I visited Banner Elk, North Carolina this weekend and spent a morning enjoying the lovely mountain weather while picking blueberries. Rolling around inside my two gallon picking bucket, the range of blue and purple colors looked too delicious not to tempt continuous taste testing. The darker the berry, the sweeter the juice.
John Rash is a filmmaker, photographer, and visual artist based in Oxford, Mississippi. John earned his M.F.A. in Documentary and Experimental Art from Duke University and B.F.A. in Art Education from UNC-Greensboro, and now works as Assistant Professor of Film Production and Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi. His documentary films and photographs often focus on topics of identity, counter-culture communities, social justice, and environment and have been shown in festivals and museums around the world. John has received multiple awards for his documentary works including the Soul of Southern Film Award from Indie Memphis Film Festival for Negro Terror, History+ Best Documentary Award from the North Carolina Museum of History for Our Movement Starts Here, and an Emmy nomination for his film about South Carolina-based photographer Sam Wang. John is also the founder of the Southern Punk Archive which aims to preserve the stories of DIY punk communities in the American South. In 2025, John was an Artist in Residence at the Swatch Art Peace Hotel in Shanghai and a resident artist at Crosstown Arts in Memphis, TN in 2022.
