THE ARTIST BEHIND THE ART
Julie Clark: Not Welded to Tradition
When Julie Clark was growing up, one phrase she never heard spoken was, “Girls don’t do that!” As the family’s only daughter, and as the younger sibling of three brothers, she did a lot of “boy stuff.” So, is it that surprising that over the intervening years she’s become one of the area’s premiere metal workers and welding artists?
“This isn’t a stretch for me,” says Julie. On the family’s farm near New Salem, Georgia, just 20 minutes from their Lookout Mountain, Tennessee home, her dad was always involved in some kind of project. If he needed help fixing a tractor, he’d grab the closest kid, and as often as not, it was Julie. Although she entertained thoughts of working with horses for a living, the tradition in her family called for an end to education only when a college degree was attained. So she earned a business management degree from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. But she wanted to know more about how to properly shoe a horse. She enrolled in the Eastern School of Farriery, in Martinsville, Virginia, and then worked for 8 years as a farrier.
The quest to become better at making and applying horseshoes continued all the while. Working in a coal-fired forge got her interested in the artistic possibilities of creating things from metal. After enrolling at Northwestern Technical College to take a few basic welding classes, she became somewhat driven, to say the least. Eventually she earned a two-year degree in Welding and Joining Technology. Later she took a series of classes at the John C. Campbell Folk School, in North Carolina, and studied under a bevy of master blacksmiths. Her skill level and experience progressed to the point that she herself is now an instructor at Campbell.
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LOOKOUT FOR OUR MOUNTAIN
Our Mountain
Lofty and grand, like a warrior band
Are the mountain peaks, dark frowning And tall and green on their heights serene
Are the pines, their dark cliffs crowning. Then far and near ring out the cheer,
Till the mountains join the chorus, For above them all, like a giant tall,
Is Lookout smiling o’er us. And ere we part, join hand and heart
In bonds which naught can sever, And a three-times-three for the wildwoods free,
And our mountain home forever.
George Norton, 1868
For perhaps 10,000 years people have come to Lookout Mountain in search of a home, wild game, or a place to rest and contemplate. There are other mountains in the world, but few stir the passions like Lookout does.
Home to several rare and endangered animals and plants (like the green pitcher plant, found only in four counties in the world), the mix of flora and fauna is amazing. In fact it’s one of the more biodiverse areas in the United States. One of the last battles of the American Revolution was fought on its slope near the northern end of the mountain just outside modern Chattanooga. And the Battle above the Clouds, fought in Chattanooga in late 1863, resulted in a victory for the Union that opened up the door to Georgia and the city of Atlanta, and the eventual march of the blue-clad army all the way to Savannah and the Atlantic Ocean. History has been made here for a very long time.
First, a few facts. This is a long, narrow mountain, about 83 miles, by one estimate, running from Gadsden and Attalla, Alabama to Chattanooga, Tennessee. It’s only nine miles across at its widest point between Mentone, Alabama and Cloudland, Georgia. It’s not particularly tall: 2,393 feet above sea level at High point, Georgia. The mountain’s height decreases from 2,111 feet above Chattanooga to about 1,120 feet above Gadsden. Yet its combination of altitude and latitude give it a noticeably different feel from more southerly places in Alabama and Georgia. There are four distinct seasons here, and snow is not uncommon. In fact, Mentone even has a ski slope, the second most southerly in the nation.
And this is an old mountain. Limestone deposits, accumulated from a shallow sea that once covered this area, were laid down 600 million years ago. Two hundred million years ago the Appalachian Mountains were formed by massive tectonic upheavals, and geologists who have studied Lookout say it was once actually higher than the European Alps and the Rocky Mountains. The action of wind, rain, and ice over the ensuing millennia have worn it away, leaving us with a limestone, shale, and sandstone lump covered by a thin layer of soil. It has been estimated that there are more than 7,000 known caves in and around Lookout. Legend has it that during the Civil War, a band of Confederates managed to walk under the mountain all the way from Chattanooga to Gadsden. A number of major waterfalls cascade over steep precipices, including ones at Lula Lake, Cloudland Canyon, Mentone (Desoto Falls) Blue Pond (Yellow Creek Falls) and Gadsden (Noccalula Falls). There are at least two major underground waterfalls, the most famous of which is Ruby Falls, in the side of the mountain above Chattanooga. Water was also on the minds of early visitors. Springs like the one at Mentone drew people from all over the United States who believed that drinking the water was good for every ailment from asthma to cancer. Little River Canyon, in places 700 feet deep and reported to be the deepest in the eastern United States, is in the middle of the mountain, running almost 25 miles in length.
