LIFT Culture House owners Leon Grodsky and Natalie Smith kick back in their coffee shop/performance space/art gallery in Cherokee.
Higher and higher
LIFT Culture House — elevating perception since 2004
Entering the LIFT Culture House is a curious experience.
First, there’s the parking lot – a broad swath of concrete that melts into the surrounding landscape of bright, tourist-oriented businesses. (LIFT occupies a space once made famous as the “Teepee Restaurant.”) From the outset, the sign for LIFT and its Tribal Grounds Coffee House seems just the slightest bit out of sorts. A coffee shop? In Cherokee?
The trip gets stranger when you walk through the door and find vacationing soccer moms, European tourists and Native Americans sitting idly by a counter, sipping mocha shakes and espresso. Beyond the entrance is a small gallery, displaying one of the coolest modern art shows released this summer, anywhere in Western North Carolina (this means you, Asheville). In the back is a large performance space with abstract paintings on the walls, and beyond that, a quaint deck overlooking the Occonaluftee River.
“We are two people that like differences,” co-owner Natalie Smith says, of herself and partner Leon Grodsky. “We feel more comfortable in different environments.”
Grodsky shared a similar sentiment over the phone two days earlier. The Brooklyn born-and-raised artist better like differences – he could hardly have found a more foreign place to open a business.
“It’s like a different country here,” he said. “It’s a totally different culture.”
Grodsky met Smith a few years ago, when she was a student at Western Carolina University and he was artist-in-residence. Smith, a native Cherokee who grew up in Chapel Hill, was gravitating back to her roots after a few years at Eastern Carolina University. They opened LIFT together two years ago.
The reasons behind that somewhat unconventional decision are far more involved than the simple sale of fair trade, organic, indigenously-grown coffee. Smith and Grodsky saw that something was happening in the Qualla Boundary and wanted not only to be a part of it, but to help facilitate the change.
Smith calls it a “worldwide movement, a renaissance of indigenous peoples,” slowly coming to life in Cherokee.
“For the awareness of our community of that renaissance, we came in about four to seven years in,” she says. “We realized… we became awakened to… the wave in the renaissance in the beginning, when it can be hard. We happen to be pioneers.”
That renaissance is manifesting itself in many ways – renewed interest in native tongues (currently happening in Cherokee), a new focus on traditional medicine, a return to native structures of government and a burgeoning arts community.
When asked why native people were starting to make more art, Smith frowned.
“That question is an oversight,” she said. “There’s always been art made — it never stopped.”
After a moment’s thought, she added; “You could say that indigenous people are becoming more active in the non-traditional media of their culture, in doing more expressive, non-functional art.”
Indeed, while the garden-variety tourist’s’ interest will be drawn to traditional utilitarian pieces like hand-woven baskets, LIFT displays the kind of artwork more likely to be found in the MOMA than the Smithsonian. The current show (as of my visit), “The Secret Lives of…” combined architectural sculpture, film, sound, draperies and a painting of Popeye. Some of the artists reside on the Qualla Boundary, many do not.
“We see ourselves as representing a contemporary experience of Cherokee people,” as opposed to past history, Smith says. “We have the opportunity now to present something real, instead of something Hollywood. That’s what the difference is now – it’s truth as opposed to fiction, fantasy, romance. There’s still romance, and lots of mystery and excitement, but it’s truth-based, not Hollywood-based.”
And that, she adds, is a whole lot more interesting.
