Category: art

art, Chattanooga, Chattanooga outreach, community, Daily Life, Entertainment, Environment, Family, Food, History, Hugs, Music, outdoors, Philanthropy, Sustainability, Trains, UTC, women

Rising Rock Media Podcast

By Megan Cooper

Megan Cooper hosts an episode of Rising Rock Media Podcast where listeners can get a glance at life in Chattanooga, Tennessee. She speaks with several very different people from interviews she hosted throughout the semester.

Meet The Storyteller

Megan Cooper is a senior communication student at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, UTC, focusing on being an audio technician and editor. Megan has experience using Adobe programs to create audio content for broadcasting. Megan is a show host, promotions director, and station manager at UTC’s student-run radio station, the Perch. She is also currently working as a promotions tech at Summit Media Group in Knoxville, TN. This is Megan’s second semester in Rising Rock as an audio technician where she uses nothing but tone of voice to share people’s stories, and she built the Rising Rock radio showcase for 88.1 WUTC. When she isn’t working she is reading fantasy books and hunting down the next CD on her list. Cooper’s passion lies in music, books, radio, and using stories to bring people together. If you have a story you want to tell or want to contact Megan you can reach her at megancooper820@gmail.com. 

art, Chattanooga, community, Daily Life, Diversity, Fashion, Uncategorized, women

More Than Just Hair

Written by Emily Petitt Dwyer

Meghan Landis folds clean towels as she prepares for clients. Wednesday, November 20, 2024. Photo by Emily Petitt Dwyer.

With its signature orange and black vines winding across once-white walls, vintage furniture complementing the mix of wood and tile flooring, and plants nestled along the aged brick hearth at its center, Good Sister Studio redefines what a hair studio can be.

The studio offers clients an intimate and educational experience while using clean and sustainable products—products free of harmful chemicals and good for the environment.

In the Northshore-based studio, Meghan Landis, the studio’s co-owner, adjusts her red curly hair with a confident “zhuzh” as she embodies the values she and business partner, Alexa Kuper, have built their studio upon.

Continue reading “More Than Just Hair” →
art, Chattanooga, community, Entertainment, History, Love, Uncategorized, women

In Search of Dolly

Written by Drew White

Dolly Parton was married to her forever husband, Carl Dean, in Ringgold in 1966, because of the legacy of the town, proximity, and the name, “Ringgold,” rings of gold, delighting Dolly.

Ringgold, Georgia is a town known for love. Ringgold has been a popular spot for marrying since the 1800s because of its unique one-stop-shop quality. Blood work to test for sexually transmitted diseases was a required step of the marriage process until 2003. In Ringgold, couples were able to get their blood work completed and approved the day of the ceremony. The proximity to Fort Oglethorpe paired with simple blood work completion created a boom in the marriage market in Ringgold throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. 

Continue reading “In Search of Dolly” →
Animals, Anxiety, art, Chattanooga, Chattanooga outreach, community, Daily Life, Diversity, Entertainment, Environment, Family, Folklore, Healing, Health, History, Hugs, Love, Music, outdoors, Sports, teachers, Trains

Rising Rock Radio Showcase
Graphic by Kylee Boone

Rising Rock is excited to showcase some of our best audio stories in a continued partnership with Scenic Roots.

Nature vs Nurture

Taryn Brooks sits with Taylor Reed, a member and volunteer of Forest Families of Chattanooga. Reed, along with her daughter, has grown alongside the organization and seen the benefits of nature firsthand.
Continue reading “Rising Rock Radio Showcase” →
art, Chattanooga, community, Daily Life

2000 Degrees

Written by Olivia Smith

Chris Mosey cuts the excess glass to seal the ornament. Friday, April 12, 2024 (Photo by Olivia Smith).

If you ever walk down Broad Street on a weekend afternoon, you may be lucky to spot Chris Mosey blowing glass at his Downtown Chattanooga studio. 

Mosey is the owner and artist of Ignis Glass Studio located at 401 Broad Street. Mosey’s open-concept studio allows tourists and locals passing by to witness a unique art form full of fire, color, and technique. 

Mosey studied ceramics at the Appalachian Center for Crafts, an arts program through Tennessee Tech University, in Cookeville, Tennessee where he found his love for glass blowing during an elective he needed to graduate. 

Continue reading “2000 Degrees” →
art, Chattanooga, History, Music, Photography, Trains, Uncategorized, UTC

A Tin Type of Man

Written by Taryn Brooks

Bill Steber, a Mississippi Blues photographer and one of the Hoodoo Men musicians, speaks about the value in analog art forms and revisiting the past through historical and modern perspectives.

The backdoor of a well-loved white van swings open with a squeak, revealing a fully functional darkroom that transforms tin plates into photographs. Upon closer look a collection of instruments inhabits the corners, mirroring how the two devotions appear in the life of photojournalist and musician Bill Steber. 

Steber describes his job title as a “chief cook and bottle washer at preserving the old weird America,” a culinary term meaning his responsibilities in his field rank from high to low and everywhere in between, illustrating the journey his professional career has taken. 

Along with strumming to an array of instruments and joining friend Sam Baker in the HooDoo men, Steber also spent 15 years as a photojournalist for the Tennessean and embarked on a documentary journey through the Mississippi’s Blues Trail. Photography and music have been life-long passions of Steber’s, both of which were born out of a love for illustrating modern times through a historical lens.

Continue reading “A Tin Type of Man” →
art, community, Entertainment, Music

Where the Bluegrass Grows

Written by Carter Graham

Cindy Pinion introduces the New Dismembered Tennesseans at the 3 Sisters Bluegrass Festival. Photo by Mia Liu (Friday, October 4, 2024)

Street lights glow along the dark path of the St. Elmo Historic District when the twang of a banjo breaks the night’s silence; coming from The Woodshop Listening Room, bluegrass is in the air tonight. 

Cindy Pinion and Laura Walker are the folks fighting to preserve, in their different ways, an art form that has been at the center of their lives for decades. 

Pinion, the daughter of the iconic bassist Thomas “Boxcar” Pinion, has made it her mission to preserve traditional bluegrass through her organization Forever Bluegrass and its festivals. Walker is a singer and multipurpose musician who has been performing with the famous New Dismembered Tennesseans—as well as a few other bands she performs in—for the last 30 years.

Continue reading “Where the Bluegrass Grows” →
art, Chattanooga, Chattanooga outreach, community, Daily Life, Diversity, Entertainment, Music, Philanthropy

Rising Culture

Written by Connor Spelta

Alex Newton spoke with Shateria Smith and Shane Morrow about Responsive Initiatives for Social Empowerment (RISE)—a black-led nonprofit organization that has been serving the community with free programming, concerts, and communal events since 2011. They hosted the Levitt BLOC Music Series during the month of September, which consists of free concerts for the public every Sunday.

For the most part, a drive down Taylor Street in East Chattanooga looks like any other street in the city’s poorer river-to-ridge region. The blur of closely packed industrial, commercial and residential lots aging into historic status is interrupted by a sprawling 14,000-square-foot complex adorned with stained glass windows and statues. 

The over 100-year-old building, formerly the Solid Anchor Church, hosts Chattanooga non-profit Responsive Initiatives for Social Empowerment (RISE). The black-led non-profit was started in 2011 by current CEO Shane Morrow and his partner.

Known originally as Jazzanooga, the organization began with a single-day Jazz festival as a part of the Community Foundation of Greater Chattanooga (CFGC). After the initial success of the festival, the organization spun off from CFGC into the independent non-profit it is today.

Continue reading “Rising Culture” →
Animals, art, Chattanooga, community, Daily Life, Dance, Diversity, Entertainment, Environment, Family, Health, Love, Music, outdoors, Sports, Uncategorized, UTC, women

Rising Rock Radio Showcase
Graphic by Kylee Boone

Rising Rock is excited to showcase some of our best audio stories in a continued partnership with Scenic Roots. To listen to Scenic Roots, visit https://www.wutc.org/scenic-roots.

Tiny Bailarinas

Ava Nessell spoke with Wendy Reynoso, the student success and services coordinator at La Paz Chattanooga, about her experience finding a community in Chattanooga after immigrating from Guatemala. 

Continue reading “Rising Rock Radio Showcase” →
art, Chattanooga, community, Entertainment, Music

Social Songs

Written by Meleah Holder

Dan Pinson performs as a headliner at Snap Fest 420 on April, 20, 2024 with a group of local Chattanooga musicians. (Photo by Maleah Holder).

The low hum of a bass guitar and drums echoes from behind the walls of the Comedy Catch in downtown Chattanooga. A small audience looks on at Dan Pinson—better known as Danimal—as he strums away, crafting a relaxing evening for his listeners. 

Pinson’s music provides a one-of-a-kind experience for those downtown as he performs live, keeping local rather than seeking bigger opportunities. As a singer and bass guitarist for several local bands, he says he owes his experience and growth to the music scene in Chattanooga. When Pinson began developing his passion for music, he noted that the typical genre was rock, very different from his psychedelic tune. 

Continue reading “Social Songs” →