After receiving an M.A. in Southern Studies at Ole Miss in May 2003, Amy Evans spent the summer completing an internship with Viking Range Corporation in Greenwood, Mississippi. At first glance, a partnership between a fine arts/humanities student and a high tech corporation might appear to be an odd match. However, upon closer inspection, the connection makes perfect sense. Viking manufactures premium appliances and equipment for people who love to cook, and food is a huge part of the Mississippi culture and tradition. Add to the mix a Southern Studies graduate student trained in documenting those cultures and traditions, a company president with fond local food memories of his own, and you have a recipe for success bigger and better than “mile high pie” at Greenwood’s Crystal Grill.

Upon receiving her B.F.A. in printmaking from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 1993, Evans spent a year in Savannah, Georgia, and then moved home to Houston, Texas, to teach art at the High School for Performing and Visual Arts. She left Texas to be a part of the Southern Studies Program at Ole Miss. For her graduate work, Evans combined her love of art and teaching to initiate community arts programs in the Mississippi Delta towns of Rome and Drew. This deep connection with the people of the Delta was the impetus for her to cofound a nonprofit arts and outreach program called Pieceworks. Her investment in Mississippi and the Delta is great, so when Viking offered the internship, she took it.

Viking and the Southern Foodways Alliance had been considering a project to document and preserve the food traditions of Greenwood, where Viking Range Corporation is headquartered. Because of her work documenting Tennessee barbeque, Evans seemed the perfect candidate to undertake the project. She was given free reign to interview Greenwood restaurant owners and cooks. She not only documented the histories behind the well-known Greenwood restaurants Lusco’s, Giardina’s, and the Crystal Grill, but she was also able to forge relationships over the hot grills and stoves of local food legends Leroy “Spooney” Kenter Jr. and Mattie Smith and with hot tamale maker extraordinaire Pearl Johnson. The common ingredient in all the interviews was how much the people Evans spoke with loved the restaurant business, because they loved the people they fed.

Evans’s newest project is developing tours of blues and cultural sites in the Delta; the tours will be available through the Alluvian, a new boutique hotel in downtown Greenwood. The pilot tour was a very successful excursion offered in conjunction with the Southern Foodways Symposium in October 2003. Similar tours are being developed as preludes to the Living Blues symposium in February 2004 and the Oxford Conference for the Book in April 2004.

LeAnne Gault

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