As the newest artist-in-residence at Shenandoah National Park, documentary filmmaker Stace Carter sums up his outdoorsy side in one word: “Meh.”
A former Boy Scout, Eagle Scout and decades-long Albemarle resident, Carter says he has “a great appreciation for comfort,” and his interest in this artistic residency comes not with the chance to shoehorn backcountry hikes into an art project but rather to indulge himself in easy access to spectacular natural resources.
“This is a great chance to spend time in a place without which my life would be less,” he says. “The first time I went to Shenandoah, not long after I moved to Charlottesville, I was killing time while looking for a job and decided to head toward the mountains and see what I could find. I headed toward Skyline Drive and was blown away, and since then I’ve visited as often as possible.”
In short, Carter is like many park visitors: content to get lost in little adventures, whether that’s walking a section of the Appalachian Trail or simply wandering around for a few hours.
The everyman approach no doubt appeals to leaders of the Shenandoah National Park Artist-in-Residence Program, which offers artists a chance to live and work in the park for a period of two weeks, then donate original works of art to the park.
In Carter’s case, he’ll create two two-minute videos of the people he meets in the park. “I’m hoping to capture some of the stories from visitors and park staff about how they found the park and what they’ve found in the park,” he says.
Carter will act as a story detective for his residency, living at Skyland Resort and immersing himself in the experience of the Shenandoah wild. Ultimately, his work will live with the National Park Service’s centennial celebratory campaign Find Your Park, which highlights visitor stories from across the country.
To further the goals of this campaign, Carter has been tasked with engaging the public in his work—a process that becomes him. “The park service will give me assistance in exploring,” he says. You wouldn’t think there is a behind-the-scenes to it, but there is a public safety component. I get to work with rangers to find special and relatively off-limits places, and I have no idea what I’m going to find.”
Diving into the unknown with the task of creation is the name of the game for documentary filmmakers like Carter, who got into the business as a music editor “a billion years ago.” He worked as a film writer and producer in the advertising industry, a job that was, as he puts it, “fun and big budget and spiritually unsatisfying.”
Tired of driving to and from Richmond and Washington, D.C. on a daily basis, Carter eventually became a video producer at the Darden School of Business, where he honed his behind-the-camera chops and interview skills.
He also began working with the founders of the Festival of the Photograph, helping the first LOOK3 establish its video production component. Getting to know documentary photographers like Bill Allard and Eugene Richards and see the scope of their work was life-changing.
“I was floored with how much of a story they could tell with one frame,” says Carter. “Bill does Americana and personal community stories, and Eugene does social justice stuff. I saw their work as a combination of the amazing power of art and the adventure of actually going and making it.”
Documentary captured his heart, he says, because “you’ve got to immerse yourself. You can’t just show up, snap pictures and hope you’ve got something good. You’ve got to get to know people and communities, and that takes time. That’s not an easy thing. There’s adventure rolled into the process.”
He began his own exploration in earnest when he began filming a documentary for Darden about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. He flew south and spent a week working with the Coast Guard.
“That project taught me the value of expressing big ideas with small stories,” says Carter. “We met a lot of good folks who were tied up in a huge conflict. Most of the people who work the rigs fish commercially on their days off, so getting rid of Gulf drilling didn’t work for them, contrary to everything we heard in the press. Working both industries tends to be a family tradition and runs deep in the blood. It was fascinating and gratifying to find people who had a story that needed to be told and to help them tell it.”
Now he will do the same for the park he loves. “To me, Shenandoah, and the wider national park system, is a big story about our recognition of the profoundly beautiful and meaningful places that still warrant a notion of American Exceptionalism,” he said. “They tie us to the past and remind us of the importance of preserving what this land was, either hundreds or even tens of thousands of years ago.”
His research has revealed an abundance of stories even before he set foot in Skyland. “You can imagine what it must be like to work as a park ranger and know one of these most valued places so well, to have a family history that dates back before the Civilian Conservation Corps, who built this park. Small stories, big lessons.”