A show winding down at Scenic City Clay Arts not only celebrates two Appalachian art traditions but offers some eye-popping color for dreary January.
In "Face Jugs and Quilts of Modern-Day Appalachia," glossy eyes embedded in face jugs stare back at viewers and lustrous fabrics of contemporary quilts cocoon the walls.
The 70 works make up the first exhibition of the year for Scenic City Clay Arts, which occupies space in the Arts Building on East 11th Street.
The exhibit came together as an offshoot of a Hamilton County Schools in-service day for art teachers, according to Carrie Anne Parks, a ceramics sculptor who teaches part-time at the nonprofit community pottery studio. Some 50 teachers and administrators signed up for a day of wheel-throwing and hand-building pottery organized by local artist Lolly Durant, with Parks as her self-described sidekick.
"As part of this, we had curators from the Houston Museum [of Decorative Arts], who came and did a talk for us about traditional face jugs that were originally made by African slaves in the South, and they brought a face jug from their collection so everybody could see the real thing," Parks explains.
If you go
* What: “Face Jugs and Quilts of Modern-Day Appalachia.”* When: 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday.* Where: Scenic City Clay Arts, 301 E. 11th St.* Phone: 423-883-1758.* Website: sceniccityclayarts.org.
"Then we wanted to have something in the gallery to support this idea and give [the teachers] some more visual food for thought, so we invited [potter] Mark Issenberg and he invited his friend [and fellow potter] Shelby West."
She explains that while the noted North Georgia potters based their works on the traditions of face jugs, "they're contemporary potters living in the modern world, so theirs are interpretations of the traditional forms."
Meanwhile, Durant and Parks connected with members of the Chattanooga Modern Quilt Guild.
The textile artists adhere to traditional ways, "although most of them are using pretty high-tech sewing machines and more modern fabrics," Parks says. "But certainly they are people who are carrying on a traditional craft in a contemporary form."
She describes the quilts as "really like paintings, the way the people are working with color and forms. They are doing interesting things with their stitchery and adventurous things with their quilts."
The works will be on view through Thursday.
Contact Lisa Denton at ldenton@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6281.