Robert “Rocky” Parriott has never been defined by a single pathway. Over the years, he has been a teacher, a coach, a cook, a crafter and a poet but above all else, always a photographer.
Throughout his lifetime, he has coached everything from football to baseball, taught biology, anatomy and physiology, washed dishes and worked the food line in multiple restaurants and hosted his own cooking show, both on the radio and on television. Through every detour and reinvention, photography remained ever-present in his mind.
During his time at App State, he was a member of the Appalachian student-led newspaper, staying behind the camera and utilizing his skills in photography for the paper.
His photography journey began on May 24, 1973, the day he bought his first camera: a moment that would define the rest of his life.
“It was my birthday, I was 21. I went to Fox Camera in Augusta, Georgia and bought a 35mm Pentax Spotmatic film camera and I bought all the dark room equipment,” Parriott said. “I would go to the Savannah River near Augusta, Georgia and I’d go down and I’d shoot in the rapids.”
Two decades later, a sudden shift in perspective changed his life direction. When he was 42 years old, Parriott experienced a change in lifestyle, which made it difficult to continue to work in the agriculture field after 20 years in the business.
“When I became a vegetarian I couldn’t sell cattle anymore, so I wanted to get a degree in biology, so I could be a biology teacher,” Parriott said. “And I did, I became a biology teacher.”
From 1994-97, Parriott fully immersed himself in campus life. During his time, he worked in student media services as a darkroom tech, for the biology department as an assistant lab instructor and as a photographer for The Appalachian student-run newspaper.
While on the paper, he photographed football games, instinctively knowing where to point the camera due to his prior experience coaching the sport. When he found his own time, the rapids of the Savannah River of his youth lingered, inspiring him to photograph nature.
In 2003, six years after securing his degree, Parriott took a photograph of some yellow ladyslippers, the colors of the petals pastel and bright. It made its way into the Carlton Gallery in Banner Elk, a monumental moment for his career, Parriott said.
“I started loving being in the gallery with my work,” Parriott said. “It made me feel like I was evolving into an artist.”
Decades later, in 2017, nature remained his primary focus when he began writing. During his time at App State, he was assigned “Mountains of the Heart: A Natural History of the Appalachians” by Scott Weidensaul for a biogeography class, a book that stuck with him long after the class had ended.
“I’ve lived here in the mountains since 1981, this book has everything that I value about our world here in the mountains,” Parriott said. “That chapter on the birds, it just moved me to where I became more observant and more interested in learning about all the subjects that are in this book. So, that’s how it started. When I moved to my house that I live in now eight years ago, I wrote my first poem because I was so inspired.”
In 2022, Parriott published his first book of poetry and prose, “JAGS AND RIPPLES IN THE COSMIC FABRIC: A CELEBRATION OF OUR NATURAL WORLD,” marking the beginning of a new chapter in his creative life.
On Dec. 6th from 11 a.m. to noon, The Todd Mercantile hosted its first Groovy Poets Party. The event featured local writers sharing their work, and community members were invited to come listen, support and even read their own stories. Parriott shared selections of his poetry, continuing his long-standing effort to reconnect the community with the natural world.
