Kentuck Festival of the Arts features several Black Belt artists

Black Belt artists are well represented at the Kentuck Festival of the Arts, a nationally recognized event that will be held in Tuscaloosa’s Snow Hinton Park on Oct. 17 and 18.

The Kentuck Festival is a renowned art festival recognized both locally and nationally as one of the best in the country. It’s been named a Top 10 event to attend by the Alabama Department of Tourism, and it was voted “Best of Bama” by Alabama Magazine in 2018 and 2024 and has been featured in popular magazines like Smithsonian, Southern Living and National Geographic Traveler.

This year’s event includes 270 artists with a variety of artistic styles ranging from folk to contemporary arts and traditional craft.

Here’s a list of the Black Belt artists that will be showing their work at Kentuck.

Charlie “Tin Man” Lucas

Selma (Dallas County) | Guest Artist | Booth G-13

For Charlie Lucas (b.1951, Pink Lily, Alabama), being an artist is in his blood. Descended from seven identifiable generations of artists and craftspeople, he grew up immersed in a world of making and creativity. On his mother’s side, artistic traditions were passed down through a matrilineal line of quiltmakers. His great-uncle created life-size clay statues, his maternal grandfather was both a gunsmith and basket maker, and his grandfather’s father was a respected local blacksmith who, in addition to practicing his trade, crafted baskets and other iron and wooden objects for his family and community. It was through this great-grandfather, his mentor and lifelong source of inspiration, that Lucas studied blacksmithing and metalworking and learned to make toys for other children.

Lucas knew he wanted to be an artist by the age of seven, but it was not until 1984, when a serious back injury forced him to reconsider his career path at age thirty-three, that he committed himself fully to art. Since then, he has devoted his life to building an extensive body of work rooted in resourcefulness, imagination, and personal history.

Calling his artistic identity the “Tin Man,” a personification of his inner-child, Lucas has become known for transforming discarded metal and found objects into inventive sculptures and mixed-media works, his “toys.” His oeuvre ranges from surreal paintings to sculptures assembled from recycled wire, fabric, wood, and welded metal. Often inspired by dreams, visions, and memories, his works serve as markers of significant moments in his life and tributes to the people who have shaped it. Through these deeply personal narratives, Lucas honors both his immediate family and the unnamed ancestors whose presence continues to inform his artistic practice.

Lucas’s work is held in the permanent collections of the High Museum of Art, Atlanta and the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York. Over the past four decades he has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including at the Royal Academy of Arts, London; New Orleans Museum of Art; Birmingham Museum of Art; Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts; and the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem, NC. His work is in numerous books and catalogs including Charlie Lucas – Tin Man published by University of Alabama Press in 2009. In 2022, he received a Visual Arts Fellowship from the Alabama State Council on the Arts.

Lucas creates art in his studio in Selma, where much of his work is on display and where he has hosted visitors and art camps for children for many years.

Images: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1hvrjbsGqeF8Y6oCM9KfsaMdyj3FSbS5M?usp=shari ng

Website/Social Media: https://www.instagram.com/charlielucas_thetinman/ https://www.charlielucas.art/

Aaron Sanders Head

Greensboro (Hale County) | Demonstrating Artist & Artists In the Schools | Booth G-06

Aaron Sanders Head is an Alabama-based textile artist. Aaron was raised in rural Grady and Hope Hull as the youngest of three children from an artist mother and an agricultural worker father. His grandparents were both rural mail carriers, and the times Aaron spent accompanying them on those trips cemented early on a fondness for rural areas and the importance of connection however it can be found. That learned sense of observation combined with inherited family traditions of textile and agriculture inform the unique visual language Aaron works in today, that exists in the worlds of quiltmaking, handwork and natural dyes. Aaron creates quilts and hand-stitched, naturally dyed textiles that explore the lived experiences of rural Alabamians.

Images: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1a_nrl53VNQ3k2yBnIJqeZ-tCbTc9fPwJ?usp=sharing

Website: https://www.aaronsandershead.com/

Booker T. Washington High School Photography Magnet

Montgomery (Montgomery County) | Guest Artist | Book F-06, 08

Booker T. Washington Magnet High School is designed for students with special talents and interests and is committed to providing a hands-on interdisciplinary, arts-centered approach to instruction. Booker T. Washington Magnet School is the only high school represented at the Kentuck Festival of the Arts.

Images: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1AvBDMP5R1QKhrC4Nmn8iubriKuTFfCn2?usp=sha ring

Social media: https://www.instagram.com/booktw_photo/

George Taylor

Montgomery (Montgomery County) | Booth C-12

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“Like the artists of the Lascaux caves, I am compelled to capture and share emotionally charged images from my life. I paint exclusively in oils because they convey an unequalled feeling of solidity, depth, and chromatic intensity. Though I do now work more and more from memory, most of my work is still painted en plein air. I prefer to be there, in the scene, to select the exact relationships and essences I'm after. The subjects I have chosen are fraught with meanings and associations for me. Their appearance in these paintings is a synthesis of how they look to me, how I feel about them, and what the picture needs, all filtered through the practical restraints of the medium. To this end, I freely appropriate techniques from many artists, styles, and historical periods, which, I believe, makes me a ‘post-modern, post-historical, subjective realist.’”

Images: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1RGicKWpij4pjvOxQTBus7CS44hQ7fjXr?usp=sharin g

Website/social media: https://www.instagram.com/georgetaylor.artist/

Caroline Sherrer

Montgomery (Montgomery County) | Booth C-36

Caroline Sherrer is a contemporary artist based in Montgomery, AL known for her realistic paintings of still life moments and nostalgic objects from the home and nature. She works in oil and is primarily self-taught, although she is heavily influenced by her uncle who is also an oil painter. She exhibits her work in galleries in Alabama and Mississippi, and she also enjoys participating in numerous art fairs across the Southeast and Midwest.

“I am a self-taught oil painter based in Montgomery. I like to describe my work as “nostalgic realism,” and I am drawn to familiar subjects from around the home and from nature. I enjoy painting well-loved objects that tell a story; such as an old rotary phone, a silverware set, or brass trinkets, and I often incorporate bright color and pattern to my paintings to bring them a fresh new life and voice.”

Images: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1DjvRxsw8iQQXS-SYl6-kzRHqVF-87ba6?usp=sharing

Website/social media: https://www.carolinesherrer.com/ , https://www.instagram.com/carolinesherrer_art/

Garland Farwell

York (Sumter County) | Booth B-63

“Long a fan of Southern artists such as Mose Tolliver, Howard Finster and the Gees Bend Quilters, I journeyed to the Alabama Black Belt to explore Folk Art, Rural Art and Outsider Art and to see if I might find a spark of inspiration to illuminate new paths in my creative life. An intended two-month stay in rural Alabama became a year. A year quickly morphed into 10. And so on. I've never felt a stronger sense of belonging. My art practice has transformed to reflect this new environment. By adapting the practical and humble approach to life and creativity of the people of the rural south, my process has become more streamlined and the work, while encountering its share of challenges, flows more effortlessly.”

Images: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1xIX0S_ebsiczU-QczfC8hpBEF7bKFT4X?usp=sharing

Website/Social Media: https://www.instagram.com/garland_at_south17/ , https://south17.org/

Gee’s Bend Quilters

Boykin/Gee’s Bend (Wilcox County) | Guest Artist | E-01

Gee’s Bend is a small, isolated town in southwest Alabama known internationally for their incredible patchwork creations and their role in the Civil Rights Movement. The quilting tradition dates back to the 19th century and continues today. Hailed by the New York Times as “some of the most miraculous works of modern art America has produced,” Gee’s Bend quilts constitute a crucial chapter in the history of American art and today are in the permanent collections of over 20 leading art museums. For more information about Gee’s Bend Quilters, visit: https://www.soulsgrowndeep.org/gees-bend-quiltmakers

Images: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/15ne-ZK3Xaj8tLdRCmTKt5H1oV6dOL75v?usp=sharing

Website/Social Media: https://www.instagram.com/gees_bend/ , https://www.instagram.com/geesbendquiltmakers/

Black Belt Treasures Cultural Art Center

Camden (Wilcox County) | Demonstrating Artists | D-25, 27

Buried in Alabama’s Black Belt are treasures of the past, highlighting decades of talent and showcasing how those talents are passed through generations - Black Belt Treasures Cultural Arts Center is a non-profit gallery and cultural arts center featuring the works of over 400 artists and craftsmen from across Alabama’s Black Belt region. In addition to the Gallery, BBTCAC offers art classes and workshops for youth and adults, artist demonstrations, in-school arts enrichment through its Black Belt Teaching Artist Program, along with heritage arts lectures and events.

The Black Belt Treasures Cultural Arts Center has a wide variety of artwork, from paintings and quilts to wood and metal work. With artists as varied as the culture of the Black Belt, associate director Kristin Law said there is something for every guest to enjoy. “Demonstrating artists are a huge part of what we do so that people can see them and learn from them,” Law said. “They are the storytellers. They are the reason we’re here … We’re trying to change the image of the Black Belt, show the positive, the wonderful talent, the people that are here, the stories that are here, and keep that living history alive and bring it into the next generation.” Website/Social media: https://www.blackbelttreasures.com/

Images: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Xjj-vrUrV11gfxUPtJRWmNjhKKXzmyHB?usp=sharing

Proceeds from the Kentuck Festival of the Arts support the following year’s festival and fund Kentuck Art Center’s year-round programming. Kentuck Art Center is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization with locations in Northport and Tuscaloosa.

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