The 53rd annual Kentuck Festival of the Arts took place over the weekend at Snow Hinton Park, away from its usual location in Downtown Northport, showcasing over 270 artists.
The location was changed after the city and Kentuck Art Center failed to reach an agreement related to the festival’s funding.
Among these artists were Abigail Brewer, Carol McCrady and Francesca Charley. Each represented a different style, ranging from painting to fabric arts, and they were only a few of the talented creatives featured at Kentuck this weekend.
Abigail Brewer
Brewer is a first-year MBA student and can often be seen selling her art at the Tuscaloosa Farmers Market and across the Tuscaloosa community. She creates mixed-media paintings, using oil or watercolor and often layering her works with fabric and gold leaf. Brewer said the use of both materials connects her to her Chinese heritage and relates to her past as a dancer.
“I grew up loving the language, the music, and also looking at art and being inspired by that,” Brewer said. “I danced with Alabama Ballet for a bit, and that really shaped how I paint people and think about movement and expression. Those are my two guiding lights.”
Brewer has been practicing her style of art for about five years and has been selling her work for three. While she was an undergraduate student at the University, majoring in international studies and minoring in Chinese, she decided to take a drawing class.
“What I envisioned in my brain could be possible if I knew how to do it, and that’s what got me hooked,” Brewer said, referring to the full-time drawing and foundations instructor.
Her work depicts fantastical scenes of nature or female figures drawn in striking poses. The fabric incorporated into her paintings is collected from her travels to places like Japan or when she visits her family in China. Her color palette is bold and vibrant, and a key element of her work is her attempt to capture ephemeral moments to preserve them forever.
Carol McCrady
McCrady is an artist from Madison, Alabama. For 40 years, she has created original works inspired by Celtic symbols, making papyrus sheets from scratch and drawing on them with ink and watercolor.
“I’ve gone to Europe and done a lot of research on ancient materials, and I learned how to prepare papyrus from some old French books during Napoleon’s time,” McCrady said.
Although Celtic art varies widely from sculpture to pottery, McCrady’s work is reflective of art made during the Medieval period, during and after the Christianization of Europe. Her designs vary from paintings of angels to calligraphy written in English. Many of her works involve an image bordered by Celtic knots, and she also creates illuminations inspired by manuscripts written by religious monks.
McCrady’s artistic journey began when she moved to southern Alabama with her two daughters in 1979. To provide for her family, she initially taught calligraphy at colleges and universities across the state. Her work comforted her after the loss of her daughter, Edien, in 1993.
McCrady is one of 12 artists this year to win Kentuck’s Merit Award.
Francesca Charley
Charley is not only a senior majoring in anthropology but is also a quilt-maker.
“I have been sewing since the age of 10. My grandmother was the one who started me quilting because I would spend every summer with her,” Charley said.
The practice has been passed down, originally beginning with her great-grandmother who needled scraps of fabric together in order to stay warm during the winter.
“To see it expand from survival to something as beautiful as it is today, it’s just a great progression. And I’m honored to be a part of it,” Charley said.
Her mother, Claudia Pettway Charley, is also an artist, and she works in collaboration with the Black Belt Treasures Cultural Arts Center, a nonprofit organization in Camden, Alabama.
According to its website, the center supports over 450 artists and works to economically revitalize Alabama’s historic Black Belt region. Charley and her mother’s quilts are made from a mixture of fabrics including cotton, denim and linen, and they are defined by bold colors.
“The thing I love about our quilts is that there is no rule to our designs. Other artists have rules and guidelines, but we don’t have that,” Charley said. “It’s really free and expressive.”
