Our Storytelling Trek Blog #2
- ilene
- Aug 1
- 4 min read
Updated: Aug 9
NABS Talking: On The Road Documenting Black Appalachian Storyteller Fellows
Hearts Rooted, Souls Recharged, Gear Ready - Collecting BASF Geographies
By: Ilene Evans
Editor: Karen "Queen Nur" Abdul-Malik
First Stop: DeWayne Barton, South Arts Recipient
Hood Huggers International in Asheville, North Carolina
We pulled into a neighborhood of old homes nestled into a steep hillside on the west side to the city. This is also where we found Kelle Jolly. It was the great weekend of the “Plant Sale.” Signs were posted all over the neighborhood and we found folks arriving at the Peace Garden & Market in West Asheville selecting trays of new plants and seedlings ready to take to their own home gardens.
We traveled to interview 2026 BASF DeWayne Barton, but it was 2025 BASF Kelle Jolly who first greeted us. She was helping a neighbor to her car with new plants. The hillside is a bit challenging and paths are well defined, but they incorporate the ancient roots holding the trees in place. The shade of the trees was a very welcoming relief from the burning sun and we enjoyed the sense of sanctuary there.
DeWayne’s small mountainous garden patch is managed by his wife, our own Kelle Jolly and her husband live on that property and enjoy DeWayne as their landlord.
Be ready to climb up and down the hill into coves and corners to see all that loving details that he and his wife, Safi, together with community members have curated in the last 20 years. It is a tremendous living art garden, a history garden, a memorial garden, a healing garden and a library all next to a green house where DeWayne’s wife preps all the zillions of seedlings that that are loved into bloom and become part of the plant sale and part of a story. While traveling the hill to the base of the garden, all senses are immersed in the reverence beheld community sculpture stories under the artistic direction of DeWayne.
DeWayne is a world traveler and story collector, and is as devoted to saving his family’s community as he is to planting gardens and saving the seeds needed for the next generation. His mama is still living down the hill and across the road. DeWayne tells stories about his family history in this place as well as the story of the neighborhood and the many adventures of characters, critters, and creeps. His tremendous memory winds back through the impact of Jim Crow, the crack epidemic, police violence, and the drug wars, even the Iraqi war.
As a visual artist and sculptor, he uses materials that hold the spirit of a place, a people, an event, a time that needs remembering. His vision is that of an ecologist, building a healthy eco system of land, people and politics. The visual art and sculpture garden teaches the history of people on a journey. He may use hub caps, rims, gears combined with steel, pipe and plumbing to make a statement. These statements that are not just aesthetic, but hold the spirit of ancestors, heroes and sheroes past and present. The sculptures help create green spaces in the city. They have become a part of the land. Some represent his family who made a good life despite oppression and the constant disruption of their property, children and elders. Others memorialize people and events that need to be remembered.
City Planning, and highway construction and expansions have ripped through their neighborhood of black owned properties, not once, not twice, but now, a third time. DeWayne has been active in mitigating that damage. He remembers what is lost each time a part of the community was destroyed and other sections separated from the normal continuity of what we call a neighborhood. "The neighborhood is the headwaters," the Black Appalachian Storyteller Felllow eloquently declares. He shares the stories of some of the legal battles to protect the neighborhood. The current initiative to expand the highways has been fought well, but not won. People will suffer. Although a few homes have been saved through their actions, many more will face demolition. Dewayne's storifies his activism throughh is sculptures, poems and stories. "Hood Huggers International: Return to Burton Street is a declaration, a collection of poems that ring out like street corner anthems, sung to a drum call with both love and rage." - —Glenis Redmond, Poet and serves as the Poet-in-Residence at The Peace Center.
The art pieces that DeWayne makes are placed in different parts of Asheville and create an exciting driving tour, where he helps visitors learn and understand the Black History in Asheville as he tells the stories exemplified in his work. We took the tour in his most prized antique motor car - a blast from the past!!!
As the neighborhood is bracing for yet another destructive highway expansion, the need to shelter in place with projects that span the generations is DeWayne’s long-term vision, Blue Note Junction which combines the arts, health, the environment, social enterprise and entrepreneurship. The Legacy Investment From Tourism (LIFT) Fund Grant will help DeWayne complete the plans for Blue Note Junction and to infuse the CAP (Community-Accountability Plan) program, while building safe places of peace that strengthen our stories.
Blue Note Junction https://hoodhuggers.com/blue-note-junction/ is an inspiring model for other to create and sustain in their own neighborhoods. . https://youtu.be/Q7aKCTqXx8Y
When we left DeWayne, this was my take away:
Mission: Restore and preserve the community
Message: Renew, Recycle, Remember, Rebuild
Motto: Play Hard and Keep the Stories Alive
3, 6, 9 - What’s on your mind? Black Appalachian Storyteller Fellows are blowin’ my mind!
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