Second Annual
Craft in Alabama
January 20 – March 17
opening reception Friday January 20^th 5-7 pm.   

This exhibition is to highlight and celebrate artists in the state of Alabama who work with traditional crafts mediums to express ideas in the vocabulary of today’s contemporary art and sculpture. 

Craft artists on display include fabric artists Debra Scott and Barbara Mitchell and Billy Ray Sims, basket weaver, all from Birmingham.  Terri Camp of Opp will exhibit an assortment of highly imaginative gourds.  Face jugs, a traditional folk art pottery, will be represented by Jerry Brown along with local potters Steve Dark and John Rezner.  Sam Cornman will display a blown glass installation.

Ninth-generation potter Jerry Brown of Hamilton, AL. is the recipient of the 1992 National Heritage Award from the National Endowment for the Arts and the 2003 Alabama Folk Heritage Award. Jerry Brown still digs his own clay at a one hundred year old clay pit in Detroit, Alabama and has the only known mule-powered pug mill still operating in the United States. Brown and his mule, Blue, mix and grind the clay used to make his one-of-a-kind pieces of pottery and his wife Sandra glazes and finishes the ware.

Terri Camp’s award winning gourds will be featured in an upcoming issue of Southern Living.  Six years ago Terri retired and moved to Opp, AL after a lifetime in Alaska.  It was here that she discovered the wealth of artistic possibilities presented by the humble gourd.  Since that time Camp has been expressing her creative spirit through these gourds .  “With my sculptures, I usually spend 4 to 8 weeks on one piece, depending on how complicated it becomes.  I rarely duplicate a piece, as I am pretty well over it once I've spent any length of time on it.”  .

Local potter Steve Dark’s face jugs display wry wit and surprising details. Dark uses the forms of the ‘whimsical face and chicken jugs as a springboard to express his offbeat sense of humor’.  Dark’s work won Best of Show at the Orange Beach Festival of Arts and has been featured in Coastal Lifestyles Magazine.  In 2011 Dark was Chairman of Exhibitions for the Alabama Clay Conference in Mobile.  He is co-owner and exhibitor at Cathedral Square Gallery, Mobile where he has curated shows focusing on “guys named Steve”.  Dark teaches ceramics at Faulkner State University and can be found at his Gulf Shores studio, Pottery Central.

Sam Cornman, resident glass artist at The Hot Shop at the Orange Beach Arts Center, is an internationally recognized artist.  Cornman graduated from the School of American Crafts, Rochester Institute of Technology and has played an important role in the contemporary craft community of Alabama since his move south in 2007.   Cornman demonstrates flameworking at Kentuck Art Festival and Jerry Brown Art Festival each year and his work has been featured in exhibits from New York to New Orleans. 

 Barbara Mitchell uses textiles to create contemporary art quilts, fiber-wrapped wall hangings, liturgical banners and clergy stoles.  Her stitching methods include applique, piecework, embroidery and beadwork and all her designs are original.  Some pieces are abstracts driven by color and movement, while others are representational designs.  In 2011 her work was included in the Sacred Threads biennial exhibition outside Washington DC.

 Fairhope artist John Rezner’s face jugs are wood fired and made of local Baldwin County clay. A member of the United States Sports Academy’s Art Committee, Rezner  created a series of face jugs of baseball greats for the Academy of Sports as well as a jug of the Abbot of the Shaolin Temple in China. The jug is now in China as part of the Shaolin Temple's museum collection. 

 Billy Ray Sims has worked as a magazine editor for over thirty years but he is also an artisan basket weaver.  Sims is a member of Southern Highlands Craft Guild; Alabama Designer/Craftsmen; Mammoth Cave Basket Maker’s Guild and SouthernArtistry Register (now South Arts).  His materials range from white oak and black ash to sweet grass and bull rush and are appropriate for each style.  He hand renders all materials and harvests and splits most of the white oak.

Birmingham Fabric artist Debra Scott works with various types of felt, creating vessels, hats and wall hangings.  The nuno felting technique combines hand-dyed silk fabrics and various amounts of fiber to create a lighter weight garment to wear in warmer climates.  Scott is a member of Alabama Designer Craftsmen Guild; state representative of Handweavers Guild of America (HGA), member and past-President of The Greater Birmingham Fiber Guild. Her pieces have won awards at the Bluff Park Art Show, Kentuck Festival and Leeds Folk Festival.