear their stories,” says Firesheets. After all, it’s the cultural stories that are at the heart of disCOURSE. Plus, she notes, their events have to offer something attendees can’t otherwise access by going to a locally owned restaurant or food truck. As she puts it, they need “some reason to come to our event and pay more.”

But, she teases, though they are tight-lipped as of now on who it is, they’ve decided to include a Greensboro-based chef in the 2026 season of disCOURSE. They can, however, spill who their 2026 opener will be — none other than Chef Kanlaya “Gun” Supachana, made possible, Firesheets says, by a private donor who wishes to remain anonymous, but is a fan of the disCOURSE mission. (That event is scheduled for the afternoon of Sunday, February 22, at Machete.)

While those ticket sales help Firesheets and Withers pay their chefs and venue hosts fairly, they admit to needing support to be able to keep going and to bring in even more chefs.

“Ling Sue and I actually make very little,” says Firesheets.

“There was one where we walked away with 33 bucks each,” adds Withers. Enough to grab an order to go from the featured chef? Yep, “and that’s pretty much what we do, exactly what we do!”

Thankfully, their goal is not monetary. “It started from a place of inspiration, passion, and when it ceases to be that, then we won’t do it,” says Firsheets.

First-time disCOURSErs Lindsay Morgan and pal Emily Morris ventured to last spring’s Soul Cocina event held in the backyard of Double Oaks on a sweltering day. While they spent time catching up after not seeing one another for a while, a solo attendee sat with them and asked if she could join the conversation. That wouldn’t happen at your standard Starbucks, says Morgan.

Morris agrees. “A lot of community was built here and that’s amazing.”

Marci Peace, who has attended a few disCOURSE events, says, “It’s so important right now to have space to have conversations. With everything, with people pitted so much against each other, it’s important.”

From the beginning, Firesheets and Withers have served course after course of connection, conversation, community and cultural cuisine with a goal of sharing women’s stories. Theirs, it seems, is still being told, bite by bite.

Winter is for the Birds

WINTER IS FOR THE BIRDS

Home
Tag Archives: Feature
You can always count on a blue-headed vireo to make sure you don’t miss your morning alarm. After all, the early bird gets the worm.
This red-shouldered hawk ruffles some feathers as it swooshes in on his prey.
Considered to bring good luck, a red cardinal shows off surrounded by heaps of frosty snow.
This female northern cardinal, though not as vibrant as her male counterpart, is unmissable with a beak as bright as hers.

Winter is for the Birds

Lynn Donovan focuses on our bright-beaked buddies

By Joi Floyd

With the brisk, wintry temperatures approaching and the holidays in full swing, you’re sure to hear about the partridge in a pear tree — over and over again. But the real tweet of the town comes from our favorite chirping, warbling friends. Though most birds of a feather flock together, you’re bound to find one or two different breeds cozying up next to each other for warmth. Whether gathering leaves and tiny twigs for nesting or feasting on tasty nuts and seeds, these sweet tweeties stick close together. Photographer Lynn Donovan captures our precious woodland buddies in action as they face the snowy — we can hope — season.

A Cooper’s hawk keeps a keen eye on his surroundings.
A creature stirring? Something has piqued this cedar waxwing’s interest and made it peer over the end of the branch.
There’s nothing stronger than a pileated woodpecker’s beak — except maybe the urge to dye our hair red.
A red-tailed hawk nestles on a branch as the winter season draws closer.
It’s hard to miss this American crow as he trots through the pure white snow.
What could bring more winter wonder than a white-breasted nuthatch playing in the snowfall?
A brown-headed cowbird hunkers down as sleet falls from
Two turtle doves? These are two mourning doves and two is always better than one.
In a wintry world of gray, brown and white, a bright eastern bluebird is sure to catch your attention.
This raging turkey vulture is hard to miss as it confidently stretches its wings post-landing.

Lowe and Behold

LOWE AND BEHOLD

Home
Tag Archives: Feature

Lowe and Behold

A Greensboro home sparkles from a dash of family tradition with a merry-making twist

By Cassie Bustamante   •   Photographs by Amy Freeman

The stockings on Charlie and Linda Lowe’s mantel are hung by the chimney with care. But they aren’t your ordinary, run-of-the-mill stockings. Nope, these five-of-a-kind stockings, in a soft, gold tone, are shaped whimsically, curved like an elf’s boot, trimmed and monogrammed in an orange-coral. And let’s not forget the pleated, black-and-white striped cuff.

The gold stocking fabric came from a Greensboro Symphony Guild Super Sale, back when they were held at Printers Alley. “I went with a friend of mine,” says Linda, “and there was a pair of drapes for next to nothing, like 20 bucks, and it was that beautiful, quilted fabric.” She snagged the deal, knowing she could Maria von Trapp those curtains and give them new life somehow. “It had all the trim and everything.”

“That is how an artist shops,” says Charlie. “They see other things in things.” His blue eyes twinkle proudly. And the beard on his chin? Well, it’s as white as the snow, naturally. Though Charlie, Linda’s jolly little helper elf and husband of 39 years, wears his a little more closely cropped than Saint Nick’s.

More symphony drapery panels surround the base of the couple’s Christmas tree, serving as a make-shift skirt. Mercury-glass beads in red and silver swag from bough to bough. The beads, purchased sometime in the 1960s from Friendly Shopping Center’s Woolworth’s, which Linda and her mom frequented, are a glimmering reminder of childhood Christmases. Linda says she inherited her love of Christmas decorating along with the beads from her mother, who passed away 30 years ago.

“My mom always played the organ in the living room where the tree was,” says Linda, “and she said I would just lie down under the tree and look up at the lights.” Her mom also told her how she’d cry at the first signs of the tree’s imminent death as it dropped needles on her.

Of course, some mementos are perhaps better cherished only once a year. A bell, also from 1960s Woolworth’s, plays — very annoyingly, says Linda — “Jingle Bells” when you pull its chain. As the keeper of the family bell, to this day, she calls her older brothers on Christmas and plays it over the phone as a prank. “Sixty plus years of doing that!”

Charlie, too, has fond memories of his boyhood Christmas tree. His parents both grew up on farms without much else to their families’ names, so when it came time to celebrate the holidays with their only son, Charlie recalls the tree overflowing with gifts for him. “My parents lavished me,” he says. But his mom brought one of her favorite farm traditions with her into her young family — a fresh cedar tree.

His mother, who passed away in 2016, regaled him with stories from her own childhood about cutting and hauling the chosen tree straight from the family’s farmland. “She and her sister finally got to the age to be trusted with an axe,” says Charlie, “and they would go out on the farm, and find the tree that they loved, and down it went.” And how old did one have to be to wield an axe? “Oh, they were probably 6, 7 or 8.”

“I saved all of her — what’s now vintage — Christmas stuff,” says Linda of Charlie’s mom’s decorations, everything from plastic candelabras with red bulbs to ornaments.

Linda and Charlie have been celebrating Christmas together for almost four decades. Married since 1986, they have, between them, three grown children — Alex, Rebecca and April — four grandchildren and one great-grandson. Linda was a customer at the camera shop where Charlie worked as a sales associate. He’d ask her out and she’d say no, but, eventually, as with the film in the lab, a romance developed.

After a quick courtship, the couple married and began their lives together. Both are retired now. “I retired early because of Mom and Pop,” says Charlie, who cared for his parents in their final years. Linda retired from a long career as a graphic designer that included 20-plus years with the News & Record.

But, as young parents, they were always on the go. Dropping their young children off with the grandparents, they’d haul cameras, lighting and lenses to shoot weekend weddings together. “I don’t know how we did it, but we did,” says Linda.

They worked long hours, but still found the energy to infuse some holiday magic into their own children’s memories. Before the internet even existed and clever Christmas ideas were easily found, Linda’s mother was making Santa’s boot prints on the hearth by setting down a pair of boots, sprinkling something white — perhaps confectioner’s sugar or flour — around them, lifting them off and leaving behind evidence that the jolliest elf had, in fact, been there. Linda took a cue from her mom and did the same for her kids using sprayable fake snow.

Plus, Linda decked the halls of their home and did the holiday shopping for the kids and extended family. “I look back and I am like, good grief.”

Charlie looks at his wife knowingly. “That’s what moms do,” he says. “They fill in the space.”

But Linda doesn’t just fill in the space. Her decorations, especially the ones she’s made herself, are over the top, and changed out year after year. As she unboxes her attic-full of holiday decor each year, she says, “I just pick things up and reinvent the wheel.”

In fact, when Linda sees something she likes, she wonders how she can recreate it in her own unique way. One item she knocked off her to-do-my-way list? A fox doll. Linda, who used to horseback ride, has collected hunt scenes and equestrian decor for years, and had always coveted a fox dressed for the hunt. When she couldn’t find exactly what she wanted — “they always look like bears or something” — she set her mind to making one by needle felting, something she’d never done before.

“Of course, I jump right into things,” she says. “I don’t start small.” She made one tiny bird as practice and then went full speed into crafting her fox, who sits on her entry bench for the holidays, greeting guests. He’s a few feet tall and his face is expertly crafted with a naturally sly expression. A riding helmet sits atop his head and, of course, he’s wearing a red riding jacket with gold buttons, all of it needle-felted. No small feat for her first foray into the craft.

Upon the encouragement of a friend, Linda, who used to belong to Daughters of the American Revolution, decided to enter her fox into their annual D.C. craft show in the doll category. “And it won best of show,” she says, as in winner of the whole shebang.

“Another art form that she dabbled in. She has the touch,” says Charlie. Whereas in the North Pole, Santa gets all the credit, Charlie simply can’t resist touting his own “Mrs. Claus’s” talents.

There is also the large painting in her kitchen nook. She’d gone to High Point Market with a friend and spotted a heron painting. “Gosh, I could do that,” she recalls thinking, and set up an easel right there in her kitchen to get the lighting just right as she painted. To add a touch of Linda Lowe signature whimsy, she put the bird in a blue-and-white basin, bubbles pouring out.

“But you know, in reality, they’re tromping around in mud all day,” muses Charlie. “They have got to do something! You gotta get that goop off somehow.”

A footbridge in the background of the painting is coral, a color Linda particularly loves. To set her kitchen table for the holidays, she used festive wrapping paper as a runner, edging it with scalloped, peach-colored ribbon she scored at Anthropologie. “Of course, I bought every roll!”

In the dining room, swags of greenery and blush-colored faux pomegranates adorn an unsigned vintage painting of, they’re guessing, George Washington. The fruit picks up on the colors in Linda’s custom cornices, though they weren’t custom built for this space, and — this should come as no surprise — were found at an estate sale, Parker Washburn’s to be exact. She, of course, Linda bubbles, was the daughter of Leon Oldham, founder of Leon’s Beauty School, and Aileen “Mrs. Leon” Oldham, and the estate sale was located inside the old, stone home the couple once lived in on Elm Street.

They’d need new side panels to work for Linda’s purposes, so Charlie suggested he could just make new ones. In his years of working at the camera shop, he’d honed his own carpentry skills by building store walls and fixtures. Plus, Linda recalls at their former home, “He made an amazing gate and fence for our patio.”

Charlie, ever so humble about his own accomplishments, says, “I used to like to piddle a little bit with woodworking and things like that.”

Linda knew Charlie could build her whatever she wanted, but what she wanted was to reuse something with history from an iconic Greensboro home. New side panels in place, thanks to Charlie, she recovered the cornices in a soft blue, floral fabric, piped in red. The blue blends into the Benjamin Moore Gossamer Blue on the walls.

In the living room, the mantel is decked out in nontraditional holiday colors — chartreuse and orange. The built-in bookcases that flank it feature books, blue-and-white transferware and white foo dogs that once belonged to Linda’s mom. But on the white mantel, orange foo dogs stand out and stand guard on either side, swags of greenery draping down with orange ribbon and chartreuse ginkgo leaves interwoven. “I have a thing about things being symmetrical,” she says.

The tree, however, remains traditional. And, she quips, “I only put up one big tree!” For as long as she can remember, she’s decorated the tree by herself. “It’s not a theme tree. It’s always got the same ornaments, same beads.” She especially loves a tree that’s covered in glass baubles reflecting the shine of her rainbow lights.

Did the kids help when they were little? “I would let them hang their stuff along the bottom,” says Linda, then, under her breath adds, “Then I’d go back and fix them.”

“My job is to hand them to her,” notes Charlie.

For years, the couple purchased a real tree, usually from Wagoner’s tree lot. But sometimes, Linda notes, the family would take off for West Jefferson, on a quest for that quintessential Currier and Ives moment, “which never went quite that smoothly!” 

After Charlie’s mother, who still loved the smell of fresh cedar in the home, passed, Linda caved and bought an artificial tree. The one she wanted came prewired with white lights, so Linda figured out how they were attached and painstakingly rewired it with her own strings of colored lights. “A big operation,” notes Charlie.

“I still haven’t found the right topper,” notes Linda. “I’ve never had one that’s like, ‘That’s it!’” An angel, a bow, a star — you name it — nothing has hit that high note. Once, they even hung a Moravian star from the ceiling above the tree.

“And then we just adjusted the tree under it,” says Charlie. “That was a collaborative idea.”

Linda walks into a room featuring four corner cabinets, each cabinet filled to the brim with vintage cameras Charlie has collected, mostly Nikons, but Canons and other models as well. The cabinets, mostly scored at estate sales, are by Greensboro’s iconic Benbow Furniture, now closed.

Does she decorate inside these cabinets at Christmas, too? Nope. “Don’t touch my stuff,” Charlie says with a smirk.

Charlie points to a particular black-and-silver Nikon. “This is [from] like 1951, something like that. This was occupied Japan, after WWII.  Nikon started out making telescopes and microscopes, and then went into cameras because that was something you could sell,” he says. “And we were trying to make their industry work so they could support themselves.”

“I figured I have the rest of the house, I can let him have this room,” she says with a chuckle.

“You’re not going to open that door, are you?” Charlie asks Linda teasingly as they approach the first-floor bedroom, which now serves as Linda’s craft room.

“Yeah, I am,” she says. “You know I am.”

What they both assume is a cluttered mess is actually an artist’s treasure box, overflowing with tools and materials a creative person would have a field day with. One very tall wall is piled high with various small, handmade shelving units, including one her brother made as well as her grandfather’s old shaving stand. Her vision for it? “The Harry Potter wand shop, where everything was just stacks of books.” Fitting, as this, indeed, is where the magic happens. Paints, colored pencils, glues, markers, ribbons, brushes and all sorts of crafting supplies line the shelves. An old, wooden spoon rack holds wax seal molds.

On another wall hangs a gallery of paintings and sketches from throughout the years — some by Linda, some by her mom, who was also an artist — and even a floral painting that’s been in the family for years. Linda also spent time during COVID organizing her family’s history and has rows and rows of photo albums dated by year. In fact, during that time, Linda created two round family “trees,” one for her family of origin and one for Charlie’s. Never one to follow the beaten path, hers are more garden than tree. The names, arranged in a circle, form a sort of labyrinth of hedges that resembles an English boxwood garden. They now hang in the dining room.

On the project table in the middle of her craft room sits a current project — a mirror adorned with shells she’s been collecting for years.

“If I can spill the beans a little bit,” says Charlie, “we’re trying to get a beach house.” The couple has spent the last few months searching for a property on Sunset Beach or perhaps Ocean Isle, something they can vacation at with their family but also rent out.

“I’ve been beach-deprived my whole life and I’m like, ‘You know what? I’m going to the beach!’” Linda says. “I’ve got so much stuff piled up back there!”

“I have always said about Linda,” quips Charlie, “too much is never enough.”