283 GA-255, Sautee Nacoochee, Georgia 30571
North Georgia is one of the countries hub’s and centers of Folk Art. With North Georgia’s soil being such rich and pure red clay allowing an endless supply of clay, self taught artists and potters for decades have created utilitarian vessels, vases, pitchers, bowls, and also whimsical face jugs, decorative pottery and animal sculptures. These artists and their masterpieces are celebrated and on display at the Sautee Nacoochee Center, which is also the Folk Pottery Museum of North Georgia, that hosted this year’s folk pottery and arts festival.
With more than 60 vendors on a beautiful day, we visited the festival and saw serious artist creating seriously fine works of folk art and pottery. Chris Allison is the artist who works under the name Chicken Fried Art, and his painted animals and cut out wood painting shaped in the form of a possum with her babies, shared that he is so inspired and creates so much art, choosing what to bring to a show can be difficult as he might be parting with a piece. Chicken Fried Art showed us animals, mysterious figures of different sizes, something for every decor or design idea.
An artist named Breezy working under Clay Oddities by Breezy had an impressive collection of clay jugs that were painted with realistic and expressionist scenes of historic US battleships, varied patriotic US scenes, portraits of famous US authors like Edgar Allen Poe, to our favorite, a portrait of President Abraham Lincoln, that we very much appreciated.
The Meaders family, whose clay works of art and pottery from generations are in the museum’s permanent collection, and also in the Smithsonian Institute, had a memorial to the late Ruby Meaders, a potter who helped inspire other lady potters with her creative works pottery and animal sculptures. The Meaders family continues working in clay and had two booths for viewing and procuring some of their family’s historic pottery works.
We bought a functional work of pottery from Shady Creek Pottery actually as they are based in Cleveland, Georgia, where North Georgia Culture is also based, and her works were some of the most lovely and charming utilitarian works we had seen. Any of her works could also be decorative and display and collectible, but Shady Creek Pottery managed to combine form with function.
The potter Robin Rodgers had some of the finest works we saw that were original ideas, but fine pottery decorated and painted in a way that made us wonder where did the artist begin? From creative and clever face jugs to serious animal and wildlife depictions on jugs and in sculpture, Robin Rodgers showed a fine art technique to this classical folk art style of work.
Our only note about this fine art and pottery festival is that we wish, with all the fine wineries nearby, that the festival organizers had worked with one of our fine wineries to offer their wine at during the festival. We are hopeful to bring more publicity and attention to this festival to attract out of towners. New York City, for instance, has many hundreds of folk art collectors who would travel to North Georgia for this opportunity to view and procure our region’s fine folk art. Please let our friends at the Sautee Nacoochee Center know you read about them on NorthGeorgiaCulture.com!
