FEATURES
Pottery and painting perfection at Comer Museum
Laura Nation-Atchison
06-08-2008
His hand worked pots are done in a sensational red finish, and accented with carvings and flashes of other color.
And her huge florals hanging in the other gallery at Comer Museum and Arts Center have a realism inspired by her own garden.
Potter Larry Allen of Leeds and Sylacauga painter Judy Hartsfield have filled the museum with their work this month, and there’s a reception in their honor next Thursday from 6 p.m. until 8:30 p.m.
Chrissy Pursell will entertain on the piano and there will be refreshments served.
Allen grew up in Birmingham and took some art classes at Jeff State.
He was exposed to the hand building method of pottery there, liked it to some degree, but said the process was just too slow for him.
While at Jeff State, a faculty member did comment to him he should become a potter, “But she was always going around telling people what they should be,” Allen said, laughing.
He later went on to attend Berea College in Berea, Ky., found pottery classes using a wheel, and soon got hooked.
Since the mid-80s, Allen has done his art full time, traveling to shows and festivals “all over the place.”
During a recent trip to the nationally recognized Spoleto Festival in Charleston, S.C., Allen was awarded a third place honor in an overall competition.
“It’s huge,” he said of the event.
Art forms were all judged together, there were not separate categories for painting, sculpting or pottery, for instance.
One of the earlier shows he participated in was the Chalaka event held in Sylacauga.
He also frequents shows held in Fairhope and Bluff Park, among others.
Allen gets ideas for designing the pottery in lots of ways.
Some are simply for their decorative effects, and others have another message to relate, such as the one inspired by 911.
There are figures etched along the edges of some of the vessels, they encircle the pieces and are holding hands.
“It seems like everyone in our country felt a unity then,” he said. “That’s where the figures came from. I said I was going to etch it in stone because it probably wouldn’t happen again.”
Allen and a partner, Tina Payne, have opened gallery and studio in Leeds, naming it Cahaba Clayworks.
Payne makes Earthborne tableware.
The gallery and studio is located at 7575 Parkway Drive in Leeds and the artists may be reached by calling 205/702-4180. Classes are taught there as well as offering gallery and work space.
Hartsfield has been painting all her life, she had an older sister who was an artist and put paints and brushes in her hands at an early age.
The youngest of nine children, Hartsfield graduated from Phillips High School in Birmingham and later attended Gulf State Art School, soon met her husband, the late Virgil Hartsfield, and stopped her classes.
But she didn’t stop painting and drawing, and has become especially well known for her paintings of rural scenes, especially those of cotton fields and farms.
These are done in watercolors, while a newer collection of paintings-the florals-are done in acrylics.
One of Hartsfield’s sons, Chris, is an artist, too.
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About Laura Atchison
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Laura Nation-Atchison is The Daily Home features editor.
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Contact Laura Atchison
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