Timi Reedy and Tammy Clemons are ecofeminist scholars, sustainability activists, and multi-media artists with deep Appalachian roots. As homesteaders and regular open house hosts for the annual Kentucky Solar Tour, Timi and Tammy have also been featured in several film projects that focus on different aspects of Appalachian living and sustainability.
Timi and Tammy formally began the "Remembering the Reedys" documentary project in 2009 with a 3-month Appalachian Sound Archives Fellowship in the Berea College Special Collections and Sound Archives where they donated and processed Frances and John Reedy's recordings, photos, and memorabilia. In 2009, they also completed the Community Scholar Program sponsored by the Kentucky Folklife Program, and in 2010 they conducted additional research at the Kentucky Historical Society as part of a Family Research Fellowship. They are recipients of a 2009 Kentucky Foundation for Women Artist Enrichment Grant and a 2010 Alternate ROOTS Artistic Assistance Grant for equipment support for the documentary. They have publicly presented different project components, phases, and findings for their final fellowship presentation at Berea College in 2009 and at the 2010 and 2012 Appalachian Studies Association Annual Meetings.
Timi grew up in Harlan and Corbin, Kentucky. Her grandparents, John and Frances Reedy, were early Bluegrass musicians who temporarily migrated north to work in Dayton, Ohio during the late 1940’s through early 1960’s. As a child, she would travel with her grandparents as they toured and performed at The Grand Ole Opry, Renfro Valley, churches, and community gatherings during the 1960’s. During those years, she developed a deep and abiding love and respect for Appalachian music and culture. She earned an associate degree from Sue Bennett College, and is a three-time alumna of Eastern Kentucky University. At EKU, she earned a B.S. in physical education and a biology minor, an M.S. in physical education with an emphasis in sports administration, and an M.A. in education with an emphasis in allied health science.
For four years she co-owned a pottery studio in Berea, and in the early 1990's she worked for four years as an assistant sculptor for Martin Studios. For two years during the mid-1990’s, Timi participated in an ongoing video oral history project gathering stories from Appalachian people over 65 and their memories of the forest. As part of this project, she conducted two interviews with her grandmother, one about the forest in Eastern Kentucky where she grew up and another on her music career. This oral history project was sponsored by Appalachia—Science in the Public Interest (ASPI), which has archived copies of the project. Over the past decade, she has also worked as a part-time production assistant, and she recently produced an "Appalachia Mixtape" as follow-up to the 2012 Harlan/Knoxville MicroFest organized by the Network of Ensemble Theaters. The audio piece features interview excerpts with Linda Parris-Bailey (of The Carpetbag Theatre, Inc.), Robert Gipe (and other Higher Ground participants), Berea musicians Mitch Barrett and Moose Morgan, Margo Miller (of the Appalachian Community Fund), and more important cultural organizers in the Appalachian region. Timi is also a self-taught mycologist who first learned to hunt morel mushrooms with her grandparents.
As the heir to her grandparents’ musical collection, Timi has an extensive collection of photos, news clippings, reel-to-reel recordings, vinyl LP’s, and 45’s, and she has also had many of the Reedy recordings converted into digital format. In addition, she also inherited her grandmother’s formidable collection of vinyl recordings by other artists from the region. Most recently as a research assistant for bell hooks, she has participated as a production assistant for a video project with James Hilleman as well as extensive recorded conversations between bell hooks and Wendell Berry. She and Tammy continue to discover and document new and intriguing multimedia artifacts that Timi's grandmother collected.
Tammy grew up in Montgomery County, Kentucky. Growing up, she spent most weekends with her grandparents Ruby and Howard Clemons, watching “Hee-Haw” on Saturday nights and going to church with one of them on Sunday mornings. She spent substantial time learning piano from and performing music with her mamaw Ruby, who wrote more than 1000 gospel and country songs. She was also exposed to and enjoyed various types of gospel music through her mamaw’s Church of God, her papaw’s United Baptist church (who allowed no musical accompaniment), her father’s favorite bluegrass gospel radio station WSKV in Stanton, and her mother’s love for the music of Elvis Presley.
Throughout her various academic and professional experiences, Tammy has explored and engaged in various arts media and studied the Appalachian region and cultures. She is a graduate of Berea College as well as its first Women’s Studies major. While pursuing a graduate degree at Harvard, Tammy also worked for two years as a manuscript desk assistant at the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at the Radcliffe Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Much of her graduate work focused on feminist theology, ecofeminism, and grassroots activism. She earned an MTS in world religions and women's studies in 2001. After grad school, Tammy worked at Berea College for almost eight years before embarking on this production. She worked as the Executive Assistant to the President for four and a half years, and later served as the College's campus-wide Sustainability Coordinator for almost three and a half years. She is currently a doctoral student in the University of Kentucky Department of Anthropology where she is researching young women visual media makers in Central Appalachia what they envision for the future. In 2014, she completed a graduate certificate from the University of Kentucky Department of Gender and Women's Studies, and in 2016, she earned an MA in cultural anthropology. For three years, she worked as a teaching assistant in the UK Department of Anthropology and the Appalachian Studies Center.
Tammy is also a media artist who has made more than 40 short videos over the past two decades, including a 10-minute documentary about the Berea College Appalachian Museum, a short commemorative video about Timi’s grandmother, and a digital story about her own grandparents and the connection between Appalachian heritage and sustainable living. She is especially interested in film/video as a medium for storytelling, not only in the context of researching and documenting on behalf of others but in empowering communities and individuals to tell their own stories through film as well. Throughout her various academic and professional experiences, she has explored and engaged in various arts media and studied the Appalachian region and cultures.
Tammy has participated in several film courses and workshops, and she taught a Berea College Short Term course called “Acting the Part: Filmmaking and Community Activism” in January 2009. She has also offered a short workshop on “Filmmaking and Activism: Organizing Film Screenings for Social and Environmental Justice” at the 2009 Campus-Community Partnerships for Sustainability Conference, where she also co-coordinated the “Water and Climate Change Film Festival.” For several years, she co-produced the local Clear Creek Film Festival featuring film/video projects “focused on but not limited to natural and sustainable living, Appalachian storytelling, Appalachian youth culture, global awareness/human rights, and any films created or produced by local media artists.” In 2013, she served as an invited jury member for the Festival Internacional de Cine de los Derechos Humanos (International Human Rights Film Festival) in Sucre, Bolivia. In summer 2014, she volunteered as an Assistant Media Teacher for Camp Steele at High Rocks Educational Corporation in West Virginia, and in the summers of 2015-2018, she served as the lead Media Teacher as staff for the same program. For four summers, she also spent time visiting and volunteering with the Appalachian Media Institute (AMI) in Whitesburg, Kentucky.
As a theatre artist, Tammy has participated in several community productions, some of which featured the work of local playwrights. She performed two Eve Ensler monologues from “A Memory, A Rant, A Monologue, and a Prayer as part of the Berea College production of the Vagina Monologues. She also played multiple roles in two series of 10-minute plays for the Berea Rain Barrel Festival and the Berea Quilt Extravaganza. For the 2009 and 2010 Clear Creek Festival, she participated in the collective creation and performance of a short set of character sketches and skits called “Clear Creek: Past, Present, and Future” based on local story gathering, personal experiences, and improvisational exercises. In 2016, she participated in a month-long Fall Youth Theater Lab that was a collaborative theater workshop facilitated by AMI and Roadside Theater and resulted in an original short play that was publicly performed for a community audience. In November 2017, she participated in the Hurricane Gap Community Theater Institute at Pine Mountain Settlement School.
