Boost Arts Education!

On September 21, 2024, the Mountain Mermaids Collective, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, is throwing a party with BBQ, live music, and a silent auction at The Todd Mercantile to raise funds for young artists in the High Country. The 2024 Mermaids Mentors program, now in its second year, is partially supported by a Watauga Arts Council Grassroots Grant, and through this event we aim to raise matching funds to meet our fundraising goal per the grant. Please come to our party and help us reach our goal! 

MERMAIDS MENTORS PROJECT

Mountain Mermaids Collective is a Todd, NC 501(c)(3) nonprofit with a mission to build an inclusive, diverse, sustainable arts community in western North Carolina. In support of that mission, we are excited to announce the development of the Mermaids Mentors Project, a program that will empower young artists of the high country through relationship development and skill building. If you’re interested in being a mentor in the future, please fill out this mentor application.

Mentee applications for the 2025 Mentors Project will open soon. Following an orientation on January 25, 2025, five mentors will be paired with five young artists (ages 13-18) from February through April, 2025. During the 3-month program, each mentee will develop their art (examples may include songwriting, painting, metal work, spoken word) one-on-one with their Mermaid Mentor. Through this process, the young artists will take their ideas from inspiration to completion, eventually sharing finished products with a larger audience and receiving feedback. This type of mentoring experience is important for all young people, but most especially for young artists. The young artists will showcase their work with their mentors at the Sirens on the Mountain Festival on May 31, 2025.

Donations

The Mermaids Mentors Project is more than an arts education project. We know that empowered young women have the ability to craft their future with passion and articulate their path forward with self assurance. Through the Mermaids Mentors Project, young artists will hone communication, develop confidence, and build a foundation of life experience.

Art provides young people with an outlet for meaningful self expression. In this program, young women will have an opportunity to develop a relationship with a local professional artist and to share their artistic vision with a larger audience. We hope that participants will recognize the importance of a dynamic and generous creative community, one in which collaborators support each other and have equal opportunity to articulate their opinions.

Meet our 2025 Mermaid Mentors

Katie Rose Delucia

Katie is an artist, creative founder and guide at The Healers Art Studio, and has been an advocate for Mental Health for over 10 years. Since, she has worked with a wide range of clients, women of all ages, youth and teens, in group settings and 1:1. Along the way, she has merged her love of self-expression, the arts, and mental health into numerous art projects, and has sold her art in various locations across the country while teaming up with local partners to spread mental health awareness through community workshops and events. Katie believes art can turn wounds into light, and it is finding and connecting to that light that allows us to transform our world from the inside out. This very belief is at the heart of The Healer's Art Studio’s philosophy, a creative workshop and event service where she facilitates customizable art programming to connect participants first from within, and to express outwardly through the medium of art. Art making is just one of many expressions to spark transformation, and she is thrilled to be partnering with Mountain Mermaids Collective for the 2024 Mermaids Mentoring Project while supporting the creative vision of her mentee.

Liz Lanham

Liz Lanham comes from Philadelphia and was raised surrounded by traditional Irish music. Her home was often filled with musical gatherings, and through these experiences, she learned to love music as a way of living and connecting. She began her musical journey with bluegrass banjo and guitar. When she moved to Boone around 2008 she had the good fortune to take fiddle lessons with Cecil Gurganus, and she officially caught the old-time fiddle bug, learning new tunes and seeking out old-time jams as often as possible!

In Boone, Liz can often be found at local old-time and bluegrass jams. She teaches fiddle for the Junior Appalachian Musician program and has performed in several local groups including PIg Ankle Annie, the Heel Raisers, and Ruby Goose. She currently performs as Liz Lanham and Friends and with the Belle Peppers.

Kelsey wagner

Kelsey Merreck Wagner (b. 1990) is a textile artist and environmental activist. She received her B.A. (Studio Arts; focus: printmaking) at Western Michigan University; her M.A. (Cultural Studies & Sustainability; focus: community-engaged arts) at Appalachian State University, and is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Michigan State University (Anthropology; focus: human-animal relationships, environmental art, and activism). She has exhibited work internationally in Cambodia, Thailand, Canada, and Italy, as well as across the United States including Illinois, Texas, Ohio, New York, North Carolina, and Michigan; and has done curatorial work with and for art, culture and education institutions around the world. She is also a member of the Blue Ridge Fiber Guild (Boone, North Carolina) and a founding member of the Mekong Artist Collective (Nong Khai, Thailand). Her research and artmaking are at the nexus of aesthetics, anthropological inquiry of environmental ruin at human hands, and hope for socio-environmental justice. She is especially interested in using art to raise awareness, initiate critical conversations, and spark change towards coexistence among all species on the planet.

Meet our 2023 Mermaid Mentors

Shenette Swann

Shenette Swann is the creative owner behind the music, mediation, and motivation coaching service called Spark Wonder and New Narratives. Strongly believing in the power of the story and the passion behind words, seasoned songwriter and entertainer, Swann has found the secret to contentment and purpose and teaches clients that the answer is completely within their own self narrative. With 25 years years of journaling experience, Swann teaches the art of Journ(healing) and the manifestation power of vision writing. Her deeply intuitive and interactive coaching style catapults the client into the place Swann calls the Spark Zone – a place where the coach is not the coach at all; instead, the client owns the ability to coach and empower themselves through transformative inner connective writing. With music and performance as her first platform, Swann’s music is laced with motivational messages of empowerment and wisdom. The proud mother of 2 sons and a personal story of overcoming, Shenette Swann embodies the strength of all women.

LinDsay Carroll

Lindsay Carroll, b 1990, is an award-winning oil and pastel artist living and working in the High Country of North Carolina. She received her formal training at a young age from the South Carolina Governor's School for the Arts and Humanities where she studied from 2007-2009. Her work—a blend of classical and contemporary realism— focuses primarily on the figure and the portrait. Carroll uses soft edges and delicate blending to render her subjects. She prefers to paint figures lit with natural window light or dappled sunlight. Her paintings have been described as “smooth,” “dramatic,” and “detailed.” Each of Carroll's paintings is carefully planned and executed with precision to portray the mesmerizing dance between light and form.

Teresa Lee

Teresa Lee is a theatre director, actor, educator, and movement specialist. She has a long and active career in the High Country theatre community. As a founding Artistic Collaborator with In/Visible Theatre, she has directed, acted, and choreographed stage fights and was last seen in their production of The Christians in 2017. Teresa also performed her one woman show, Night Frogs, at Boone’s premiere solo performance festival, BOLO in 2017 and for the National Women’s Theatre Festival in Raleigh, NC in 2018. She has directed professionally in the High Country area at Blowing Rock Stage Company, Ensemble Stage, Horn in the West and Blue Ridge Community Theatre. Teresa recently retired as Professor of Theatre Performance in the Department of Theatre & Dance at Appalachian State University, where she taught acting, stage movement, theatre education, creative expression, improvisation, and Alexander Technique and was the Director of the Appalachian Young People’s Theatre touring program.