My Greenville:

Profile: Greg Flint Finding Diamonds in the Rough

One man’s junk just may be Greg Flint’s treasure. The Greenville-native and self-proclaimed scrounger loves turning found objects into art. Whether it’s a bit of shell or a piece of rusted metal, Greg turns materials others may discard into custom jewelry. One-of-a-kind jewelry is his primary focus, but the other side of Greg’s art are enamel wall pieces he creates using old photographs downloaded from the Library of Congress Web site. 

“They have a tremendous archive of especially Civil War photographs. I’m using Photoshop to alter that image and then transfer that to the enamel,” the 46-year-old artist explains. The process also involves using an iron to transfer a photocopy of the photograph onto the enamel. “Sometimes the technique is more challenging and sometimes coming up with the idea is more challenging,” Flint says. “The ideas come more easily when I’m working constantly.”

Greg also finds inspiration from his other passion in life: teaching. Greg teaches art at the Fine Art Center of Greenville County. “I’ve learned as much from my students as they have from me,” he admits. He teaches visual arts to fourth through eighth graders in the ARMES (Arts Reaching Middle and Elementary Schools) program. Greg first started teaching art at the college level at Oklahoma State. He returned to Greenville to care for his ailing mother, never expecting to stay very long. “It was going to be a one-year position, and now I’ve been doing it for 17 years,” he says. He also never anticipated getting such fulfillment from teaching children. “I feel like I’m having much more of an impact on my students working with these younger kids,” he says. “They really enjoy what I teach and are as passionate about art as I am.” 

Like many of the youngsters he teaches, Greg remembers having a love for art at a very young age. It’s a passion he has always shared with his twin brother, Paul, who is a painter in Greenville. “I can remember us going to kindergarten and for the first time being around other kids who would rather play kickball than draw,” he says, “and I remember thinking how weird that was.”

Greg says Greenville is the perfect place to be an artist. “I don’t know of another town the size of Greenville that has as much support for the arts,” he says. “As an artist, that makes a huge difference in my life.” 

Seven years ago Greg and his twin brother set up studios at the Art Bomb, a renovated Greenville building once used by the Brandon Mill. The Pendleton Street space now houses the studios of more than a dozen local artists. “I honestly never thought I would have a studio that I liked as much as that one,” says Greg. It’s at Art Bomb that Greg displays his jewelry and enamel wall pieces. The artists hold at least two shows each year, one in the fall and one in the spring. 

Many of the artists pitched in to turn the old, rundown building into the gem that it is today. Just as Greg’s studio saw a transformation from old to new, his art is the same way. Old photos and discarded metal all find new life in the hands of Greg Flint. N

Profile: Urban League of The Upstate Johnny Mickler

At age ten, Johnny Mickler found himself without parents, wondering how he would be able to care for his four younger siblings. Those decades-old struggles are what inspire him to create new programs and initiatives as the president and CEO of the Urban League of the Upstate. “It made me wonder how can we make it,” Mickler remembers of his childhood. He was born in Seneca and attended high school in Greenville. “I feel very strongly that there are a lot of kids like me that lost their mother and father and that still have the dream of being something great or doing something good.” Mickler says his rough start in this world is the main reason he’s involved with the
Urban League.

The Urban League of the Upstate is just one of 102 national Urban League affiliates located in 36 states across the country. The organization was established in 1910 with the goal of empowering African Americans through education and racial justice. Mickler previously headed up the Urban League chapter in Toledo, Ohio, but was drawn back to his Upstate roots to help care for family members facing health problems. When Mickler accepted the position to head the Urban League of the Upstate last June, his first order of business was to create a strategic plan that would lead the organization into the next three to five years. “Until I do that assessment of the agency, we can’t move forward because I need to know where we are,” explains Mickler. 

In what Mickler calls record time (a mere ten weeks) the strategic plan was completed and the organization is now moving forward with a new mission and vision. The organization’s vision is to see all Upstate citizens achieve their fullest potential and share in prosperity. Their mission is to enable African Americans and others in need to attain economic self-sufficiency through advocacy, collaboration and targeted services focused on education, job training and employment. It may seem like a lofty group of goals, but Mickler knows there are a lot of people working to make it happen. “It’s the board’s job and the community’s job and all the stakeholders’ jobs to make that happen.  I’m just going to try to guide the ship,” he says. 

Mickler says charting that course can be overwhelming at times, but he’s reminded often that it’s the children and those that are less fortunate that truly need the help of his organization. 

Mickler knows there are still large obstacles facing the African American community. Educational achievement gaps among racial groups, disproportionately high dropout rates among black males, and economic income gaps that have grown over the last decade are all reasons why the Urban League is still a necessity in the Upstate, according to Mickler. “We are in the people building business, and we want to help those less fortunate understand that there is a lifeline out there for them,” Mickler explains, “and that is the Urban League.” 

For information on the programs offered by the Urban League contact them at 864-244-3862 or jmickler@urbanleagueof theupstate.org. n

In The Lead:

Julian Crawford Bringing an International Edge

 by Lydia Dishman

 photo by Pat Rawlins Photography

When Birmingham, England native Julian Crawford was transferred to Germany while working for a former employer, his responsibilities went much further than financial management and strategic turn-arounds. “I spoke no German,” says one of The Capital Corporation’s current principals, smiling broadly as if navigating a new job while learning a foreign language were second nature to him.

To make assimilating easier, his colleagues gave him a cup with instructions to place one Deutschmark in it every time he spoke English. “Nothing like losing money to motivate you,” he says, but explains the real facilitator was working with people from Scandinavia, Italy, Spain and the Middle East who all spoke German as a second language. “Total immersion,” says the now-fluent German speaker, laughing at the experience.

It may seem exotic to some and daunting to others, but to hear him recount it, this kind of experience is pretty standard fare for Crawford. He’s seen much of the world, setting out to explore after graduating with a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Sheffield. For one year he journeyed through Australia, took a train from Delhi to Varanasi in India (overnight with 30 people, chickens and produce – in a car made for six passengers), and covered much of the U.S. and Canada. “I started on one side and went down the other, mostly on a Greyhound bus,” he says.

On another trip through Indonesia with his wife, Crawford was determined to see the most far-flung temples and to get to Komodo Island to see its eponymous dragons. He chuckles again at the memory, “The harder to reach, the better.”

He is quick to point out that the help of friendly locals greatly facilitated these explorations. But, perhaps it is his innate geniality, demonstrated by an easy and frequent smile and his obvious delight in experiencing other cultures, that brought out others’ kindness towards him. Whether he’s talking about trekking through remote regions or the creative elements of his work in mergers and acquisitions (M&A), it appears that his own adaptability and determination prepares him for anything.

So it comes as no surprise that when he accepted the position with The Capital Corporation, Crawford threw himself into both the corporate and local cultures with equal zeal. “I am motivated by innovation and change,” he says, and nothing could be closer to the truth. He once received the highest score for innovation on a personality test, and he currently holds patents on two inventions. He created a conductive fiber, which now belongs to the Japanese chemical company, Teijin, in addition to another tubular fabric which can be used for automotive applications.

“I had some M&A experience with turnaround and strategy, what drives profit and how to improve selling. I used all that as building blocks,” explains Crawford, who found his new workplace as diverse as the current global economy. “We are all of slightly different backgrounds,” he says, describing the other principals, “but the breadth is beneficial to our clients.”

Crawford slipped seamlessly into The Capital Corporation, adding his expertise to a team with twenty years of success providing a complete range of innovative investment banking services for middle market companies. Crawford breaks down the intricacies this way, “The seller wants a premium and the buyer wants a discount. My job is to identify a buyer and to determine what would be seen as value for both the buyer and the seller. It is really a simple equation,” he quips.

Turning serious again, Crawford admits he gets up at 5:30 every morning and that there is no such thing as an average day. “I have clients in London, India, Mexico and Australia,” he explains. “For instance, right now the weakness of the dollar is attractive to foreign buyers. India is an emerging market, very well capitalized in technology, software and manufacturing, with a lot of ties through London.”

Foreign investors’ focus on the United States has kept Crawford busy assisting businesses with opening subsidiaries. He says, “M&A does satisfy a lot of things I look for. Most people are constrained in their jobs. There is the most latitude for doing things here that is atypical in this business.” He quickly adds that he doesn’t consider himself a workaholic. “I have the kind of job where you don’t have to be at work to have a flash of inspiration,” and acknowledges that sniffing out the best opportunities, an integral part of deal making, can happen at any hour.

Though he thoroughly enjoys his work, he says matter-of-factly, “Passion can’t be continuous. It is something you go in and out of. When I do something that I can say Julian Crawford did – I know I may not be the only one who can do it – but it is the individual bit that makes it worth doing.”

When pressed, Crawford does say that had he not pursued this career, he might have turned to capturing opportunities of the visual kind. Taking photographic safaris would satisfy his urge to see the world through the lens of a camera. But he has no regrets. “The things I miss are the exception more than the rule. If you look back, you should be comfortable with your decisions, not have ‘if-onlys.’ We are only here one time.” n

> BACK TO THE TOP

Ken Zwerdling: Not Lost in Translation
      By Lydia Dishman

Even if you’ve never visited the Big Apple you can probably imagine a New York minute. Lightning quick and razor sharp – by the time you notice it, it’s over and you’re on to the next thing.
     
      Ken Zwerdling is a living New York minute. Sitting in a corner of a handsome leather sofa in his office at Liberty Square, the CEO of Foreign Translations Inc., describes his company’s acceleration, charting its brief history with a rapid-fire delivery.
     
      “We started [Foreign Translations, Inc.] out of our house, but we decided to get space in this building because we are growing and getting clients all over the world,” he says. All over Greenville too apparently, as their client list bursts with big names such as Fluor, Rockwell, and Michelin.
     
      “Every major law firm is our client,” he says. Not bad for an outfit that is currently occupying what Zwerdling says was the smallest space available in the prestigious office building at the entrance to downtown. “We needed a presence,” he says simply.
     
      Tipping his hat to the non-traditional workplace, he admits that part of their core staff is not based in Greenville. “Two of our staff are in Florida, another is in Raleigh, another in NY, and one in France. We can do this because of technology,” he says, touting the benefits of having a web-based office program.
      Zwerdling is the only person in the company who does not speak any other language fluently, but has “financial-ese” down pat. Cutting his teeth at Goldman Sachs on Wall Street helped, as did a stint consulting and strategic planning for a number of corporate clients and start ups.
     
      “I learned through market research and competitive analysis how to put things together.” Concept modeling was the place to be until the late ‘90s,  he says, just before the people getting funded in e-commerce crashed and burned. “After that, no one was paying to write business plans,” he says.
     
      So he set his sights closer to home. In his home to be precise. All that time, his wife, Tamar Paltrow was doing what she always did best: foreign translation. The current president of the company, Paltrow is fluent in Italian and has handled a number of high profile assignments, including document translation for the multi-million dollar Parmalat case.
     
      “I thought I should look at that a little more closely,” Zwerdling says. “This is a $9 billion industry.” His research showed that the majority of translation services are run by translators who stay busy doing the actual work and are not necessarily able to run and grow a business. “A company like that cannot build long term value with one-shot projects,” he observes.
     
      So, he took the next step. “I wrote a business plan that was not geographically specific,” he says, allowing them to pack up their house in Florida and follow the call of Greenville’s quality of life, its growing economy and proximity to the mountains, Atlanta, and Charlotte.
     
      The rest, as they say, is history, albeit at a breakneck pace. Zwerdling is constantly looking for ways to expand the staff and the number of projects. “I am looking to have my UPS moment,” he says with a laughing reference to the popular commercial that shows a small business getting thousands of hits on their website. Since they changed their operation’s name from Mondial to Foreign Translations in January, they have revamped their website and translated it into nine languages.
     
      “We use search engine optimization to our advantage, especially with foreign search engines. We are on Google Korea,”  he says with a measure of satisfaction. “We want to expand into Europe and Asia – especially China and France.” Eventually, Zwerdling would like to hire his own in-house search engine marketing person.
     
      Technology aside, Zwerdling acknowledges that the key to their business is not just to do the work, but to get the work. “We use the internet to facilitate. We will never meet 95 percent of our customers, but if someone asks for a quote they get it within 15 minutes. That sets the tone for the entire relationship.”
     
      His other plans include more trips to national trade shows for some pretty unexpected business segments. “I attended the manufacturing trade show in Chicago. There were 20,000 attendees and only one other translation company. I want to be where there is nobody and everybody needs us.”
      Seem strange? Think again. “I just bought a barbecue grill from Home Depot and tried to read the instructions. It is not that they were wrong, but they were clearly translated by a Japanese person into English.”
     
      Another key to their meteoric rise may be due to their hiring practices. “It took us seven years to build up our freelance staff to about 1,000 translators. Now, we have MBAs doing business documents in Russia and people who only do legal. They are all highly specialized and every one of them is sitting in their own country.” In addition, he emphasizes, “Our staff not only speaks another language; they have a passion for languages.”
     
      “We are expected to make $1 million in sales this year – double what we made last year,” he finishes neatly.  If it all seems brilliantly simple, it is, in part. The tough part is that when Zwerdling and his family take off for a week at the beach, Tamar is driving the car while Ken is speeding down the information highway, facilitated by a wireless adapter in his laptop. He confesses to constantly read “all the business publications,” and obsessively checks for updates online.
      “I wake up in the middle of the night, I have ideas,” he says and lowers his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I’m always thinking about work.”
      In practically the same breath, he’s jumped ahead to the eventual sale of the company for a tidy sum that will allow him to retire, and turn his thoughts to pursue a Ph.D.
     
      “I’d like to teach a course in entrepreneurship for Clemson or another university,” he says, though it is hard to imagine him at such a sedentary pursuit. Even he confesses, “I can’t sit still.”

HISTORY
      Battle of the Botanicals
      By Lydia Dishman
     
      Much has been documented about wars and warfare. Books and films, oral history and photographs, fine art and quotidian conversation, all bursts with examples of everything from the Revolution to the present war in Iraq.

But what of another war, daily fought on our soil? In high summer you can see it unfold as the ropes of kudzu vine put a stranglehold on trees and telephone poles, while poke and milkweed bravely shoot up alongside. Native Rudbeckia and Echinacea adorn the feet of hometown hero Pete Hollis’s statue, while imported cotton plants make a second comeback as ornamentals in front of Riverplace. The tide is turning slowly as native plants are rediscovered for their ability to thrive in our sometimes punishing environment.

Greenville has been since the earliest time, a green and pleasant land. Though we may never be sure if the name came from its flora or the illustrious General Greene of Revolutionary War fame, the landscape was noted by many a visitor and settler such as one Edward Hooker, who traveled from Connecticut in 1805 and found “the streets covered with green grass and handsome trees growing here and there.”
      Before the Europeans came, Greenville was hunting land for the Cherokee and Catawba tribes. The rivers were bordered by thick cane brakes. “Old fields,” places that had been carefully burned for clearing and cultivating, were smothered in grasses and wildflowers.
      The Native Americans used the flora to their advantage, turning to them for medicines, food, dyes, and building materials. The “three sisters” – corn, beans, and squash – were staple foodstuffs. Bark, roots, and leaves of trees such as sassafras, dogwood, and tulip poplar were commonly used for fevers. Black cohosh, made into tea, assisted women in childbirth to bring on contractions for a more rapid delivery. Bloodroot dyed the skin. Mixed with bear grease it became war paint and imitation blood on a tomahawk. Women also used it, adding a flush to their cheeks.

Speaking of red stains, hundreds of acres of wild strawberries, spurred by the burning of old fields, thrived. This variety was much smaller than the fruits we purchase or grow today. But they packed a colorful punch. So much so that they colored the legs of horses galloping through.

This in particular was noted by William Bartram, America’s first native born naturalist, artist, and writer, who traveled extensively in the Southeast during the tempestuous years of the Revolution. His path from Charleston through the upcountry in 1775 marked just part of a famous journey that would be turned into a bestseller for its time. Travels was widely distributed in the nascent US and in Europe. The Europeans were awash in admiration, admonishment and curiosity. Influenced by his vivid descriptions of lush landscapes, they thought it rough and wild, filled with native savages and exotic plants.
      Though Bartram never quite passed through Greenville, C. Leland Rodgers notes that Bartram’s description of Oconee could have easily been one of Greenville. “...encircled by a wreath of uniform hills, their swelling bases clad in cheerful verdure, over which issuing from between the mountains, plays along a glittering river, meandering through the meadows....”

Bartram enthusiastically catalogued hundreds of plants and animals. He created names for them, some of which remain, while others have changed. Among the catalogued are some perennial backyard favorites such as the oakleaf hydrangea and the big leaf magnolia.
      It is easy to image how other plants were “discovered.” Surely when trekking on Paris Mountain around 1798, Governor John Drayton followed his nose to the fragrant yellow Carolinian woodbine. Better known as honeysuckle, Drayton christened it lonicera lutea caroliniensia and said, “It not being noticed in any botanical book, respecting this state...in form and appearance much like English honeysuckle. It grows in a warm southern exposure, on a rocky precipice of Paris’s Mountain in the Greenville District.”

Though taken by the beauty and fragrance of what he found, Drayton was nothing if not a practical businessman. “Nature, wise in all her actions produced these, not only for the admiration but for the uses of man.”

And used they were. Passed from the hands of the Native Americans and adapted by the Europeans and Africans, common wisdom prevailed, continuing to provide sustenance and healing to the population that scratched their living from clay soil of the Piedmont.
      Poke, for instance, which still dominates the roadsides (and backyard gardens) stubbornly raising four foot high fronds with berry laden spikes, has been used for everything from dying wool and meat to curing all manner of ills. In her compendium of local folklore, Tis True Fer Fact, Blanche Marsh recounts, “This happened after I found out poke berry root will cure poison oak. You boil up the root into a strong brew, take a cloth and rub it all over the affected area on your body. Be sure you lock your door first or you might be charged for streaking plumb nude.”

Marsh also noted, “Milkweed is good for remedies too. Some folks call it nightshade. They’d chop up little leaves and pods, put it in a frying pan with a little milk and boil it. My mother used it for when people got milk leg. You know that’s when your leg swells up and you get a blistering and breaking out.” Other times, it was the fragrance – or rather, the stench – that could be used to advantage. “Just about everybody used asaphedity. You’d put some of it in a little sack and tie it to a string and hang it around your neck. You smelled worse than a pole cat! That kept folks away so you didn’t get their flu.”
     
      Drayton could not have known when he spoke of plants “for the uses of man,” that soon the native plants would be pushed aside for new varieties in pursuit of beauty and money. In his enthusiasm as an amateur botanist, Joel Poinsett, who made his summer home in Greenville, vigorously promoted diversification of crops, new fertilizers and seed exchanges while developing a formal garden at his “Homestead.” His most recognizable contribution is the poinsettia from Mexico, a plant that cannot be grown in our soil, but develops nicely inside the home. His garden was much imitated. Chancellor Waddy Thompson and Benjamin Perry followed suit, and in 1835 there was even a cry from O.H. Wells, editor of the Greenville Mountaineer, urging residents to plant ornamental trees to beautify the city. Thanks to these efforts, Greenville still enjoys a liberal painting of pink and white from native dogwoods and magnolias as well as imported crepe myrtles and Bradford pears. A relatively peaceful example of co-habitating natives and exotics.

At times though, the botanical tussle has become an all-out war. A.V. Huff notes in the years following the Revolution, Greenville planters were on the hunt for flora that would provide more than a little food or medicine, fragrance or beauty. Corn was the most cultivated for personal use, as well as for sale, up until the Civil War. Cotton plants, brought from Europe, were grown in modest amounts until then. It wasn’t long before short staple and coarse fiber replaced corn and subsistence crops in the local economy and eventually laid waste to the soil. But that is a whole other column.

Among this past summer’s movies, one of the top-grossing surprise hits was also the raunchiest, crudest, and most right-on-target. Knocked Up (whose very title raises certain expectations) was written and directed by Judd Apatow (this being his second outing; his first, The 40-Year Old Virgin).
     
      In the film we find Ben Stone – grubby, pudgy, slacker extraordinaire – whose Peter Pan Syndrome looks like Peter on Speed. Out clubbing one night he meets Alison: tall, blonde, beautiful, up-and-coming national TV personality. They end up drunk, at her place having sex (which he doesn’t remember). The next morning, in the light of day, she realizes that he’s not someone she ever wants to see again. But after she discovers she’s pregnant, she realizes she must.
      No unique plot here. Go back to The Scarlet Letter and you’ve got basically the same dilemma – and that wasn’t a unique plot device even then.
     
      What provides Knocked Up such a high entertainment quotient is how Apatow, effortlessly weaves into the dialogue so many pop culture references that the audience knows this is their world they’re watching. What gives the film its value is his keen sense of the various cultural currents many of us have to navigate.
      The crudeness, which at times is over the top, serves, for the most part, an important purpose. You and I live in a crude, vulgar, and (for many) highly offensive culture. Most of the crassness around us finds its expression in various forms of sexual images and verbiage. Couple that with “hooking up” (or at least trying to) coming close to replacing baseball as our national pastime, and the stage is set for many a lady to suddenly discover she’s carrying a stranger’s baby.
     
      Three points: First, a hedonistic society, such as ours, produces moral confusion – and conflicting desires. When Alison and Ben are leaving for breakfast after their first tryst, they encounter Alison’s brother-in-law, Pete, carrying his three-year-old daughter out to the SUV. After introductions are made with some good natured smirks and winks and nods, Pete turns toward his vehicle, whispering in his daughter’s ear, “Don’t ever do what they did.” The little girl replies, giggling, “I’m gonna do it...” To which Dad responds, “You are? Uh, oh. Someone’s getting home schooled.”
     
      Funny stuff. But the fact is that as a father, Pete doesn’t want his daughter to behave like Alison has. But what’s the likelihood that she won’t if she grows up with everyone around her taking such a cavalier attitude.
      Second, in a hedonistic society we’re often forced (in order to soften in our own minds what we’re actually saying) to speak euphemistically, thus causing the very same words, used by different people, to have completely different meanings.
     
      When Alison and Ben first see their baby via ultrasound, the ob-gyn (thinking they’re married) says, “Yeah, there’s your baby. Now take good care of it.” A couple of scenes later one of Ben’s friends, alarmed at the disruption this pregnancy is causing, urges him “to take care of it.” A couple more scenes pass and Alison’s mother is telling her she’ll just have “to take care of it” – like her half-sister did years earlier, and who now “has a real baby.”
     
       Finally, as a portion of our one generation degenerates into hedonism you can trace the previous generation’s influence. When Ben goes to his father, pleading over the phone for counsel and guidance (“I don’t know what to do”), he gets none. His father has lived his own life in a moral haze and has none to offer.
      Knocked Up is a cautionary tale that ends with a note of hope: we can grow up. We can begin to understand consequences and take responsibility; we can experience the joy of commitment over and above the fleeting thrill of momentary self-gratification; we can recognize a defenseless child’s need to be “taken care of”, and in doing so put ourselves in a better position to provide that child and her generation with moral stability.

Johnny Price is executive director of The Caleb Group, which offers a forum to consider public and private issues from the Biblical perspective. Submit comments to johnnyprice@charter.net or editor@greenvillemagazine.com.