Capturing Community: Symbolic Sense of Place

Symbolic Essense of Floyd: Split Rail Fence, the BR Parkway, The Buffalo
Symbolic Essense of Floyd: Split Rail Fence, the BR Parkway, The Buffalo

First off (and on the same thread as yesterday’s post) I want to thank Colleen Redman, Wanda Combs at the Floyd Press and SWVAToday.com for their excellent work that lifts our community projects up into the wider radar. A recent interview by Colleen was published in print and online yesterday.

And the business at hand for the next few days: create a symbol that will represent both the  350 climate action AND the SplitRail Eco-Fair and capture the essence of Floyd and be reducible to graphic elements that can become T-shirt artwork (thank you Green Label!), a window sticker (available for $3.50 each very soon!) and posters and the street-wide banner.

This is what we’re working on now: to help us conceptualize the final design, two photographs have been merged (I was happy to find the right images and then really surprised I remembered how to crudely overlay and paint away to leave elements from both).

From this, our graphics person (thanks so much Elaine!) will incorporate the nice converging parallax of the rail fence and parkway leading to the distinctive outline of Buffalo Mountain. In the end, we’ll have a bold but elegant representation that will immediately be understood to represent Floyd County.

See yesterday’s post if you’d like to volunteer, or become a vendor or a sponsor at the October 24 festival.

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fred
fred

Fred First holds masters degrees in Vertebrate Zoology and physical therapy, and has been a biology teacher and physical therapist by profession. He moved to southwest Virginia in 1975 and to Floyd County in 1997. He maintains a daily photo-blog, broadcasts essays on the Roanoke NPR station, and contributes regular columns for the Floyd Press and Roanoke's Star Sentinel. His two non-fiction books, Slow Road Home and his recent What We Hold in Our Hands, celebrate the riches that we possess in our families and communities, our natural bounty, social capital and Appalachian cultures old and new. He has served on the Jacksonville Center Board of Directors and is newly active in the Sustain Floyd organization. He lives in northeastern Floyd County on the headwaters of the Roanoke River.

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