Girl Meets Winston Salem

Bird's Eye sketch of Winston-Salem, 1891
New Winston Museum

Winston Salem, North Carolina

Known as the City of Arts creating the first Arts Council in 1949. An art's council is a government or private, non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the arts mainly by funding local artists and providing communication between the local artists. Winston is also home to the  2nd largest tobacco company in the US, owned by R. J . Reynolds. R. J. left Virginia to start his own tobacco company. Due to the success of Camel cigarettes, the US Federal Government appointed Winston Salem the port of entry for foreign tobacco products even though we are 200 miles inland.

I don't smoke, so that is as far as my interest goes in tobacco.

I had the pleasure of moving to Winston Salem in August of 2011 to attend the University of North Carolina School of the Arts School of Filmmaking. I moved from Fayetteville, NC after 15 years. I didn't know my way around very well and I didn't know anyone yet so I didn't get around much. It wasn't until school started that I started branching out and finding things to do to stay busy on the weekends.

I've learned that there is actually a ton of things to do! Winston Salem offers Farmer's Markets on almost every day of the week. Trails to hike, great restaurants and coffee shops and plenty of artistic things. I've found it very useful to use social networking to keep up with everything Winston Salem has to offer. If I didn't, I would have never found the New Winston Museum located on 713 S. Marshall St. After a trip to the Cobblestone Farmer's Market I decided to find this museum. Chris Jordan, the Director of Programming, was very accommodating to my impromptu interview. "Saturday's can be kind of slow," he said as we entered the empty showroom exhibiting over a hundred photographs of Winston Salem as old as c.1856.

I decided to reach out and contact Kristi Marion who runs Publicity for Riverrun International Film Festival. She is also the instagrammer for mywinston-salem.com, I have been following Kristi for the last year taking her advice on new and fun things to do in Winston Salem and by chance ran into her while I was documenting my time at the Old Salem Cobblestone Farmer's Market. I felt like I was meeting a celebrity. She was so humbled by my even knowing who she was. 

Kristi Marion is what I like to call a Winston Salem connoisseur. I was ecstatic when she agreed to be my subject for an interview. Being a blogger herself, she relates to the point I'm trying to make. That there is SO much to do in Winston Salem as you will hear in the interview below. 

Kristi's blog: http://www.southernasbiscuits.com/p/about-me.html 

Kristi also writes for a blog about Winston Salem: http://www.mywinston-salem.com/ 

At first I felt that this idea to blog about Winston-Salem might be a tad ambitious, seeing as I am double majoring and working part time at a restaurant. But I've had more fun in the last few weeks generating ideas to write about and meeting new people. I'm looking forward to this challenge. 

My favorite view of the downtown skyline is from the Film Village at the North Carolina School of the Arts. Here you can just barely see the Wells Fargo Building.