TUSCUMBIA-On Saturday, September 21 from 10:00AM until 4:00PM the Tennessee Valley Art Association will hold a free symposium…”Clay without Borders: The Historic Pottery of Northwest Alabama and Northeast Mississippi”. Admission to the symposium is free and will kickoff the Spruce Pine Pottery Exhibition at the museum.
Symposium Speakers
Joey Brackner – Alabama State Council on the Arts | author, Alabama Folk Pottery
Joey Brackner, manager of the Council’s Folklife Program and Director of the Alabama Center for Traditional Culture, has worked for ASCA since 1985. He manages a project grants program, which supports efforts by Alabama organizations to present the state’s folk traditions as well as an Apprenticeship grants program supporting master folk artists who are teaching students their art forms. Brackner co-produced “Unbroken Tradition” a film documentary on Alabama folk potter, Jerry Brown with Appalshop. He is a native of Fairfield, Alabama. He received a B. A. in Anthropology from the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 1977 and a M. A. in Anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin in 1981.
Ann Z. Wrenn – art historian
Ann Z. Wrenn grew up in South Florida and spent summers with her Mother’s family in Morgan County, Alabama. As a child she developed a love of family history and an appreciation of her deep roots in North Alabama. She attended Huntingdon College in Montgomery and has a B.A. in English and American Literature from Florida Atlantic University. Wrenn earned her Certificate in Folk Art Studies at the Folk Art Institute of the Museum of American Folk Art in New York City, where she pursued her interest in both art and family history by researching the pottery of Spruce Pine. Her work was published in the Journal of Muscle Shoals History: Historical Narratives of Franklin County, Volume XIII, 1993.
Symposium Schedule:
// Mary Settle Cooney10:10 am — “Historic Pottery in Northwest Alabama and the Context for Spruce Pine Pottery”
// Joey Brackner
10:45 am — “The Potters of Spruce Pine and Marie Rauschenberg Rice”
// Ann Z. Wrenn
11:00 am — Spruce Pine Exhibit Gallery Talk
// Billy Weeks
12:00 – 1:30 // LUNCH (independent)
1:30 pm – “The Jugtown District of Itawamba County, Mississippi”
// Sherry Bennett, Mona Mills, and Arlon Cox
2:15 pm – “Turning Clay into History: The Story of W.D. Suggs Pottery”
// Janis Suggs Dyson
3:00 pm — “Panel Discussion”
// selected speakers and collectors
4:00 pm – Program Ends
