One of my oldest friends, Chad Smith, lives and works on the edge of the New River Gorge in Fayetteville, West Virginia. Aside from being a veteran white water rafting guide and heading up the facilities management at the Riverman, Chad has started a new venture in his home town, West Virginia Home Grown Farms, and asked me to help get the new farm’s identity off the ground.
This long time dream of Chad’s has taken seed as he and his business partner get ready for their first growing season. The farm is a small roadside farm operation located just outside of Fayetteville, West Virginia and is producing gourmet produce for local restaurants – year round.
Chad’s genuine good nature and earnest love for the West Virginia life is noticed right away. One time we were sitting in his living room and he offered a sip from a quart of blueberry shine. When asked how much a jar of white dog costs, he looked at the ceiling and thought for a minute. “About… 12.” he said, and tightened the lid. “Yeah, 12 eggs.”
To help capture his love and reverence for the spirt of the ‘Wild and Wonderful’ state, I dug into the WPA collection at the Library of Congress. Both the graphic design and the spirit of this movement – one that seems so quaintly earnest and pure in today’s world – seemed a great echo to Chad’s spirit today. The Work Progress Administration brought attention and relief to many rural populations in hard years of the 1930’s. All artwork for this piece is original vector illustrations, the dog depicted in this art is Chad’s Dog Frisco, a wonderful Saarloos Wolfhound who as been my partner in many Rocky Mountain Adventures. Frisco is named after the Colorado mountain town where she, Chad. and his wife Stacey lived out some wild times on the Arkansas River. But that is another story.