Flame azaleas at Hooper Bald
By Gina Malone
In celebration of a rare stand of native flame azaleas on Hooper Bald in the Nantahala National Forest, Graham County hosts the annual Flame Azalea Festival, in Robbinsville. This year’s event happens Saturday, June 14, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the Robbinsville High School, and organizers are promoting the family-friendly day of activities with the help of artwork by a Cherokee County artist.
The festival goes hand in hand with Robbinsville’s official recognition in 2018 as an Azalea City by the Azalea Society of America. (Wilmington is the only other Azalea City in North Carolina.) “The Flame Azalea Festival is important because it continues to kindle local interest and investment in not only protecting that rare native stand on Hooper Bald but also the ecosystem that causes them to flourish,” says Amber Benton, assistant director at Graham County Travel and Tourism. “It’s also important because we have a goal to increase the number of private and public plantings of azaleas in our community.”
In a first this year, organizers commissioned a promotional poster for the festival, rendered by Anna Rose Garrett. “I was drawn to Anna’s work the first time I saw it, before I knew anything about her or had even conceived of the idea of the Flame Azalea Festival poster commission,” Benton says. “As I became more familiar with her work and style, I felt like she was a natural fit for this project.” Plans are to continue this relationship between regional artists and festival promotion.
Garrett is a printmaker who lives in Andrews. “I’ve been drawn to process-oriented mediums from my earliest memory, but found myself particularly captivated by lino print in 2016, when taking a printmaking class at Berry College,” she says. She graduated with a degree in Art Education and pursued other mediums before returning to printmaking in 2020. “At the time, my husband and I lived in Laos, Southeast Asia and I was inspired by the skill of Lao artisans and their love of their traditional crafts,” she says.
For its symbolism and storytelling tradition, Garrett chose a quilt as a motif for the poster’s design. “We intentionally chose flora and fauna that were regionally significant and set it in the framework of the quilt design so the two concepts could interact,” she says. Garrett’s husband Graham, who works with Mainspring Conservation Trust, helped with suggestions that would depict not only the place but a particular season as well.
“That’s what the Flame Azalea Festival celebrates,” Benton says, “a place and a season which has not only nurtured those amazing blooms but also cultivated a resourceful and creative culture.”
The festival includes a range of activities, including a demonstration of propagating azaleas through cutting, a river cane walk by a Cherokee artist who will discuss harvesting and using cane for weaving and instrument making, and a ceremonial azalea planting as well as art and music. A limited number of prints of Garrett’s artwork will be available for purchase.
“The key thing we want people to experience, however, is Hooper Bald,” says Benton. “We hope everyone will either take a self-guided or guided tour.” Guided tours will be held Saturday, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., and Sunday, 1–4 p.m.
To learn more, visit GrahamCountyTravel.com/flame-azaleas. The festival is free to attend, but visitors are encouraged to donate to the Graham County Fire & Rescue.
