Audobon International has taken up golf:  well, greening the greens, that is. Golf courses are generally the antithesis of the environmental movement; they require lots of land which requires lots of {usually drinking-quality} water, and keep up their lush, green appearance with the aid of ugly chemicals and pesticides. Their goal in their words:

Assist golf courses and golf course developments in providing wildlife habitat, protecting water quality, and improving overall environmental performance.

Wondering which courses near you are more sustainable than the rest? Tiered levels of  the Audobon’s Signature Sanctuary program denote the course’s initiative above and beyond the general requirements.

Which courses are certified? Here are a few that meet the highest standards:

Black Forest on Lake James, Marion
Hasentree, Wake Forest
Hidden Lake-Phase 1, Raleigh
Palisades Golf Club, Charlotte
The Sanctuary, Charlotte
Pinehurst #8 Centennial, Pinehurst

If smacking balls around multi-million dollar homes makes you nervous, there are other options.  Here’s the full list.

With Valentine’s Day around the corner (and we all know the real reason for V-Day is to eat chocolate), I thought I’d share a few local spots. Mad props to my sister, Laura, who tackled some grueling research for this post.

(images via The Chocolate Fetish Web site)

Barking Dog Chocolatiers in Charlotte is run by a husband and wife team who donate all proceeds to local charity. Eat for a good cause? Say no more.

The Chocolate Fetish in downtown Asheville is famous for hand-created truffles with flavors like “Velvet Sin” and “High Tea.”

Escazu Artisan Chocolates, located in downtown Raleigh, offers exotic chocolate bars, truffles and other confections made in very small batches and with interesting ingredients like chipotle chili, pumpkin seeds and dried organic fruit.

“Just Because” Chocolates in Wilmington specializes in hand-dipped fruit, homemade turtles and brandy-soaked tree-ripe bing cherries coated in dark chocolate.

Happy eating!

- Suzanne, pretty*swell

And then I figured, hey, I’ll stick around for lunch so I can post about the entire NOFO experience for indieNC. All in the name of blogging, right?

NOFO lives in an old Piggly Wiggly grocery store in Raleigh’s historic Five Points neighborhood. I really like how they’ve maintained so much of the old store’s character, in both the upstairs gift shop and downstairs cafe.

Interesting design elements abound, like repurposed produce coolers, old signage and canned goods inside the bar’s facade.

The displays are creatively assembled and always beckon me to buy. everything. in. the. store. They carry quite a few local goods, like Muddy Dog roasted grits (Morrisville), GroWild organic wheat-free vegan granola (Raleigh) and Old Guilford’s steel-cut oatmeal (Oak Ridge).

And how can you stay in a bad mood with happy pigs everywhere?

The cafe serves lunch Monday through Friday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and offers brunch from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Sundays. Dinner hours are: Tuesday - Thursday from 5:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. and Friday - Saturday from 5:30 p.m. - 10 p.m.

I’m a sucker for the Thai Chicken Wrap with NOFO’s famous sweet potato fries. And sweet tea, of course. I left there feeling full and happy.

Mission accomplished!

- Suzanne, pretty*swell

image courtesy Karl Larson + The Color Wall blog

The display, sadly, fell dark in the 1990s because of the malfunctioning switches and gears that first gave it life in the early 1970s. A short-lived restoration effort sparked the Color Wall back to brilliance in 2005, but a mere two years later, the entire system shut down.

That’s about to change.

Led by NC State grad Karl Larson, a graphic designer and contributor to Goodnight, Raleigh!, a grassroots movement to restore the Color Wall is gaining steam. They’re raising funds on pace, they hope, to re-light the Color Wall within the coming year. For good.

They plan to replace the antiquated mechanical device with a modern, computerized system that will eliminate the need for repeated repairs.

Check out The Color Wall blog for more information and for ways to help the cause. Also, keep your eyes peeled for a public event this spring featuring paintings by Joe Cox.

– Suzanne, pretty*swell

But winter? What’s available right now? PLENTY. And the sight of all that farm-fresh produce –  hearty kale, exotic sweet potatoes, crisp green onions, acorn squash –  inspires me to whip up a stick-to-your-ribs, soul-warming meal.

If you want to find out what’s in season in your part of the state, check out this handy chart from the state Department of Agriculture. Also, this site will point you to farms, farmers markets and nurseries in your county. And visit this one to learn about restaurants, shops and co-ops that offer local foods in your area.

Right now, the indoor vendors at the State Farmers Market offers pasture-raised meats, free-range eggs, nuts, honey and every other imaginable canned food, jelly or relish. Also interesting: muscadine slushies and goats’ milk custard.

You can even pick up a stack of firewood (armload of kindling is free). I also spotted greenhouse tomatoes and tunnel-grown strawberries.

And just for good measure, a photo of my little shopping companion. Couldn’t resist.

Happy eating!

- Suzanne, pretty*swell

One of my favorite local artists is Keith Norval. His work always makes me chuckle. He and fellow artist Anna Podris just opened an exhibit, “Cloud Nine,” at The Morning Times in downtown Raleigh. Glad for the excuse to chow down on the Times’ awesome breakfast empanadas, I checked out the exhibit over the weekend.

This Norval piece, “Hog Town,” greeted me at the stairs on my way up to the gallery:

My favorite Podris piece, “Unopened Packages,” hung at the top of the stairs. The description of the medium was “encaustic on wood,” which I’d never heard of. It looked like the painting was encased in wax, which gave it really interesting dimension and sort of a dreamy tone. Sure enough, a quick Web search confirmed my wax theory.

Here’s my favorite Norval piece from the exhibit, “My Dog is Crazy.”

The exposed brick wall and lots of natural light created a beautiful setting for the exhibit. Norval’s and Podris’ art flowed together nicely.

“Cloud Nine,” featuring the work of Keith Norval and Anna Podris, is on display at The Morning Times in downtown Raleigh through Feb. 26. Admission is free. Sausage-and-egg empanada highly recommended.

(From www.artomat.org)

The subject of today’s post is somewhat of a throwback to art school for us, and it’s also the only thing we knew about the Piedmont Triad before moving out here: the Art-o-Mat. (For those of you who have experienced it—especially for those of you from Winston-Salem, where the Art-o-Mat was born—thanks for bearing with us!)

It’s a project 13 years strong that uses old refurbished cigarette vending machines to sell small pieces of art submitted by artists all over the world. In our basic art foundations boot camp class in art school, we had to create 10 pieces to fit the size specifications (about the size of a cigarette package) for an Art-o-Mat; it was probably one of the most fun we had on a project we did that semester. Unfortunately we didn’t have any near us in West Virginia or nearby Maryland, but now we’re living in the state where the most of them are located!

(Below: This Paper Ship ca. 2006 in their art school days visiting the Art-o-Mat in the Museum of Contemporary Art in L.A.)

We like them not only because they’re a cool idea and the mid-century design of the machines is killer, but also because it’s example of NC artists using local particulars—in this case, NC’s 150+ year strong relationship with tobacco—in creative ways. We love traveling to new places, but we like to be aware of the fact that there’s usually a vast wealth of inspiration staring at you the minute you walk out your door. This is a great reminder!

—Joel and Ashley, This Paper Ship

NOTE: We realized after writing this that someone probably covered about the Art-o-Mat already, so we searched for it on the IndieNC blog. Sure enough, Michelle interviewed Clark Whittington, the creator of the Art-o-Mat, about a year ago! We wanted to leave our post up, though, because Art-o-Mat is that cool of a project that it deserves extra attention. (Plus, we think it’s funny using old pictures of us as guest writers on a blog.)

Throughout this past year we’ve been blessed as freelancers to be able to carve out a portion of each working day to devote to producing food where we live. Our recent move to an apartment in Greensboro meant we had to leave our onions sleeping in the snow and giving up our laying hen to a good home (sorry, Marshmallow). We’re already marking up our seed catalogs, though, because our neighborhood is home to the Dunleith Community Garden, one of the many urban food production projects courtesy of Urban Harvest Greensboro. They’re a non-profit organization devoted to the wide-ranging increase of education on small-scale local food production all around the Greensboro area and beyond, no matter what the landscape. They update their blog once or twice a month, but read back through their entries and you’ll get a good sense of what the burgeoning movement (that seems to be taking hold of the whole of NC) looks like in Greensboro!

—Joel and Ashley, This Paper Ship

(Photo taken by Ashley at the December Greensboro Indie Market in 2009)

We love how her sophisticated design aesthetic and appreciation for hand-lettered typography blend together in her hand-painted cut-out dolls and paintings on found objects. We’re also suckers for the 60’s French film influence, and for the found portraits that show up every now and then. Check out the painting cluster of hers below, and then be sure to check out her Etsy shop (we have a paper doll of hers framed in our living room, and her magnets on our fridge) and her blog too!

(Photo courtesy of Jordan Grace Owens, from her blog)

—Joel and Ashley, This Paper Ship

(Photo courtesy of Zeke Vantreese)

Our first highlight is an unabashed shout-out to a superb local Greensboro artisan/organizer/catalyst, Zeke Vantreese, and his creation, the Greensboro Indie Market. We must state from the beginning that we’re totally biased about how cool he is, because two weeks before we even met him in person at his booth at the first Indie Market in September and handed him our business card, he had commissioned us to design the banner and poster for the October market and had given us a free booth in return. Ever since then he’s been a really big supporter of ours and has been a big contributing factor for us to even be able to stay afloat as freelancer designers/illustrators in a depressed economy. (Another key example: giving us a shout-out in his interview on Etsy’s blog. Hello increased traffic!)

(Photo courtesy of Zeke Vantreese)

His big public contribution has been the Greensboro Indie Market, which ran monthly on Elm St. in conjunction with Greensboro’s First Fridays from September to December 2009, and which will continue with a big event downtown in May 2010. (Watch the Indie Market blog very soon for updates!) We were blessed to witness it grow from its beginning as a smaller gathering into an entity with a strong local following; not to mention it allowed us to meet artists from other NC art communities, such as Jody Cedzidlo of Flytrap Studios in Carrboro. Ever since we moved here, we’ve been hearing talk of Greensboro having started to come up in the world in the last couple of years; the Indie Market seems to us to be a prime example of talented members in the local crafts/arts community starting to  talk to one another and help create a thriving scene to share with the other wicked scenes in the rest of the state. We’re excited about being a part of it all!

(Photo courtesy of Zeke Vantreese)

And, of course, we mentioned that Zeke is not only an organizer and catalyst, but an artisan. He’s the proud hands behind Rewined Recycled Glassware, his studio that takes used glass bottles from restaurants around town and refurbishes them into drinking glasses. (We’re going to have to propose a trade with him sometime soon, because we have yet to procure a set for ourselves.)  His standard stylish sets have dealt mostly with classic green wine glasses, but we’ve seen him use beer bottles and Boylan’s soda bottles with their labels intact, and we’ve also seen him create mini-planters out of old Jägermeister bottles. Do your dining room/breakfast nook/kitchen table a favor and pick up a set!

Stay tuned for more! We’re having a lot of fun with this so far…

—Joel and Ashley, This Paper Ship