Inside Appalachia Folkways Project Story Archives - Page 21 of 21

Mountain Artworks is a studio in Mercer County that houses the unique flair, personality, passion, and dreams of metal sculptor Michael “Mike” Sizemore. Mike has a particular fondness for copper, but he uses all sorts of materials in his work, even recycled glass ashtrays. Like many artists, Mike keeps a day job to pay the bills.

You can find his sculptures at Concord University, private yards, city streets and at Tamarack, in Beckley West Virginia, which features juried artists from across the state. Imagine pipes bent into abstractions of owls, turtles, and even the New River Gorge bridge. Some of his work, which can tower as tall 30 feet, is often inspired by petroglyphs from ancient drawings.

Mike traces his love of artmaking back to one day while he was growing up in Fayette County when his mother insisted that he and his brother go to school despite a blizzard.

“Everybody else was home sleigh riding, but my butt was in school,” Mike explained. “To give me something to do, [the teacher] brought me in one of those foot stools and gave me a box of chalk, and she told me to draw the solar system on the chalkboard. So I drew the solar system. It took me all day. What I really remember was coming into class the next day, and everybody was amazed at how cool it was. It was like little tours that came into the classroom. They brought in another chalkboard so they didn’t have to erase it. Yeah, that felt pretty good.”

Mike Sizemore holds up a sketch of the New River Gorge Bridge that he’ll use to create a metal sculpture.

That was the first time Mike realized he had something special to share. As a middle-schooler, a mischievous Mike took his drawings from chalkboards to, well, other surfaces.

“I remember seeing airbrushed T-shirts, and I’m thinking, [I’d] been graffiti painting all over Fayette County,” Mike admits. “Why not take it down to a small scale and put it on a shirt? So yeah, let me say I did a fair amount of graffiti painting all around Oak Hill. Sorry, Mom and Dad.”

Mike also was helped along the way by some of his family in Roanoke, Virginia, especially his infamous Aunt Leona.

“She moved to Roanoke to work for the railroad,” Mike notes, “and she was a horse-snuff-dipping, cigar-smoking, drinking, hard woman. But she was cool.”

Mike’s cousin Tom had a blacksmith shop in Aunt Leona’s garage. That’s where Mike heated up his first piece of metal.

Mike went on to study art at Concord University (then Concord College). He moved to New Mexico, where he learned from other metal sculptors and discovered petroglyphs, or rock carvings left by the Pueblo Indians.

“I would get on my mountain bike and go out to these things and spend hours taking photographs of them and so forth and so on.” Mike says. “I was just mesmerized. . . . There’s a language in that. “

He eventually brought that inspiration back to West Virginia and blended it with his affection for our state and its lush scenery.

Mike’s Day Job

Mike keeps his humor on the job. I even notice a “no fishing” sign hung on a cement tank full of sludge.

Mike Sizemore at the Athens Sewage Treatment Plant

“We have one in the lab also that says ask for free sample,” Mike giggles. “Comic relief at the sewage plant is essential to the job because it gets a little crappy now here sometimes.”

Mike’s plumbing experience goes way back. Growing up in Fayette County, he heard about the days when indoor toilets were first introduced to the area.

“My mother’s father was a manager in the mines, so they were the first people in Whipple to have a flushing toilet. Ya know, everything else just went out to the creek,” he laughs. “So it was a pretty big deal.”

Mike has deep roots here. He says his ancestors were Italian immigrants and native Cherokee. Mike’s parents also grew up in Fayette County, where bartering was a way of life.

“My parents did it on a fairly decent scale,” Mike said. “They still do it to this day. They’re antique collectors, so. . . . If you need your grass cut and this person wants a nice cabinet out back that my mom’s been collecting for 20 years, she’ll get her grass [cut] for the summer, and he’ll get the cabinet.”

Mike learned to be resourceful, too. He says it was often a matter of survival. He recalls gathering glass bottles with his mother along the side of the road as a kid in Oak Hill, for extra cash.

“Remember when you could take bottles back and get three cents for them? Yeah, that was our job on Saturday morning. We’d steal a buggy from the A&P, or borrow it or whatever you want to call it because we always took it back, but we took it back full of bottles. Then, when I wanted money, I’d go get bottles myself, with my friends.”

He remembers those days fondly. But they weren’t easy, care-free days.

“It was pretty tough, and that struggle got passed down to all of us,” Mike explains as he wipes his nose. “It basically taught you if you want it, you gotta go get it. Gotta find a way to do it. Do it without breaking the law; my parents taught me that, too, which we didn’t always succeed at, you know,” Mike said as he chuckled.

Today, there are lots of colorful walls adorned with paintings and metal sculptures in Mike’s home. Relying on that time-tested tradition of bartering, Mike has collected hundreds of pieces of art by trading his own work. It’s taken some growth and courage, but he’s making money selling his art, too.

“I don’t know too many people like myself that can take any kind of metal and turn it into something. It’s taken me a long time to get to that point because I just want to make people happy, and I do make people happy, but now it’s just business coming into that fold.”

Mike has helped to create a Youtube channel for the Town of Athens. The page explains how what flows out of your toilet is treated at a plant. Mike is planning on retiring soon from the sewage treatment plant so he’s taken on a young apprentice. He plans to work more on his art but these days, he’s getting help from his son, Willie, especially when it comes to the digital presence of his work. As he teaches Willie to weld, his son helps out with social media. So it seems the dependable barter practice of Mike’s past, is still helping to take him forward.

You can find Mountain Artworks on Facebook. Special thanks to Goldenseal Magazine for help with this report. You can also find Sizemore’s story and more on this week’s episode of Inside Appalachia.

Around the holidays, homemade treats are everywhere — whether it be Christmas cookies, gingerbread houses or fruit cakes. One Swiss holiday tradition involves making Rosettes — light, crispy, deep-fried pastries made using a floral-shaped iron mold.

Head chef at Lost Creek Farms, Mike Costello, recently inherited a rosette iron from his Helvetian ancestors. He shared the process of making the pastries with West Virginia Public Broadcasting

“I’ve heard a lot of people refer to it as a lighter version of a funnel cake,” Costello said. “A little bit crispier, lighter —these rosettes are pretty delicate when you pull them out of the oil. They look like they might be more robust, but that’s because the fins of the iron are kind of hollow. I’s a really kind of delicate pastry.”

Mike Costello at his farm in Lost Creek. He recently inherited a traditional Swiss rosette iron.

The rosette iron is similar to a branding iron, although much more delicate. The base is metal, floral shaped — it’s the part that is actually dipped into the batter and oil. The handle sticks vertically out of the cookie cutter-like mold.

Costello said the rosette can be traced back to many different immigrant cultures.

“I think rosettes were pretty common, especially in this part of Appalachia because you had so many immigrants coming not just from Switzerland, but Austria and Hungary, and also other places that you see rosette tradition show up around the holidays,” he said.

Costello’s rosette iron was gifted to him last Christmas. It likely was passed down from his Swiss great-grandmother, Flora. She immigrated to Helvetia when she was six years old.

“I got really exicted, probably more excited than I should have been about this little metal floral shaped thing with a red handle.” Costello said. “To me it was much more than a tool, it was a piece of my past I’d been longing for. I knew there was this piece of my family’s history that was up in the mountains of Helvetia, and suddenly I have something tangible from that.”

Flora is somewhat of a mystery woman to Costello, as she passed away before her history could be fully documented.

Pictures of Costello’s family that lived in Helvetia, including his great-grandmother Flora (photos on right). It is likely the rosette iron came from Flora.

But in photos, one can see Flora standing with her cows, chickens and field crops. One thing Costello knows is Flora was an excellent farmer and cook.

“To have this piece of our heritage that if there was someone you could point to and say, ‘Who’s doing the farm-to-table the real deal way?’ Before it was cool, Flora was doing farm to table in Braxton County, West Virginia,” he said.

Using the rosette iron passed down to him, Costello can make the pastries that perhaps Flora once made.

Costello follows a traditional Helvetian recipe that makes around 50 rosettes; however, he typically halves it for smaller gatherings.

For the batter, Costello cracks three eggs and adds half-a-pint of half and half.

“You want to get the eggs and the cream pretty well beaten together,” he said. “Then I add about one cup of flour.”

He lightly whisks the ingredients together.

“What we’re looking for is for the batter to be pretty light,’ he said.

The batter should be smooth and light, more like a pancake batter than a cake batter. If not, one can add a little extra cream.

After mixing, Costello adds one secret ingredient.

“A little bourbon, just a little splash into the batter,” he said. “I honestly don’t know if I’ve noticed much of a difference. But it’s kind of fun to carry on. I’ve heard some folks say it makes it a little crispier. I’ll take it.”

Costello dips the rosette iron in the hot lard. It is important to keep the iron hot so the batter will slide of easily.

He then heats up lard in a skillet. Costello said you want the oil about the depth of the flower base on the iron.

“I’ve got my iron in this hot lard and I dip it in this batter and you can hear it adhere to the iron,” he said. “I’m trying to avoid it coming up over the iron so when I put it in , it slides right off like that.”

And in about 10 seconds the first rosette is completed.

The end result is a golden, crisp, airy pastry in the shape of a flower. It has eight petals that are hollow, which adds to the delicate intricacy of the finished pastry.

“You know when you get it right because you can hear the sizzle of the batter. That’s when you know it’s really sticking to it pretty well,” he said.

The process reminds Costello of making Christmas cookies as a kid. Although he never met his great-grandmother Flora, he spent many holidays in his grandmother Betty Williams’ kitchen.

“She had a little step stool that my brother and I would get on because we couldn’t reach the counter top. But, that’s a lot of what I think back to in terms of the holidays and tradition is being in that kitchen, and making those cookies, and wanting to keep that up in some way,” he said. “So now that she’s gone as well, this is kind of in a way satisfies that need to be a kid again in my grandma’s kitchen making cookies. It’s almost the same.”

In just a few minutes, there is a plate towering with dozens of rosettes.

“We’ve run out of room on the plate, and we still have a ton of batter left,” Costello said.

Rosettes are typically served sweet. So while they are still hot, Costello added several different sweet toppings.

The finished product. Rosettes are typically served sweet and can be garnished with various sugars.

“I’m gonna do a basic powdered sugar, and I’ll also do a cinnamon sugar mix,” he said. “I’ll have some with some sorghum, and one thing that goes pretty well with that sorghum is a little bit of this J.Q. Dickinson salt from the Charleston area.”

Costello actually grew the sorghum on his farm and hand pressed it into syrup. It adds an unexpected earthiness, while the salt marries all the flavors together.

The rosettes themselves are crispy and delicate, and the sweet topping simply melts in one’s mouth.

This story is part of Inside Appalachia’s holiday show which you can find here.

Tag: Inside Appalachia Folkways Project

Metal Sculptor by Night, Sewage Treatment by Day, An Interview With Artist Mike Sizemore

Making Rosettes Around the Holidays