Wiregrass Museum of Art – Previous Exhibitions

Shaped by Hand: Sculpture from the WMA Collection

Fri, 18 Sep 2026 18:11:04 GMT

July 18, 2026 - January 2, 2027

Shaped by Hand brings together a dynamic selection of three-dimensional works from the museum’s permanent collection, celebrating the depth and diversity of artistic practice across Alabama. Featuring both longtime visitor favorites and recent acquisitions, the exhibition highlights the museum’s ongoing commitment to collecting and preserving works by artists connected to the state and region.

Working across materials including glass, paper, wood, ceramic, and mixed media, the artists in this exhibition transform everyday and traditional materials into expressive, tactile forms. Some works explore craftsmanship and process, while others investigate memory, place, identity, and abstraction. Together, these sculptures and objects invite viewers to slow down, and consider the physical presence of art in new ways.

By focusing primarily on artists from Alabama, Shaped by Hand offers a glimpse into the richness of creative voices shaping the state’s contemporary art landscape. The exhibition reflects both the history of the museum’s collection and its continued evolution through new acquisitions, creating a conversation between familiar works and fresh additions that expand the story of WMA’s permanent collection.

B26: Wiregrass Biennial

Fri, 18 Sep 2026 18:09:54 GMT

July 18 – September 19, 2026

The Wiregrass Museum of Art proudly presents B26: Wiregrass Biennial, a juried exhibition featuring contemporary artists from across the Southeastern United States. Selected from more than 900 submissions, the exhibition brings together 36 artists representing nine states and a wide range of artistic practices, including painting, sculpture, installation, multimedia, and illustration.

Juried by Sean Miller and Bethany Taylor, B26 highlights artists whose works demonstrate innovation, strong conceptual vision, and thoughtful engagement with the social, environmental, and cultural realities of the Contemporary South. Across the exhibition, recurring themes of transformation, memory, systems, identity, and belonging emerge through deeply personal and materially inventive approaches.

The Wiregrass Biennial serves as a platform for both emerging and established artists, fostering dialogue and connection across the region while offering audiences an opportunity to encounter the diverse voices shaping contemporary art today.

Through ambitious experimentation and intimate storytelling, B26: Wiregrass Biennial reflects the complexity, resilience, and evolving identity of the Southeast.

Participating Artists

Farzana Akhtar (Baton Rouge, Louisiana)
Haylee Anne (Atlanta, Georgia)
Carrie Ann Baade (Havana, Florida)
Dori Boyd (Birmingham, Alabama)
Karen Brummund (Tuscaloosa, Alabama)
Camisha Butler (Atlanta, Georgia)
Charles Clary (Conway, South Carolina)
Seth Cook (Lafayette, Louisiana)
Patricia Cooke (Miami, Florida)
Rima Day (Thompsons Station, Tennessee)
Dariana Dervis (Birmingham, Alabama)
Wendy DesChene (Auburn, Alabama)
Maggie Evans (Savannah, Georgia)
Amy Feger (Montevallo, Alabama)
Jennifer Wallace Fields (Springville, Alabama)
Carrie Fonder (Pensacola, Florida)
Valerie George (Pensacola, Florida)
Carl Gombert (Maryville, Tennessee)
Reni Gower (Mechanicsville, Virginia)
Jim Graham (Boca Raton, Florida)
Tenee’ Hart (Tallahassee, Florida)
Tara Lee (Birmingham, Alabama)
Michael Lonchar (Tampa, Florida)
Ryan Meyer (Trussville, Alabama)
Bethany Moody (Odenville, Alabama)
Kate Hooray Osmond (Charleston, South Carolina)
Stephanie Patton (Lafayette, Louisiana)
Zakriya Rabani (Jacksonville, Florida)
Marilee Salvator (Bowling Green, Kentucky)
Jerica Scott (Twin City, Georgia)
Kyle Selley (Gainesville, Florida)
Michael Tole (Oviedo, Florida)
Martha Underriner (DeLand, Florida)
Tom Wegrzynowski (Tuscaloosa, Alabama)
Carson Whitmore (Durham, North Carolina)
Lauren Woods (Opelika, Alabama)

Within These Walls: Select Works from WMA’s Studio Artists

Fri, 18 Sep 2026 18:05:21 GMT

June 5, 2026 – September 19, 2026

Within These Walls celebrates the extraordinary talent within our own creative community, featuring work by the very artists who teach, mentor, and inspire in our studios each day. This exhibition offers a special opportunity to experience the breadth of their practices beyond the classroom, from painting and ceramics to mixed media and more.

Supporting local artists is essential to sustaining a vibrant cultural ecosystem. When we invest in the artists who live and work in our region, we strengthen our creative economy, foster meaningful connections, and ensure that the arts remain accessible and alive in our community. These artists are not only educators but also practicing professionals whose work reflects dedication, experimentation, and vision.

We are especially excited to deepen our connection to the artists who shape WMA’s studio programs. Seeing their personal work on view invites us to better understand their creative voices, celebrate their accomplishments, and honor the passion they bring to teaching. This exhibition is both a showcase and a thank you to the artists who make WMA a place of learning, inspiration, and artistic growth.

ART BRIDGES

Fri, 18 Sep 2026 18:03:52 GMT

January 16, 2026 through June 27, 2026

WMA announces the installation of two major American artworks on loan from the Art Bridges Foundation. Alice Trumbull Mason’s Magnitude of Regions from 1962 and Sam Gilliam’s Lilly from 1971 will be on view in the museum’s permanent collection galleries from January 16 through June 27, 2026.

The works appear in a focused installation with select pieces from WMA’s permanent collection. Together, they place postwar American abstraction in conversation through rhythm, color, gesture, and spatial complexity. The installation invites visitors to engage with influential works by artists who shaped and expanded abstraction. This loan supports WMA’s mission to inspire lifelong engagement with the visual arts and reflects Art Bridges’ commitment to broad public access to American art across the country.

The Forest was Rebuilt with Scrap and Ply

Fri, 18 Sep 2026 18:02:32 GMT

April 18, 2026 - June 27, 2026

The Forest was Rebuilt with Scrap and Ply brings together six artists based in the Southeast who explore beauty, awareness, grief, and resilience in response to intensifying natural disasters and environmental change. The exhibition takes its name from Margaret Curtis’s monumental painting, which presents a powerful vision of a present shaped by ecological disruption.

As rising sea levels, stronger storms, and extreme weather increasingly affect our region, these artists reflect on what it means to live, adapt, and rebuild within vulnerable landscapes. Their works acknowledge both loss and possibility, recognizing that communities must develop thoughtful approaches to mitigation, repair, and long-term stewardship for the future.

Through painting, sculpture, installation, and collaborative practice, the artists offer reflections that are at once poetic and practical. They consider how we respond to disaster, how we remember what has been altered or lost, and how creativity can imagine paths forward.

Curated by Katie Hargrave and Meredith Laura Lynn, the exhibition brings together work by Margaret Curtis, Adda Farcus, Katie Kehoe, Cristina Molina & Jonathan Traviesa, and Christina Vogel. Together, these artists examine how we endure, rebuild, and care for the places we call home.

Threads of Place: Selections from the Permanent Collection

Fri, 18 Sep 2026 18:01:24 GMT

October 17, 2025 - February 14, 2026

Threads of Place brings together works from WMA’s permanent collection that explore the intersections of storytelling, abstraction, and material practice. Featuring artists with ties to Alabama alongside nationally recognized figures, the exhibition highlights the richness of voices that shape the museum’s holdings and the larger story of American art.

The exhibition foregrounds artists who use fiber and collage, such as Della Wells, Yvonne Wells, and Jon Coffelt—linking to themes presented in Constructions: Contemporary Fiber, on view concurrently. Their works carry forward traditions of quilt making, assemblage, printmaking, and repurposed materials, drawing connections between personal memory and broader cultural histories. These works demonstrate how everyday materials and tactile processes become vehicles for narrative and identity.

Other works in the exhibition push toward abstraction and experimentation, from Frank Stella’s vibrant lithographs to Ida Kohlmeyer’s expressive forms. Artists such as Dale Kennington and Cicely Hill bring regional stories into dialogue with nationally known figures, underscoring the importance of place in shaping creative practice. Together, the works in Threads of Place remind us that collections are living archives, woven from diverse perspectives and experiences that continue to resonate across time, community, and geography.

Create Dothan

Fri, 18 Sep 2026 18:00:07 GMT

Ongoing

The Wiregrass Museum of Art (WMA) and Visit Dothan partnered to bring the work of Wiregrass-area artists into a new community setting. Beginning in July, the Visit Dothan office hosted quarterly rotating exhibitions, giving local artists a chance to share their work in a public, high-traffic space while connecting residents and visitors with the region’s creative voices.

The first exhibition featured artist Hannah Edgman, whose series Beauty Beyond the Orange used clay, acrylic, and watercolor to reimagine familiar scenes like construction zones and rural intersections. Through her work, everyday imagery was transformed into bold reflections on beauty, resilience, and community.

The partnership officially launched during the First Friday Art Crawl on August 1 at 4:00 P.M. at the Visit Dothan office. The free event welcomed community members and visitors to enjoy art, conversation, and local culture.

Featured Artists Schedule

July 2025 – Hannah Edgman
October 2025 – Erica Bey
January 2026 – Joan McDonald
April 2026 – Kennedy Rose Kimbrough
July 2026 – Latasha Hyatt
October 2026 – Robin Johnston

More information about the partnership and exhibitions was shared at wiregrassmuseum.org and visitdothan.com .

Celestial Haven

Fri, 18 Sep 2026 17:58:23 GMT

Ongoing

The Wiregrass Museum of Art (WMA) alongside students from Dothan Technology Center have installed new artwork at 1053 East Selma Street as part of an ongoing collaboration to infuse public art into our community’s neighborhoods. The work, titled “Celestial Haven” was designed, constructed, and installed by students from several program areas, including Graphic Arts, Engineering, and Construction.

Project partners began work on the project in Fall 2024 to develop concepts and designs, encouraging collaboration across program disciplines. The project highlights the intersections of art, design, engineering, and construction and highlights public art’s unique role in building community pride and identity.

The project challenged students across disciplines to work together to solve problems and contribute something meaningful to the community. Dothan Tech teacher, James McCloud says, “These projects give my students the chance to exercise their classroom skills on a real world project.” Students benefit from working together, learning communication, creative thinking, and budgeting skills, in addition to the trade skills in their prospective programs. The finished work is a testament to the students’ hard work, with over 600 hours invested in the project over the past year.

“Creative placemaking is about more than creating public art, it’s about empowering young people to see themselves as artists, collaborators, and changemakers. By working together to design and build something for their community, these students are shaping not only the landscape of our city, but also their own sense of agency and belonging.” said Dana-Marie Lemmer, executive director at WMA.

“Celestial Haven” stands as a significant achievement for the students and a valuable addition to our community and region. The collaborative effort between WMA and Dothan Tech exemplifies the power of art in bringing people together and enhancing public spaces.

“District 2 deserves beauty, hope and opportunity, and this project brings all three. Seeing our young people create something so meaningful in collaboration with WMA and Dothan Tech gives me real hope for the future. Parks Chapel AME Church has been standing strong in this neighborhood, and now we’re building on to that legacy with creativity and pride. Celestial Haven demonstrates what possible when we believe in our kids and invest in our community” said Derrick Tiller, location coordinator.

The work will remain at 1053 East Selma Street for 1-3 years while additional works are being considered for future projects and locations. This project is the first of several projects slated to revitalize this area, including the upcoming renovation of nearby basketball courts.

Participating students include:

From Graphic Arts: Braelynn Napier, Tyree Burks, and Isabella Cleveland

From Engineering: James Phipps, Hunter Bradford, Aidan Hornsby, Gavin Love, Will Trusty, Abby Bolinger, Allison Peel, John Banks, Zavior Carter, Landen Cooley, Andrew Cork, Brynton Davis, Kylie Davis, David Griffin, Hunter Hawkins, Aidan Hornsby, Braddoc Jenkins, Kara Martin, Om Rishi Raj Mohan, Syed Muhammad Taha, Joshua Vacek, Samuel Williams, Rider Wylly, Ava Bell, Dane Bryant, Bree Cartlidge, Burtch Davis, Paul Griffin, Riley Gruber, Dawson Hammack, Elizabeth Marvin, Michael Mendoza, Jacob Moore, Neel Patel, Veer Patel, Christian Phipps, Austin Smith, Izzy Sotherland, and Levi Waddle

From Construction: Miguel Flores, Alessio Hernandez, Kory Miller,Guiyermo Ortiz, Takazi White, and Damion Constable

This program is organized by the Wiregrass Museum of Art in partnership with Dothan Tech and Bradley & Schmidt Architecture, this project was made possible through the support of the Alabama State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts , with additional funding from Tyndall Federal Credit Union. We also extend our gratitude to Hollis and Spann, Inc. and Southern Lumber for their generous contributions.

Cerulean Reverie: A Sculptural Dream In Blue

Fri, 18 Sep 2026 17:57:06 GMT

Ongoing

The Wiregrass Museum of Art (WMA) alongside students from Dothan Technology Center installed new artwork at Walton Park in partnership with Dothan Leisure Services and local architect and artist Jason Schmidt. The work, titled “Cerulean Reverie: A Sculptural Dream in Blue”, was designed, constructed, and installed by students from several program areas, including Graphic Arts, Engineering, and Construction.

Project partners began work on the project in Spring 2023 to develop concepts and designs, encouraging collaboration across program disciplines. Originally intended to replace WMA’s on-site sculpture “Semiotic Compass”, which was designed and built by Schmidt to celebrate Alabama’s Bicentennial, the project was adapted due to the changing landscape around the museum and upcoming construction plans in the downtown. Working with Dothan Leisure Services, Walton Park was selected as the new site to complement the various activities and engagements that take place there, with hope that the public art will also attract additional visitors.

Students from Graphic Arts, Engineering, and Construction have dedicated over a year to imagining, designing, testing, building, and installing their work. Alani Robinson, a senior at Dothan Tech/Dothan High School and one of the designers, expressed her vision for the sculpture: “I designed ‘Cerulean Reverie: A Sculptural Dream in Blue’ to emit a feeling similar to diving into a tranquil ocean. Each up and down is like a wave, carrying you into a serene state of mind. My goal is to create a mini environment where you can pause and reflect amidst the chaos of everyday life.”

The project challenged students across distinct disciplines to work together to solve problems and contribute something meaningful to the community and is a testament to the students’ hard work, with over 600 hours invested in the project over the past year.

“Public art exists because many people, including artists, designers, fabricators, and engineers, come together to realize a vision, but rarely do those individuals work together from the conceptual phase of the project. This project provided a unique opportunity to pair students with an artist and creative professional while challenging students in different disciplines to work together from the beginning, encouraging problem solving, idea sharing, and an appreciation for everyone’s role,” said Dana-Marie Lemmer, executive director at WMA.

Marques Gibson, a sophomore at Dothan Tech/Dothan High School, reflected on the project’s impact, stating: “This project came out very well, and I believe it will make a positive impact on our community. I feel it gave a fresh new feel to the park, and it will be something everyone will enjoy. This project was a series of lessons learned on how to overcome adversity in design, printing, and communications.”

“Cerulean Reverie: A Sculptural Dream in Blue” stands as a significant achievement for the students and a valuable addition to the public art landscape in Dothan. The collaborative effort between WMA, Dothan Tech, local artist Jason Schmidt, and Dothan Leisure Services exemplifies the power of art in bringing people together and enhancing public spaces.

The work will remain at Walton Park for 1-2 years while additional works are being considered for future projects and locations.

Participating students include:

From Graphic Arts: Alani Robinson, Cady Pozega, Charity Knowles, Imperial Halsell, Israel Henderson, Jade Marreo, Jacob Costelloe, Jamarcuius Adams, Jonathan Blackman, Khayrah Linen, Marques Gibson, Parker Collins, Rihanna Walker, Robert Williams, Ryan Schmidt, Treyvon Billie, Tyree Burks, Zabrien Jackson

From Engineering: Antonio Gonzales; Austin Barley; Blake Gartman; Blake Rouse; Briana Milton; Caleb Gilmore; Charles Hickerson; Dawson Bruno; Elijah Sekeres; Ethan Jones; Franli Mesa-Ortega; Gavin Hendershott; Haley Trawick; James Howell; Jayden Allen; Lance Bryant; Landon Conrand; Lemieux Clements; Malachi Long; Mason Vines; Noah Long; Tage Smith; Walt Moody; Wes Moody; Will Moody

From Construction: Amari Kilow; Alexander Broadaway; Brandon Cazares; Brayden Taylor; Bryant William; Charles Dickens; Damian Constable; David Dalton; Eddike Campbell; Guadalupe Vazquez; Hunter Patrick; Madison More; Mallorie Brasswell; Matthew Mills; Miguel Garcia; Owen Stephens; Paul Coleman; Tamer Waters; Tarver Brown

This project was made possible by grants from the Alabama State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.

In Focus: Portraits from the Permanent Collection

Fri, 18 Sep 2026 17:54:33 GMT

June 5, 2025 - September 27, 2025

In Focus: Portraits from the Permanent Collection presents a compelling selection of photographic works that explore the power and complexity of portraiture through the lens WMA’s permanent collection. On view this summer, the exhibition features works by Jerry Siegel, Barbara Lee Black, Pinky MM/Bass, Sydney A. Foster, and Spider Martin, each offering a unique perspective on identity, presence, and the act of seeing.

The photographs in this exhibition reflect a range of approaches to portraiture, from traditional posed images to conceptual explorations of memory and transformation. Jerry Siegel’s intimate portraits of Southern artists capture his subjects in environments that speak to their creative lives, while Pinky MM/Bass’s experimental work pushes the boundaries of the photographic medium, incorporating layers of texture and personal narrative, and Sydney A. Foster’s vivid portraits reflect a deep sense of connection to our community. The photojournalistic work of Spider Martin, known for documenting the Civil Rights Movement, offers powerful insight into pivotal moments and the people who shaped history.

In Focus invites viewers to consider the portrait not only as a reflection of the subject, but also as a window into the artist’s intent and the cultural context of each image. Through a diverse range of techniques and perspectives, these photographs speak to the enduring relevance of portraiture as a form of storytelling, representation, and human connection. This exhibition celebrates the strength of WMA’s permanent collection and highlights the museum’s ongoing commitment to preserving and presenting nationally recognized voices in contemporary art.

Bud Harris – Firmly Planted in the Black Belt

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

October 21 - December 31, 2017

“I am a painter of the South, specifically the geographic area of Alabama called the Black Belt. Having been born and raised in this part of Alabama, it is what I best know and love; that is, it is my home country and I make art about this land, its people, and the stories of this place.

I seek out the places and the people that are deeply steeped in the history of the Black Belt. I am inspired by the rich traditions that include telling stories, how and why people gather, and the passing of time and how it affects people, places, and things in this region. I believe in the distinct genius loci of the Black Belt and try to manifest it in my painting.

I mainly work with watercolor but I will combine that with acrylics and oil pigments when I believe it necessary. Lately, I’ve been working on larger oil on canvas pieces and I am enjoying the experience of translating how I work in watercolor to painting with oil. Regardless of the medium I choose, I am aware of the way the light plays across surfaces and work to bring out my intent with rich color.” – Bud Harris

Melanie Ferguson: Chandler’s Cove

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

Melanie Ferguson will be exhibiting a retrospective of her work at the museum in a show titled “Inside Chandler’s Cove.” Born in Newport, Oregon, Melanie Ferguson was richly influenced by her ocean surroundings and nourished by assisting, studying, and working with coastal artists and native elders. She is well known for her calligraphic and illustration skills; her early advertising illustrations were widely published in local and national media.

Melanie subsequently focused her interest on the properties of hand blown sheet glass and studied the theory of “painting with light” as she evolved a personal narrative style applied to large-scale architectural and commercial glass commissions. Relocating to Georgia in 2002, Ferguson began study in contemporary ceramics at Roswell Art Center West in 2007, exploring the sculptural quality of hand-built form and the narrative grace of surface, with a special focus on wood and soda atmospheric firing.

Of her work, Ferguson states, “As an artist, I am most interested in that key visual “note” that inspires creative concept by revealing a story to challenge my expression through any given medium, employing the use of elements that demand physical involvement in building form and surface to expose a freedom of spirit as a new story unfolds. Coastal stones rolling ashore, eroding hillsides, the swirling ripple on water’s surface, rhythmic patterns of ocean flora and fauna, shadows cast on water soaked sand, rust, corrosion, and decay each initiates a visual of movement and a concept of renewal that influences each of my sculptural works. Using stoneware and earthenware clays, I hand-build my sculptural forms to preserve this symbolic gesture of energy.”

John Douglas Powers: Between Centers

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

John Douglas Powers will be featured in an exhibition “Between Centers” where he will present his popular, kinetic sculpture Field of Reeds alongside a series of newly created video works.

Of his work, Powers says, “The allure of the unattainable and its connection to the passage of time have become central to my research. Drawing from areas as diverse as natural history, architecture and the history of technology, I am engaged in an investigation of what lies at the intersection of cinema, computation, music and physical space. By employing motion and sound in my work, I incorporate the passage of time as a compositional element in an attempt to more closely examine abstract and often intangible topics such as memory, thought, emotion, language and the essence of self.”

Powers received his M.F.A. in sculpture (with distinction) from The University of Georgia and a B.A. in art history from Vanderbilt University. John is the recipient of The Virginia A. Groot Foundation Award, a Joan Mitchell Foundation MFA Grant as well as the Southeastern College Art Conference Individual Artist Fellowship and Alabama State Council on the Arts Individual Artist Fellowship. His sculptures, installations, animation and video works have been exhibited nationally and internationally.

Dazzling

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

Dazzling is a series of photographic portraits taken at the Platinum International Newcomer’s Pageant, by artist Sonja Rieger. The portraits are of the men who compete, who come as dressers, make-up artists, judges, sound specialists and audience members for the Platinum International Newcomer’s Pageant.

There is an intricate social network that operates at the pageant and unlike the system that appears in white clubs, this system is colored by the racial history and culture of the Deep South mirroring the church community that has long been a haven for blacks in the area. The system provides an environment and support system for young men who may not have another place in the rigid society of the south and participants come from all over the region.

Sonja Rieger has exhibited widely at regional and national venues, most recently at Carmen Wiednhoeft Gallery in Denver, Colorado; the Contemporary Art Center in New Orleans, Louisiana; the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston Salem, North Carolina; the Ogden Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana; and the National Museum for Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. Her work is in the collections of the International Polaroid Corporation, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, the Birmingham Museum of Art, the Huntsville Museum of Art, and other corporate and private collections.

Recipient of two Individual Artist Grants from the Alabama State Council on the Arts, Rieger has also received grants for projects from the Polaroid Corporation, the Southern Arts Federation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Sonja Rieger received her MFA from Rutgers University, her BA from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and became a Professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 1979.

Woodie Long: The Painted Word

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

Beginning his artistic career in 1988, Woodie Long was a self-taught, primitive abstract painter. With no formal training or attention to traditional methods, Long created elegant stories through his quick brushstrokes.

Born in Plant City, Florida in 1942, Long was the son of a sharecropper and one of twelve children. He began working in the fields at a young age, often moving with his family to where the work was. Long had a long career as a housepainter, learning a lot about the nature of paints. After twenty years in the business, Long began to turn his attention to paper.

As a way to communicate with his children, and to tell the stories of his childhood, he began painting narratives on paper, canvas and various found materials. Long’s work is characterized by its rich and vibrant colors and genuine nature. He often painted from memory, executing complex compositions in his visual storytelling.

Recurring themes in his work include women with purses, bicycles, pickup trucks and school buses, scenes from the fields and kids flying kites. He also painted a number of cityscapes, which represent his time spent in New York City during art shows he was a part of. Woodie Long: The Painted Word, will highlight a number of these themes, focusing on Long’s ability to create visual history.

Woodie Long’s work is represented in major private and public collections around the world including the Columbus Museum of Art and the Wiregrass Museum of Art.

Helen Keller Art Show of Alabama – 2015

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

April 1 - May 16, 2015

For over a decade, the Wiregrass Museum of Art has hosted The Helen Keller Art Show of Alabama. The Helen Keller Art Show of Alabama is an annual show for students of Alabama who are visually impaired, blind or deafblind.

The Helen Keller Art Show is open to students of all ages in the Alabama public, private, residential and home schools, providing them an opportunity to showcase special talents and abilities. The artwork is unique with emphasis on creativity, color and tactile media. During the year the artwork is exhibited in various venues.

The Helen Keller Art Show was on display in the Museum’s Coleman Gallery from April 1 to May 16, 2015.

Memorials to Human Folly

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

Duane Paxson has an abiding appreciation for the mysteries and rhythms of nature. To this proclivity for the outside world, he marries an equally expansive knowledge of tradition, symbolism and number. His most recent work reveals an assessment of social interaction and the human condition in which Paxson delves with wit and infectious humor into the perennial problem of evil, creating monumental hanging sculptures, which prod the viewer to a good-humored meditation. The engaging visual drama of the welded steel and fiberglass configurations serves only to enhance the artist’s sober ponderings.

Surrounded by a secure metal “screen” of graduated, looping patterns, Ivory Tower (2011) represents the abstracted “thinker,” whose role is to generate ideas through lofty contemplation. Memorial to a Slug (2012) probes human cruelty, the source of guilt. A slender cedar pendant encircled by a network of steel rods at once regular in outline and whimsical in pattern, the work pays homage to those gastropod mollusks, which kids torture, setting them on fire with a magnifying glass. Spinal Heretic (2012) further illustrates ruthlessness. Patterned after a human spine, the work bends, mimicking the physical devastation wielded by medieval instruments of torture.

The works from Paxson’s Witch Hunt (2014) series commemorate the women tortured and hanged during the Salem witch trials in 1692. Graceful in configuration, the works reflect feminine beauty, but areas of twisted and mangled steel stand for flowing hair, conveying the inner tumult of the victims. Paxson thus explores humankind’s most vexing problem, that of evil. But he does so with visual panache and engaging humor. Paxson serves as Adjunct Instructor of Visual Arts at Troy University. His work has been reviewed in Sculpture, World Sculpture News, Creative Quarterly and Art Papers . He has received numerous awards including 18 merit and purchase awards as well as an artist fellowship from the Alabama State Council on the Arts. He received his BS from Troy State University, Troy, Alabama and an MFA from the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa.

Breaking the Silo

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

We live in the most technologically advanced society to date. Some of this advanced technology is a result of or has lead to the creation of things that the average human uses everyday. Such notable tech such as smart phones, social media, the Internet, email, etc. has made life easier and more connected for some. However many others could argue that this connectivity has made this a much more complex and interconnected life is actually overwhelming and unnecessary at times. Now the idea of “being alone in a crowd” isn’t a trite song lyric from the latest boy band, but a reality that people are facing and getting more comfortable with a diminished personal interaction with others.

The silo mentality is defined as a mindset present when certain departments or sectors do not wish to share information with others in the same company. This type of mentality will reduce efficiency in the overall operation, reduce morale, and may contribute to the demise of a productive company culture. Many artists willingly isolate themselves in their “Silo” and focus on their art practice without branching to innovate or experiment for personal advancement or group advancement. One of the hardest things an artist can do is to share their innovative technique or practice for fear of it being stolen or ripped off. Pablo Picasso said that “good artists copy; great artists steal.” Steve Jobs famously and controversially referenced this quote while addressing audiences about his advancements in technology, technology that has a hand in isolating it’s users from those around them.

During the fall semester of 2014, seven students participated in a Collaboration Studio course at Troy University in Troy, Alabama. By breaking through their personal silos, communication barriers, and creative barriers the students worked together as teams to create the artwork displayed here. As the students increasingly became more comfortable with each other they also became even more excited to work with one another. The joy in the course was seeing how the students solved the same problem that they were given. The isolation and the silos were broken and now the students have presented a group of work that they can call their own.

Standards – Kim Whaley

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

Kim Whaley is a mixed-media artist and native of Troy, Alabama. Whaley’s work predominantly consists of blends of charcoal and paint, though the media are often used in less-traditional methods. Her pieces are a delicate balance of form and negative space. Of her work, Whaley says “Generally, my pieces have a single, detailed focus in composition with less important details surrounding it, which I feel encourages meditation on the emotion evoked by the piece.”

Whaley received a B.A. in Studio Art from Troy University. Her work has been shown in multiple galleries, including The Nature Gallery in Dothan, AL, and in the 14th Annual Regional Juried Art Exhibition at the Ann Rudd Art Center in Ozark, AL. Whaley has won several awards for her miniseries Three Petals , which is the origin of evolution for Standards . Whaley currently lives Ozark, AL as a full time fine artist and part time art teacher.

The exhibition will be on display in the Coleman Gallery from October 16th through December 23rd 2015.

Flat Granny and Me: A Procession in My Mind

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

Jenny Fine photographed her grandmother for the last ten years of her life. Since her death, the artist continues to want to make work alongside her. Inspired by the “Flat Daddies” project – life-sized photos of military members that help families cope during deployments, Fine created “Flat Granny” as a stand-in for her deceased grandmother. “Flat Granny” is a cardboard cutout of her grandmother made from the images taken of her while she was alive. In a recent attempt to reanimate her still image, Jenny Fine turned “Flat Granny” into a costume.

Flat Granny and Me is an ongoing series of performances with “Flat Granny” that take place within theatrical, constructed environments. These imagined spaces are shaped by Fine’s family’s narratives and are a collision of the past and the present, straddling the line between fantasy and reality.

Her rural hometown of Enterprise, Alabama is home to the Boll Weevil Monument. Privately purchased by a local businessman from an Italian monument catalog in 1919, a Classical Greek female figure stands in the middle of the intersection in the center of town. Altered from its original design, her hands, which were once a fountain, now extend above her head clasping a boll weevil. The Boll Weevil monument honors the insect for totally devastating the region’s cotton crops. The inscription on the monument calls the boll weevil a “Herald of Prosperity”, for it was the boll weevil infestation that forced Southeast Alabama farmers to diversify their crops, replacing cotton almost entirely with peanuts. Today the boll weevil has been eradicated.

In 1968, Fine’s grandmother was named Enterprise, Alabama’s “Woman of the Year.” Along with all the beauty queens and decorated city official in the parade that year, she, too, rode down Main Street, her float clumsily swerving around the Boll Weevil Monument while she waved to the crowd below.

This live performance (A procession in my mind), with original score written and performed by Five One Experimental Orchestra, will feature “Flat Granny” along with other live performers on a stage evocative of a parade float enclosed by a 360-degree photographic backdrop. The viewer entering the backdrop, enters the space of the photograph and is transported into a dream…piles of cotton form a float, strange costumed characters and musicians are scattered throughout the room-sized diorama, while the viewer circumambulates the float on a merry-go-round of sorts. The viewer moves while the “image” itself – the float and its occupants (Flat Granny, father, artist) – remain still or perform minimal repetitive movements like waving or tossing cotton into the crowd. The viewer performs as an audience circling around and around the float exiting through the split in the backdrop at any point he/she wants “off the ride.”

Fine, born in 1981 in Enterprise, Ala., received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Alabama in 2006 and a Master of Fine Arts from The Ohio State University (OSU) in 2010. Fine, a 2012 Greater Columbus Arts Council artist-in-residence in Dresden, Germany, has shown her work in solo exhibitions at Dublin Arts Council in Dublin, Ohio, Geh8 in Dresden, City Art Center in Delaware, Ohio and Kentuck Gallery in Tuscaloosa, Ala. She has taught at The Ohio State University, the University of Geosciences in Wuhan, China, and has worked at Susana Homes Orphanage and Women’s Shelter in Nigeria. Fine was awarded a National Windgate Fellowship from the Center for Craft, Creativity and Design in 2006 and a Fergus Memorial Scholarship from OSU in 2009.

This program has been made possible by a partnership that includes the National Endowment for the Arts and The Alabama State Council on the Arts.

The commission and first performances of A Procession in My Mind were made possible by The Sculpture Center with partial support from the Ohio Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Barbara Mann: Tranformation & Evolution

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

Barbara Mann has had over 35 years’ experience as a metal and jewelry artist. Her work represents highly rendered visions of movement within nature. Of her work, Mann says, “The objects that I make tell a story, relate a concept or record an observation. The subjects that interest me seem to remain constant: nature, science theories and discoveries, the beauty of form, materials and detail. The visual and physical elements in the immediate environment are starting points. The process of making an object is pure pleasure. I strive for excellent craftsmanship and the ability to distill a discovery of seeing or perceiving.”

She graduated from the University of Georgia with BFA and MFA degrees and has taught for many years as an adjunct instructor at UGA Lamar Dodd School of Art. She has also taught with the UGA Studies Abroad Program in Cortona, Italy and in Costa Rica; through the UGA continuing Education program; and with Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts. In addition, she has conducted numerous workshops throughout the Southeast.

Mann’s work is in many collections including The Mint Museum of Art, The Georgia Museum of Art, The Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, and The Committee for the Olympic Development of Atlanta, and Nations Bank. Barbara is currently president of the Athens Metal Arts Guild.

The exhibition is on display in the Dove Gallery from July 17 through December 31, 2015.

Additional information on the artist is available at www.BarbaraMannStudio.com .

Self Taught: Folk Art from the Permanent Collection

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

The Wiregrass Museum of Art will showcase work from its permanent collection by American folk artists in an exhibition titled Self-Taught . Often characterized as “self-taught”, folk artists rarely have formal training and often use found objects and materials in their works. Folk artists will paint from memories and personal experiences, depicting the world around them. Artists represented in this exhibition are Woodie Long, Jimmy Lee Sudduth, Mose “T” Tolliver, William Dawson and Bishop “Butch” Anthony, II.

Having all started life with modest means, each artist in this exhibition went on to experience success in the art world, having exhibited in some of the largest museums in the world. Jimmy Lee Sudduth is most known for his works on plywood in which he uses a homemade mixture of mud and pigment. As his artistic reputation as a folk artist grew, he was offered gallery shows in large cities, which mesmerized him with their skyscrapers and traffic. These “big city” scenes can be seen in some of Sudduth’s later work.

Like most folk artists, Mose Tolliver drew from his personal experiences for his subject matter. He often depicted whimsical images of people he knew, as well as animals and flowers. He also painted a number of self-portraits in which he was shown with crutches. Although he primarily used found plywood, Tolliver would paint on any surface he could find, in which he used common house paint to depict his images. Often only using two or three colors for one work, his compositions showed humorous sophistication.

From Seale, Alabama, “Butch” Anthony’s interest in painting did not surface until the winter of 1994 when he began painting pictures of people who live in the countryside around him. In his work Anthony uses found objects and often explores questions of identity. He is the founder and host of the annual Doo Nanny Festival.

Although he took some adult education classes in sculpture, William Dawson’s work exhibited an inner compulsion and an imaginative quality unlike that of an artist with formal training. He was a “man in the city, with rural roots” and his compositions often depicted references to the Bible, folk tales, animals, and even television characters. He is best known for his sculptural work, in particular his totem figures.

Self Taught will be on display in the Blumberg Gallery from May 6 to June 27.

An Autobiography in Clay

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

January 22 - June 25, 2016

Interior/Exterior

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

Alex Brewer, known as HENSE, utilizes unique color and composition in his installations to evoke a bold presence in the varied spaces they inhabit. INTERIOR/EXTERIOR, a multi-faceted exhibition organized by the Wiregrass Museum of Art, serves to introduce audiences to his long and successful career as an abstract painter. The exhibition combines site-specific installation, painting and works on paper both inside and outside of the traditional museum space.

INTERIOR/EXTERIOR explores Brewer’s process as related to site-specific installations in interior and exterior spaces. This is done through a gallery exhibition consisting of site-specific wall drawing, works on paper, and wood-cut shapes, and three exterior components including a billboard and two painted building facades. The exhibition is an exploration of his commitment to producing purely abstracted works by combining elements of art that are absent of representational references. As a result, the artist creates elegant compositions saturated with bold colors and lively movement of fluid forms and gestures. Along with a dialogue of spontaneous mark-making, the artist explores the relationships of these elements through his combined experience in the street and studio.

Growing up in Atlanta, Georgia, HENSE began his career painting and writing on the walls around the city. Since then, he has produced numerous public works worldwide. He combines the techniques of graffiti with the formal language of abstract painting incorporating line, form and gesture to create abstract compositions invigorated by the fast pace and culture of the street.

His works in the realm of public art, and cross-media connections have landed him local, national, and international attention. Brewer has received numerous notable commissions from the city of Atlanta and throughout the United States. His largest commissioned work was for The ISIL Institute in Lima, Peru amassing an impressive size of 137 feet tall and 170 feet wide.

This program has been made possible by grants from the Alabama State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. Support by the City of Dothan, Houston County Commission, Push Crank Press, Durden Outdoor Displays and AGF Machinery.

Gee’s Bend Quilters Collective

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

April 17 - June 27, 2015

The exhibition of Gee’s Bend quilts explores the intricate artistry from a most unexpected source. Made primarily from recycled materials, the quilts have been coveted nationwide for their bold, improvisational nature.

Gee’s Bend, known today as Boykin, is a rural, predominantly African American community southwest of Selma, Alabama. Located on an isolated peninsula, created by bends in the Alabama River, quilts were created as early as the nineteenth century. The area has its roots in the Gee family, and later the Pettways, who purchased land in Alabama for a cotton plantation in the early nineteenth century. Many of the current residents are descendants of the slaves brought to the plantation that once occupied the site.

What makes this tradition so compelling is the collective nature and aesthetic of the work being produced. Originally made from old work clothes and other recycled materials, the creation of the wildly engaging quilts we have come to know around the world was born of the need for comfort, often stacking up to ten quilts on the bed for warmth. Unlike common quilting practices, which favor uniformity, Gee’s Bend quilts include broken patterns, extreme color contrasts and often times, irregularity in patterns and edges.

It is remarkable the similarity of the quilts to minimalist and geometric paintings from the twentieth century, as the area is so isolated that the quilters had no knowledge of the outside artworld. But it is this aesthetic that is at the heart of the tradition, suggesting a group vernacular understood through childhood development and social bonding. In addition to their likeness to twentieth century modernism, their creative works also resemble West African textile and have strong connections to gospel, blues, and jazz. Even today, the quilters can often be heard singing while they sew, gospel music playing an integral role in the creative process.

The quilters of Gee’s Bend are widely known for the commanding visual presence of their work which employ unpredictable designs and unexpected color pairings. This exhibition serves as a record of the present activities and examines the ongoing artistic practice of the artists rooted in the Gee’s Bend tradition.

The exhibition opens at Art After Hours at 5:30pm on Thursday, April 16th. The works will be on display in the Museum’s main gallery from April 17th through June 27th, 2015.

Out of the Vault: 25 Years of Collecting

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

WMA is pleased to announce the opening of Out of the Vault: 25 Years of Collecting, a particularly poignant exhibition on display in the fall. In 2016, WMA will celebrate its 25th Anniversary — what better way to prepare for the future then by celebrating the past?

With a permanent collection composed of over six hundred original works of art, we wish to commemorate this momentous anniversary by sharing an historic selection of works from our collection. A walk through Out of the Vault: 25 Years of Collecting is a journey through years, artistic techniques, and stories. Each piece tells of the community and the people that have supported WMA through the years. will open to the public at Art After Hours on the evening of October 16 and run through the end of the year.

Out of the Vault: 25 Years of Collecting will be on display in the Main and Blumberg Galleries between October 17th and December 23rd, 2015.

Frank Gaines: Photo Bucket List Challenge

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

#MyDowntownDothan

Frank Gaines has documented Dothan and its history for decades, lending his keen eye as a photographer to chronicle the life and culture of our city. Taken between the 1930s and 1960s, the photographs in this exhibition highlight the historic beauty of Downtown Dothan during its heyday.

Today, Downtown Dothan is experiencing a renaissance. Thanks to groups such as the Dothan Downtown Redevelopment Authority (DDRA) and the Downtown Group, along with attractions and local businesses, Downtown Dothan is reestablishing itself as a vital part of our city. With new businesses locating downtown, a thriving nightlife and many cultural attractions, Downtown is growing to become the “Heart of the City” once again.

Join us this summer in sharing your downtown experience. Participate in our #MyDowntownDothan Bucket List Challenge and experience all downtown has to offer.

How to participate:

Complete a Bucket List item
Take a picture or video of your experience
Upload that picture or video to Twitter and/or Instagram
Use the hashtag #mydowntowndothan
Repeat!

Rules:

You must use the hashtag #mydowntowndothan in order for the photo to count toward winning the contest.
If we cannot tell what you are doing in the photo, it will not count as a completed experience.
Have fun and be creative!! The WMA may repost your picture.

What you can win:

Participants who complete the most items on the bucket list are eligible for a chance to win two free tickets to the WMA’s Yard Party for Art. The contest ends on August 20. Happy summer!

The Bucket List:

Take a selfie with your favorite work at the G.W. Carver Museum.
Track the Dothan Ice Cream cart and enjoy a delicious, locally produced ice pops.
Identify the year that the Dothan Riot broke out and then take a picture with your favorite mural.
Visit Frank Gaines’ Historic Photos of Downtown Dothan exhibit at the Wiregrass Museum of Art.
Check out a book from the DHCLS Main Branch (the former Houston Love Library).
Find the Mus-Quoian (the wooden scuplture) at the DHCLS (the former Houston Love Memorial Library).
Pop in to the Poplar Head Farmers Market.
Select your favorite car at Foster Fest.
Go to the clock tower on Foster Street.
Find the Joseph of Nazareth statue.
Take a selfie with the Houston County Courthouse bell.
See a show at the Dothan Opera House or the Civic Center.
Support Dothan’s roller derby team, Circle City Chaos, at the Civic Center.
Relax in Porter Park.
Tickle your taste buds at Blue Moon Cajun Café, Basketcase Café, Firestone Pizza, Bella’s, Delectable Edibles or Oak 151.
Take a selfie at Bullet’s, KT’s, Chill Lounge, or The District.
Come to Art After Hours on Thurs., July 16.
Attend the WMA’s Yard Party for Art on Sat., August 22.

Good Luck!

Assimilation: From Clay to Cotton, the Pottery of Guadalupe Lanning Robinson

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

Multiple

GUADALUPE LANNING ROBINSON

JULY 21-DEC 31

Delicately crafted by Guadalupe Robinson, each piece speaks to the artist’s rich cultural heritage and history. This exhibition includes many of her ceramic pots and highlights the artist’s craftsmanship and attention to detail. The delicate works are created from stoneware clays, wheel-thrown, and intricately designed and drawn by hand.

Originally from Mexico City, Robinson moved to Alabama over thirty years ago. Her work is a constant marriage of her Mexican roots and her current home in the South. The two cultures are merged through her traditional techniques and style while incorporating patterns and textures that some say are a nod to the Southern tradition of quilt making. She now works in both mediums, constantly experimenting with new methods and ideas.

GUADALUPE LANNING ROBINSON ARTIST TALK AND EXHIBITION WALK-THROUGH

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 22ND, 2016 • 6:00 – 7:30PM

Join exhibiting artist Guadalupe Lanning Robinson during this artist talk and as she explains and explores her creative process, influences, and background. Participants will also join Robinson on an exhibition walk-through of her work and a question and answer session.

A Cast of Blues

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

April 17 - May 31, 2015

A celebration of the rich musical heritage of the blues, A Cast of Blues features 40 resin cast masks of blues legends created by artist Sharon McConnell-Dickerson. The exhibition also contains the life-cast hands of the late bluesman Johnny Winter, short biographies and photos of each musician. “A life cast is like a 3D photograph to someone who is blind,” says McConnell-Dickerson, who is also blind. “It captures the flesh, muscle, bone, hair, and subtle expressions of emotion. I wanted to discover the faces behind the music I love, so I went to Mississippi and other places, following the migration of the blues, to map out the visages of many of the older generation of blues men and women.”
McConnell-Dickerson insists that patrons must touch her art and that it be fully accessible to individuals with disabilities.

All of the text for the exhibit is recorded for persons who are visually or print impaired, with sound clips of the performers music and Braille labels for each life-cast. And the faces are installed at a height that is accessible to persons in wheel-chairs and to children. “This is a ‘please touch’ exhibit so the viewer can fully experience what I felt behind the masks”, McConnell-Dickerson says.

A Cast of Blues – Artist Video from Wiregrass Museum of Art on Vimeo .

Perspectives

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

January 22 - March 26, 2016

Perspectives presents the unique worldview of photographers Sandy Spengler, Dave Wehrly, and George Mathison. All local artists, Spengler, Wehrly, and Mathison are members of SEAPAC: the Southeast Alabama Photography & Adventure Club, a photography club open to the public and dedicated to education of the art-form. The artists of Perspectives practice individually in color, black, and white chemical darkroom, as well as digital darkroom, digital imaging, and printing.

An exploration of Perspectives reveals a multitude of color, focus, and study. The approachability of the photographs on the surface provides the viewer with a sense of comfort, allowing them to delve deeper into the meaning behind the work. Perspectives variety of subject matter is, possibly, its greatest strength. Spengler, Wehrly, and Mathison transform misty creeks, statues, jewelry, rural homes, and dewy leaves into a study of time, place, and identity. Perspectives will be on view in WMA’s Coleman Gallery from Friday, January 22nd through Saturday, March 26th, 2015.

Real-Lives: Observations and Reflections by Dale Kennington

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

July 17 - September 26, 2015

Presented by Mike Schmitz and Family with generous support from the Friends of Dale Kennington.

From da Vinci to Pearlstein, the presentation of “reality” through visual expression has attracted, delighted, mortified and appealed to audiences dazzled by the skill of keen observation and technical expertise. While there are many definitions of Realism that define representational and figurative art, one artist, Dale Kennington, has managed to present us with a compelling collection of paintings that capture the essence of post-modernism in style and mood.

Kennington shares a dark and quiet American quality found in the work of Edward Hopper during the 1930-1940s, but she brings us into the 21st-century world of contemporary life through scenes of ordinary daily rituals such as a haircut, going to a bar, waiting for a train or watching a church choir. The artist makes us ponder the reality of living from an “outsider’s” position; one that feels both familiar and strange. Yet, the beauty and solemnity of Kennington’s paintings are so lush and provocative, one cannot help but stand before them and feel connected through shared human experiences common to our post-modern lives: fear, anxiety, wonder and camaraderie.

Kennington was born in Savannah, Georgia and has lived the majority of her life in Dothan, Alabama. She received a BA from the University of Alabama and in 2009 was recognized by the Alabama State Council on the Arts with the Governor’s Arts Award and the Alabama Bureau of Tourism and Travel as one of Alabama’s “Master Artists”. Her work is included in numerous collections including the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, the Columbus Museum of Art, the Wiregrass Museum of Art and the Paul and Lulu Hilliard University Art Museum at the University of Louisiana, Lafayette and the the Smithsonian Institute.

Exhibition organized by the Friends of the Mennello Museum of American Art.

Connected

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

January 20 - June 24, 2017

“Sitting at a table and sharing food with family and/or friends has always been important to me. Having the body of a bowl separate from the foot forces people to interact at the table. You cannot put the bowl down until it has passed from hand to hand, making your table guests engage with one another, even in this small way. By function, my bowls are designed to bring intimacy to the table by connecting with each other at the beginning of the meal and encourage warm conversation as a result.

The form represents our ever-changing world, moving parts trying to catch up and stay aligned but never quite perfect. Connecting to one another by sharing a meal together keeps us grounded and connected. There is nothing more important than family and friends.” – Susie Bowman

Southern Abstraction

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

October 21 - December 31, 2017

This exhibition represents a collection of Southern artists who use abstraction as a vehicle to explore symbology, shared language and the natural world. Each artist uses abstraction to different extents to explore what aspects of language and communicative devices are necessary to fully connect visually with others. What remains is an investigation of memory, the natural environment and human interaction.

Despite numerous masterful Southern abstract artists, outsiders frequently associate the art of the South with folk art and more traditional forms of expression. While this exhibition does not attempt to be a full survey of contemporary work being made in the South, it does attempt to present more fully the complex cultural landscape of the region and offer a companion to more commonly seen Southern work.

Featured in this exhibition are Claire Lewis Evans (sculpture; Tuscaloosa, Ala.), Sky Shineman (painting; Tuscaloosa, Ala.), Lucinda Bunnen (photography; Atlanta, Ga.), Ansley West Rivers (photography; Darien, Ga.), John McLeod (sculpture; Chattanooga, Tenn.), Rebecca Young (painting; Atlanta, GA), and Brian Edmonds (painting; Huntsville, Ala.).

Southern Abstraction is organized by guest curator Aaron Head.

Keep on Pushing: The Rosa Parks Show by Tim Kerr and Friends

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

Multi-talented artist, musician and activist Tim Kerr has created an immersive body of paintings, drawings and collages inspired by the spirit and legacy of social justice and human rights. The show, which originated at the Rosa Parks Museum in Montgomery in the 60th anniversary year of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, contains over one hundred works created by Tim and friends who include some of America’s most well respected illustrators, artists, photographers and sports figures.

The exhibition connects the worlds of activism, social justice, music and fine art through portraits of people from all walks of life who have advanced the cause of equity and justice. The juxtaposition of Leonard Peltier with John Coltrane, with Shirley Chisholm with Rosa Parks challenges the viewer to make connections across the spectrum of America history and find their own identity in Tim’s notorious signature, “Your Name Here.”

Tim Kerr is a native, lifelong Texan whose influence on DIY/Skate Punk culture is legendary. As a surfer and skater, Tim’s reputation as one of the earliest promoters of action sports is widely respected. As a musician, Tim’s most well-know band, the Big Boys, continues to influence generations of performers, and they are often cited as the cornerstone of the Austin, Texas alternative music scene. From Fugazi to the Misfits and countless other alternative bands of the 80’s and 90’s, the Big Boys were the “glue” that held the east and west coast scenes together. Tim continues to play Irish/Traditional/Old-Time Music and records and produces a host of contemporary musicians. Two films about Tim are currently in production–one entitled You Can Color Outside the Lines, chronicling his time playing with the Big Boys and their musical legacy, and one called Burn Bright Ring True, a film about Tim and the many bands and musicians with who he has played. Tim is a member of the Texas Music Hall of Fame.

As a visual artist, Tim has been involved in numerous solo and group exhibitions in the U.S., Asia and Europe. His work is highly sought after and collected by a wide audience. Tim works with youth across the country in the creation of murals, ‘zine workshops and the promotion of safe spaces for youth creativity and development. Tim holds a degree in Fine Art from the University of Texas, where he studied Photography with world-renowned photographer Gary Winogrand. Tim and his wife Beth, the Theatre and Dance Librarian at the Fine Arts Library at UT, share a passion for education and the power of art to make positive change in the world.

– Daniel Neil, Curator

Southern As by Amos Kennedy

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

June 1 - September 24, 2016

Southern As exhibits the prints of famed letterpress printer Amos Kennedy, whose notable work deals primarily with culture, politics, and race. In Southern As , Kennedy’s work is colorful and culturally significant. The exhibit is comprised of small, chip-board prints emblazoned with statements that connect both the artist and viewer in their “southerness.” Kennedy’s work is comfortable and familiar, which allows the viewer to connect with the pieces individually and make their own meaning.

Kennedy, who is adamant that he “is a printer, not an artist,” worked for over 20 years in the computer programming industry. In 1989, on a visit to Colonial Williamsburg with his family, he saw a printing press demonstration. Within three months of the trip, he was printing his own work. Kennedy then enrolled at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and earned an MFA in 1997. Kennedy has lived and worked in numerous small towns in Alabama, but currently resides and produces in Detroit, Michigan.

Southern As will be on view in the Coleman Gallery from Wednesday, June 1st through Saturday, September 24th.

This exhibition has been made possible by a grant from the Daniel Foundation of Alabama.

Guest Room in the Unconscious Mind

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

January 20 - March 25, 2017

Cindy Wagner is a visual narrator, telling stories through a variety of media including photography, digital image making, mixed media, and painting.

Wagner recalls her mother’s obsession with chronicling family history and collecting photographs of ancestors. Although she did not share this interest and preferred to focus on people still living, her current work serves to strike a balance between these two interests. She chooses to breathe new life into old photographs, mixing images of people lost to history with new material and digital distortion, and invites the viewer to reconsider the lives and likenesses of people who were once only memories. Wagner’s work is haunting and calls into question our own mortality and desire to be remembered.

She is a graduate of Herron School of Art And Design at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis and holds a BFA in Painting with minors in Art History and Anthropology as well as an AS in Visual Communications from Ivy Tech Community College with a specialty in Photography. Cindy is a Colorado born native and is currently making art in her studio at the historic Lowe Mill in Huntsville, Alabama.

Made in Alabama

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

April 22 - June 25, 2016

Made in Alabama explores the work of eight Alabama artists – Butch Anthony , Katie Baldwin , Doug Baulos , Cal Breed , Natalie Chanin , Frédéric Lecut , Miriam Norris Omura , and Debra Riffe – who use innovative techniques while experimenting with printmaking, mosaic, painting, glasswork, and embroidery.

Throughout 2016, the Alabama Tourism Department is honoring the artists, craftspeople, musicians, writers, designers, brewers, winemakers and food producers who make the state special. The artworks included in this exhibition celebrate this statewide initiative to showcase Alabama’s best artists and artisans, and further emphasis the museum’s commitment to exhibiting Alabama art.

Through the artists’ original works, Made in Alabama deals with the subjects of time, history, memory, and nature, motivated by a need to preserve personal and culturally relevant stories. Each piece explores the intricate processes of the artists’ chosen mediums, focusing on the actual “doing” of artistic creation. The exhibition explores the lines between fine art and craft, connecting viewers to Alabama’s rich cultural offerings.

This exhibition was organized by the Wiregrass Museum of Art with support from the Alabama State Council on the Arts.

Soul Glow: A Black Experience

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

January 20 - February 18. 2017

“My most recent work is a response to discoveries made while exploring the notion of the ‘black experience.’ The objective continues to be the use of memory as a spark toward an investigation, which could lead me to reconsider issues in new ways. The difference is that the more recent work is anchored in a more formal aesthetic.

My goal was to take a break from work that, at times, seemed laden with cultural symbolism. A shift from the literal could possibly bring clarity. My hope was to position myself in a more fertile place for exploration and discovery. I have found from past experiences that my use of abstraction always seemed to lead me to such a place, eventually revealing a kind of essence of what I’m attempting to communicate. This is very important as I continue on the path of exploring identity.

While constructing the more literal work, I was constantly making visual connections to my interest in ancient architecture, modern design, and abstract painting; more importantly, these were interests that were visually apparent in my not so recent work. As my work in the studio transitions from being more like the construction of objects and symbols toward a more immediate, intuitive, abstracted approach, certain shapes and designs are becoming more prevalent than others.

Lately, I have become obsessed with circles and chevron-like shapes. I’m beginning to see them as symbols that represent the black condition in America. Maybe the circle represents the vicious cycle that blacks find themselves in due to social-economic and racial issues. Maybe the chevron-like shape creates a directional flow; representing past, present and the future of black in America.” – Darius Hill

From Here to There – Printmaking in Alabama

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

April 21 - June 24, 2017

From Here to There: Printmaking in Alabama explores the work of five artists from around the state – Derek Cracco, Sarah Marshall, Scott Stephens, Andrew Kozlowski, and Amy LeePard – who use innovative printmaking techniques in their work.

Whether employing monotype, letterpress, or lithography, each artist uses their medium in new and interesting ways, incorporating aquatint and hand coloring to execute their work. The artists represented in this exhibition focus on a variety of subjects including language and communication, architecture, nature, and biology. As an example of Alabama’s excellence in art, the exhibition includes traditional works on paper, art books, and wallpaper installations.

From Here to There was organized by the Wiregrass Museum of Art in recognition of the unique contributions of Alabama artists. In the years 2017-2019, Alabama is hosting statewide events in celebration of the state’s bicentennial. WMA will be observing this by hosting exhibitions and programs that highlight the accomplishments of Alabama artists.

Red, White, Blue and Black All Over

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

May 24 - July 1, 2017

American history captures the growth and development of a young nation, its culture, and its people. That story is often shared with Blackness at its fringes, though the Black experience is very much embedded in the fabric of American culture–from inception. Blackness is about a journey, the twists and turns, to belong. It is a warped, oblong existence that is constantly tested, stretched, reshaped, and stretched again, revealing a resilience, both nuanced and kindred with each generation. Blackness represents movement and evolution. The diaspora creates a space for Black expression in its many forms because no single experience is the same. Blackness is not a monolith. Family of origin, local culture, and education play tremendous roles in shaping the black experience for each individual person of color. The Red, White, Blue, and Black All Over juried show will add to the diaspora by opening a space for Black artists to visually express those experiences as the Americans they are. We hope to see a variety of personal stories filled with hope, joy, pain, and love.

–Ida Harris and Precious Freeman

Jurors: Samuel Guilford, Ida Harris, Charly Palmer

In Unison – Live Performance

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

November 9, 2017

Jenny Fine, a WMA exhibiting artist, is back with her newest Flat Granny experience. If you saw her exhibition in 2015 title Flat Granny and Me: A Procession in My Mind then you know this is not to be missed. Fine will perform, for one night only, with Flat Granny and document the installation for an upcoming exhibition titled do it at the Mobile Museum of Art in January of 2018.

Of the performance, Fine states:

“In Unison is a narrative on living culture. Growing up in hills of Clarksville, Tennessee, clogging was a part of my grandmother’s (aka Flat Granny) cultural identity. So when my dance school in south Alabama started offering classes, she encouraged my sisters and me to take lessons. Clogging is a percussive folk dance – a true cultural assimilation born out of the collaboration of several newly integrated cultures. Clogging combines the jig brought to Appalachia by English, Irish, and German immigrants; buck dancing, introduced to the American south by slaves; and the Cherokee Indian stomp, introduced by Native Americans who escaped the Trail of Tears, hiding themselves in the hills of Appalachia.

In Unison continues my practice of storytelling as an exploration of cultural memory in the form of dance. Combining photography, costume design, and live performance, In Unison calls into question the historic form of the photograph and the body as moving image. This project relies on generative research and will continue to grow over the coming year.”

Through the Lens: Photography by Dr. William Hodges

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

January 19 - February 17, 2018

While serving in the U.S. Army Dental Corps, Dr. William Hodges was stationed in Vietnam from May 1968 – May 1969. It was here that he acquired his first high quality camera, an Asahi Pentax. It was during this time that Hodges captured the everyday lives of the Vietnamese people. He was particularly fascinated by the children, and observing the culture in which the older siblings looked after the younger ones.

His interest in photography reemerged after he retired from his dental practice in 1999, in which he used a high-end medium format camera. Hodges began staging still life scenes in his home, resulting in images with colors and composition reminiscent of the Dutch Masters. Hodges is best known for his series of photographs of abandoned streets and buildings in downtown Birmingham in 2008, taken with a Holga, an all plastic film camera.

The work in this exhibition spans the photographic career of Dr. William Hodges, highlighting his interest in experimentations of light, shadow, and composition.

Stones in My Pathway

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

April 22 - June 25, 2016

61 Highway is the longest road I know
Goes all the way from Chicago to the
Gulf of Mexico
Son Thomas, Highway 61 Blues

Driving along Highway 61 on a muggy summer day, the road ahead disappears into wavering bands of heat, telephone poles become rows of crosses, and overhead power lines buzz like late summer cicadas. The highway rises out of Louisiana swamps entering southernmost Mississippi to trace the Civil War through Natchez, Port Gibson, and Vicksburg, before cutting through the heart of the Delta like a long thin incision into Memphis, and weaving toward its final destination somewhere in Illinois.

In August of 1992, I drove on Highway 61 for the first time past Delta towns like Lake Cormorant, Bobo, Alligator, Mound Bayou, Panther Burn, Nitta Yuma, and Rolling Fork. I stopped in the little town of Leland in search of bluesman and folk artist, Son Thomas. His son, Pat, met me at the door of their weathered shotgun shack and invited me in. To my left, a homemade casket held the carved likeness of a dead woman in a blue print dress. On a shelf to my right sat a grinning clay skull with two rows of human teeth and aluminum foil eye sockets. I found Son seated on the side of his bed hunched over and holding aloft a cigarette with an arching three-inch ash.

Son Thomas spent most of his life as a day laborer, gravedigger, and part-time blues musician, while entertaining at local parties around Washington County. Despite international recognition late in life as one of the South’s most important blues and folk artists, he still struggled to make a decent living with his art. The afternoon I spent with him talking about his life and hearing his music made an indelible impression on me. I vowed to come back as soon as I could. When I returned the following Spring, Son was lying in a hospital bed dying of a brain tumor.

Since that first visit, I’ve witnessed many changes in the Delta. Not only has the blues world lost many important artists like Son, but the arrival of casinos has brought with them a flood of fast food, chain stores, and competition to the rural juke joints that help keep the Blues alive in Mississippi. The plantation where Robert Johnson first learned music is now home to three casinos, and billboards now pockmark Highway 61 where once there was an unobstructed view of vast fertile cotton fields.

These changes are significant because the history of the Blues parallels the history of Black Americans in the twentieth century. To many of the three million African-Americans who migrated from the South in the first half of this century, Mississippi is the ancestral homeland, the American “Egypt” from which they escaped social and economic bondage. The same Mississippi soil that transformed the Delta into the land of king cotton with the sweat and suffering of slaves and sharecroppers also produced a cultural legacy of music, religion, and rural traditions that shaped and defined the African-American community. The Blues, one of our country’s oldest original forms of music, was born of field hollers, railroad chants, black spirituals, jump-ups, European folk music and the ability of the human spirit to dignify itself in the face of oppression.

These photographs are my attempt to document the living legacy of this rich cultural tradition. The Blues is our country’s most important musical art form for it has shaped every musical form developed in its wake, including gospel, jazz, rock and roll, bluegrass and modern country. Its echoes still resound in the sweaty juke joints and dusty cotton fields along Highway 61.

-Bill Steber

I got stones in my passway
And my road seems dark at night
I got a pain in my heart
It has taken my appetite
Robert Johnson, Stones in my passway

Gravitation – Work by Jacob Phillips

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

October 20 - December 30, 2017

Gravitation features collected examinations by artist Jacob Phillips of various environments that tell a story of movements in nature. Nature (i.e. organisms, time, natural elements) is nondiscriminatory in its desire to bring harmony to its surroundings, showing reflection through water, radiance from the sun, and growth from the earth.

Phillips gains his inspiration from environments that provide escape from a chaotic world. A particular focus in his work includes driftwood and its various properties. When driftwood travels ashore, it encounters a new life, having traveled from the past, lived, and later discarded from time. The surface of the wood has been treated by the tides, changed by the organisms that called it home, and partially crystallized by the sand as it arrives on shore. Materials used in this installation include audio, clay, cast aluminum, assorted paper, light, and assorted wood.

Jacob Phillips is a recent graduate of the University of Alabama of Birmingham and a native of Dothan, Alabama. He works in sculpture and drawing and addresses topics on tranquility and movement in nature. He was a recent arts instructor for the 2016 Alabama Charcoal Program at Space One Eleven in Birmingham, Alabama, and a Sculpture Counselor for the 2017 season at Bucks Rock Performing and Creative Arts in New Milford, Connecticut. Phillips has exhibited in galleries such as The Limner Gallery in Hudson, N.Y.; Space One Eleven in Birmingham, Ala.; the Wiregrass Museum of Art in Dothan, Ala.; the Birmingham Museum of Art in Birmingham, Ala.; Lowe Mill Arts and Entertainment in Huntsville, Ala.; and the Abroms Engel Institute for the Visual Arts in Birmingham, Ala. This is Phillips’s first solo museum exhibition.

Observation as Contemplation

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

January 19 - March 24, 2018

The photographic work of Pamela Venz ranges from explorations of the effects of light and shadow on three-dimensional objects to highly manipulated images of the conflicting relationships between form, light, and space. Of her work she says, “I use photography to explore a wide range of images and technical approaches, with the elusive common thread being a recurring interest in the emotional aspect of visual contradiction.”

Her work has been exhibited in galleries around Birmingham, across the Southeast, Southwest, and mid-Atlantic in both galleries and museums, and in the Czech Republic. She has been the recipient of an Alabama State Council on the Arts Artist Fellowship, a second place award from the 2014 Dogwood Arts Regional Juried Art Exhibition in Knoxville,Tennessee, as well as several Faculty Development awards from Birmingham-Southern College, supporting both photographic projects and course development.

Born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, Venz received a B.A. in sculpture and photography from the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 1983 and an M.F.A. from the Ohio State University in 1985. She joined the faculty at Birmingham-Southern College in 1986 and created the department’s concentration in photography in 1998. She received tenure in 2001, served as department chair from 2006-2010, and was promoted to full professor in 2009.

Mike McCarty: The Music Years

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

January 19 - June 30, 2018

Mike McCarty has worked with many music greats throughout his career, designing album art and illustrations for the music industry. In 1976, after freelancing album cover art for songwriter/producer Buddy Buie, McCarty and wife Sherri formed a design studio business, McCartyGraphics, where he worked with names such as Atlanta Rhythm Section, Jerry Lee Lewis, Isaac Hayes, James Brown, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Patti Smith, KC and the Sunshine Band, Billy Joe Royal, Albert Coleman and The Atlanta Pops Orchestra, Bobby Brown/Whitney Houston, as well as writers Lewis Grizzard, Dave Barry, and President Jimmy Carter.

McCarty was a voting member of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS), and served on the Board of Governors for nearly 20 years. He has also served as Chairman of the Album Packaging Committee for the Grammy Awards. He was appointed to the Senate Music Committee by Georgia Governor Zell Miller in 1980. In 2009, McCarty was selected as “Artist of the Year” for the beaches of South Walton.

Born in Dothan, Alabama, in 1946, Michael McCarty received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Auburn University. Originally enrolled in Pre-Veterinary Medicine, McCarty changed his major to Visual Design, after the musical group Steppenwolf used a reproduction of one of his pen and ink drawings of the band for a poster. He currently lives and work in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida, with his wife Sherri.

documentingBlues

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

April 21 - June 24, 2017

Jenn Ocken has been photographing blues culture for over a decade, capturing the often emotional reactions and experiences of the legendary music scene. She has been working professionally since 2002 building a library of images that she calls “documentingBlues.” Her work focuses on blues musicians in the midst of their performances, as well as interactions from fans and relationships with other musicians.

Included in this exhibition are photographs taken by Ocken over the years at the International Blues Challenge, located in Memphis, Tennessee. This series of photographs has recently culminated in a book titled, Blues on Beale Street: Memoirs of the International Blues Challenge , which Ocken describes as “a love letter told in photographs, accompanied by a series of written experiences.”

Letters, etc.

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

June 1 - September 29, 2018

Clayton Colvin is an abstract painter, collage artist, and curator based in Birmingham, Alabama. With compositions both abstract and figurative, Colvin uses pattern, shape and form to explore memory and space. His recent work incorporates textiles and fabric, interwoven into his paintings, as an exploration of the nature of space.

Colvin received his BA in Art History from New York University in 1999 and his MFA in painting from the University of Alabama in 2005. Colvin’s work has been exhibited by galleries and museums across the US including the Birmingham Museum of Art (Birmingham, AL); the Mobile Museum of Art (Mobile, AL); and Artist Space (New York, NY). His work is included in the permanent collections of the High Museum of Art (Atlanta, GA), the Birmingham Museum of Art (Birmingham, AL), and the Mobile Museum of Art (Mobile, AL).

Tony Wright: Form and Variation

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

July 20 - December 29, 2018

Tony Wright is a ceramic artist based in Mobile, Alabama. His career, spanning over thirty years, has focused primarily on the use of the potter’s wheel to create vessels for both utilitarian and decorative purposes. In addition to his wheel work, which observes a strict symmetry, he also explores subtle and whimsical interpretations of vessel forms, including small and large-scale figurative sculpture.

Wright’s interest in experimentation through his art can be attributed to his work as an educator. As the ceramics professor at the University of South Alabama, he teaches a broad range of materials, processes, and contexts that clay affords. Wright received his MFA at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale and his BFA at Minnesota State University, Moorhead.

Youth Art Month 2017

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

March 2017

Each March, the Wiregrass Museum of Art hosts Youth Art Month, an event celebrated annually in schools, museums, and other organizations around the country. The month includes a juried exhibition of art by K through 12 students from the Wiregrass region, as well as WMA’s own Out of the (Art) Box, an installation competition for high school groups. The March 1st Opening Reception (5:00-7:00 p.m.) is open to the public and will include the announcement of several awards.

High school (9 – 12) students’ works are eligible for the following awards and will be displayed in the indicated locations for one year following the close of the Youth Art Month exhibition on March 31.

- Wiregrass Museum of Art Award , hung at WMA
- Youth Art Month Award , hung at the office of Dothan Pediatric Dentistry & Orthodontics
- Houston County Award , hung in the County Commission Building
- City of Dothan Award , hung in the Mayor’s Office
- 2nd Congressional Art Competition Award , hung in the U.S. Capitol

The 2nd Congressional Art Competition: Artistic Discovery Contest

The Congressional Art Competition, also known as the Artistic Discovery Contest, is an opportunity to recognize and encourage artistic talent in students from every congressional district across the nation, including our own 2nd Congressional District. This competition is open to all high school juniors and seniors and is coordinated through the offices of U.S. Representative Martha Roby. The winning piece from Alabama- District 2 will be displayed for one year in the United States Capitol alongside artwork from other nationwide contest winners. All winning pieces from each congressional district will also be considered for selection as the National Congressional Art Competition winner.

Out of the (Art) Box 2017

Out of the (Art) Box is an innovative variation on WMA’s popular public installation competition from years past. Four teams of high school students (grades 9 – 12) will be paired with artist mentors to create original installations in the Museum’s galleries. This year, students will be challenged to completely transform their building material, disclosed to them only on the first day of the competition, and think outside of the “(art) box” to create their work. The installations will be designed and constructed by the teams with the guidance of their mentors from February 24 through 25 and displayed in the Entrance Galleries and Main Gallery of the Museum during the month of March. The winning team, selected by a judge, will receive a donation to their school’s visual arts program.

All Youth Art Month award winners will receive recognition during a Dothan City Commission meeting held on March 7, 2017.

2017 Youth Art Month Exhibiting Artists
Click Here

2017 Out of the (Art) Box Participating Teams

Early County High School
Enterprise High School
Northview High School
Rehobeth High School

IMPORTANT DATES

Wednesday, March 1st – Opening Reception, 5 – 7 p.m.
Friday, March 31st – YAM exhibition closes
Saturday, April 29th – Final day to pick up exhibited artwork

Contact Amanda Holcomb for more information.

Youth Art Month is generously sponsored by Publix Super Markets Charities and Dothan Pediatric Dentistry & Orthodontics – Dr. Flowers and Dr. Crowder. Additional support provided by the Support the Arts License Tag Fund and the Coleman Foundation.

Folded Form – Work by Hugh Williams

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

July 20 - September 29, 2018

Featuring recent work by Hugh Williams, this exhibition features drawings and paintings about the unique, physical movement of people he encountered in everyday settings. A departure from the abstract, color field paintings he is most known for, this work is focused on figurative compositions and the artist’s curious nature. A keen observer of his surroundings, Williams was obsessed with mark making as a way to explore movement of the clothed figure. The charcoal drawings showcase his unique process and freedom of expression, not intended to translate directly to oil paintings. The paintings are designed to explore a new dimension of the figure related to form making, where distance from the work changes one’s perspective.

Born in Centre, Alabama, Hugh Williams received his B.A.A. in Applied Art from Auburn University, and his M.A. in Art from Columbia University. He joined the Auburn University Art faculty in 1957. In 1992, Williams retired as Alumni Professor Emeritus of Art at Auburn University. He taught classes in all art disciplines. His personal work includes painting, drawing, wood block, weaving, sculpture, ceramics, printmaking and assemblage. Williams’ work is in the permanent collections of The High Museum of Art (Atlanta, GA); Columbus Museum of Art (Columbus, GA); Montgomery Museum of Fine Art (Montgomery, AL); Birmingham Museum of Art (Birmingham, AL), among others.

This exhibition is guest curated by Sheri Schumacher. It has been made possible by grants from the Alabama State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.

This exhibition has been made possible by grants from the Alabama State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Home: Where I Live

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

January 18 - February 16, 2018

Home explores the unique perspective of Dothan and Wiregrass area citizens that are either homeless or housing insecure. Artists were each given a disposable camera in order to capture scenes in their everyday lives – streetscapes, community organizations, abandoned properties, and their community. What resulted is an intimate look at both the hardships that these artists face, as well as the bright moments they find — whether that be an organization that might help them find food or shelter or in the friendship they share with a neighbor.

This project, inspired by Through Our Eyes, a project which originated in Spartanburg, South Carolina, serves to shine a light on the growing number of people that find themselves without a place to call their own. These photos represent what Home looks like to them.

Youth Art Month 2018

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

March 2018

WMA is gearing up once again for our annual competition and exhibition, Youth Art Month . Held every March, Youth Art Month is a month-long celebration of student artists, in which WMA partners with elementary, middle, and high schools throughout the Wiregrass region to display student artwork in the museum. The contest is open to K-12 students from public, private, and home schools in the region. Youth Art Month emphasizes the value of art and art education for all children and encourages the public to support quality school art programs.

In conjunction with Youth Art Month , WMA will once again host the 2 ^nd Congressional Art Competition. The competition is open to all high school juniors and seniors in the 2 ^nd Congressional District. The winning piece from Alabama-District 2 will be displayed for one year in the U.S. Capitol alongside artwork from other contest winners nationwide. The 2 ^nd Congressional Art Competition is an opportunity to recognize and encourage the artistic talent in the nation, as well as in our Congressional district. All winning pieces from each Congressional district will also be considered for selection as the National Congressional Art Competition winner.

We are also thrilled to recognize another year of our popular high-school installation challenge, Out of the (Art) Box . Teams of high school students will create original installations using moveable “boxes.” This year, students will once again be challenged to completely transform their material and think outside of the “(art) box.” The completed “boxes” will be created at the museum over two days and then displayed in the museum during the month of March. The winning team will receive a donation to their school’s visual art program.

Ground Beneath My Feet – Collaborative Portraits with Visual Artists in My Hometown – Work by Charity Ponter

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

October 19 - December 29, 2018

In this series, Charity Ponter highlights the talent and unique personalities of other Alabama artists, often referencing their own work in the portraits.

Ponter began the “Ground Beneath My Feet” photo series by approaching thirty visual artists in her hometown of Birmingham, Alabama and challenging each participant to brainstorm an idea for a portrait of themselves that could be both conceptual in nature and also share part of their identity as an artist.

The artists were encouraged to stretch the horizons of their craft, to go boldly into the realm of the strange or eccentric. They were asked to dream big, to dig deep, and then be photographed while immersed in their vision. The results of the collaboration are an attempt to capture the artists as their true selves but in a constructed scene or environment, and also to reveal the joy and magic that is collaboration between creative minds.

Ponter explores the lines between art, documentary, and portrait photography in order to reveal honest connections with her subjects. Through her work, the artist offers a visual landscape in which people and situations can freely share realities on a deep and often spiritual level.

Seeking out community and collaboration with other artists wherever she goes, Ponter believes all individuals have inherent value as human beings and have a unique voice in this world. Uninterested in following visual trends that isolate, solely self-promote, or divide, she desires to create work that brings healing to individuals and connects diverse groups of people while invoking a communal village mentality.

Walks in the South

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

January 18 - March 23, 2018

Sydney A. Foster is a visual storyteller, interested in capturing the stories of everyday people that she comes across. In 2016, while walking through downtown Montgomery on her lunch break, she was compelled to begin photographing people she met along the way. Foster is inspired by the common threads that she hears from people of all backgrounds, and the aspirations we all share. This series, which began with Ms. Annetta, has evolved to include other neighborhoods around our capital city. Through her work, Foster gives each person the opportunity to shine through their portrait, letting go of the stereotypes that separate us.

Sydney A. Foster is a photographer living and working in Montgomery, Alabama. Her work was recently featured in “This is where you’ll find me”, the first major art exhibition in the Kress on Dexter building on Dexter Avenue in Montgomery. This is Foster’s first solo museum exhibition.

Echoes: A response to objects in WMA’s permanent collection by the Alabama Women’s Caucus for Art

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

October 19 - December 29, 2018

Art museums are vitally important. They collect and interpret objects, reminding us that culture is never built by accident. Popular or otherwise, culture is designed by people communicating with each other from generation to generation. All of us who make art have at some point been moved by the work of other artists. Responding to that work is both a constructive and destructive process, leading us to new and different understandings. This is why members of the Alabama Women’s Caucus for Art will make and show work in response to objects in Wiregrass Museum of Art’s permanent collection.

Participating artists:

Katie Baldwin
Heather Baumbach
Emily Bodnar
Sylvia Bowyer
Kimberley A. Brown
Kala Clontz
Anna Sue Courtney
Patty B. Driscoll
Kristy Jane From-Brown
Susie Garrett
Nicole Harper
Kimberly Hart
Deborah Hunter
Kathryn Jill Johnson
Sandra Colwell Lasater
Amy McBroom
Aynslee Moon
Corinna Nicole
Giang Pham
Ruth Ann Stephens
Melody Tiemann
Ann Vann
Roxie Veasey
Cynthia Wagner

Operation Art

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

June 5 - September 28, 2019

This exhibition features original artworks by area veterans, prior service members, and active-duty service members created during the museum’s Operation Art open studio classes held during the museum’s spring quarter as part of programming related to the exhibition Continuum: 1808 to 2017/ Goya to Erdreich. Photographs from individuals who have served or are currently serving in the military are also included as part of this exhibition, which is intended to tell the unique stories of members of our community.

Alabama Reckoner

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

April 20 - June 30, 2018

Alabama Reckoner is an exploration of the process-driven work of Alabama artist, Douglas Pierre Baulos. In this exhibition, he will present portraits of artists that inspire him, many of whom are also from Alabama. The portraits consist of three dimensional found objects, handmade paper, and meticulous details that give clues to each of the artists’ personalities.

Of his work, Baulos says, “These portrait installations reflect a multitude of interests including grief and mortality, nesting and mending, memory, the physical body, and spirituality. Although I work with emotionally heavy, conceptual themes like loss, mortality, and the power and delicate nature of memory, my work is a reflection of my attempt to live my life in fragile exultation. The process of piecing together an image is a meditative exercise for me, having as much to do with duration as physical texture or of following the thread of mindfulness to create installations that concretize ephemeral and intangible theories of information and time. I merge the abstraction of narrative with the physicality of objects.

In the portraits I’m pinpointing intangible experiences and feelings and creating diorama maps where the sentient, intimate and vestigial are articulated, placing the viewer in their midst. The figurative/vestigial re-telling nature of some of my work stresses the idea of transformation and recovery over victimization. There is an intimacy with the subject becoming object, with the reverence for the past life and the confrontation of the doggedly present body. I’m interested in forms and images that accompany the body and in the traces the body leaves: a bed, a nest, a web, decay and shadows. My work is about exploring where these spaces are suspended for observation and meet at a crossroads between the temporal (fleeting) and concrete (lasting).”

This is the second exhibition in a three-part series recognizing Alabama’s Bicentennial and highlights the 2018 bicentennial theme “Honoring our People.”

Alabama Reckoner Website

THURSDAY, JUNE 7, 6 p.m.
Artist Talk with Doug Baulos – “Mending, Memory and Placemaking”

SATURDAY, JUNE 9, 10 a.m. – 3 p.m.
Visiting Artist Workshop – Visual Ecology with Douglas Pierre Baulos and Pinky Bass

A Salad of Servers: Innovative Flatware from the 20th and 21st Centuries

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

January 18 - June 29, 2019

This exhibition will showcase the remarkable diversity of design and materials in the production of modern flatware. The servers on display will demonstrate the creativity of designers in turning functional tools into works of art. Many of the pieces are inspired by nature and others have a sculptural quality to them; their materials are diverse including stainless steel, wood, porcelain, bronze, and more!

The opening of A Salad of Servers will coincide with the release of a new book on the subject of modern flatware, Flatware That’s Not “Flat”: Design and Production of Innovative Table Cutlery, 1890-2015, authored by William P. Hood, Jr. and Phil Dreis, which explores the ways in which flatware and table cutlery designs, materials, and makers have changed over the past 125 years. It is the first publication to examine the subject in broad scope and depth.

The objects on display in this exhibition are from the collections of William P. Hood (Dothan, AL) and Phil Dreis (Big Bend, WI).

Sight Lines

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

July 19 - September 28, 2019

This exhibition explores the mediation of nature through the lens, the vehicle, air conditioning–through modern machines. What does it mean when the relationship to the natural world is always facilitated and manipulated? The ubiquitous phrase, “Objects are closer than they appear,” frames the landscape as it recedes in the side-view mirror. Reflections can never quite be trusted, light bends, glass magnifies, aluminum siding becomes a funhouse mirror. Using video, photography, and site-specific installation, Katie Hargrave and Meredith Lynn capture the strangeness of how the landscape is mediated.

Hargrave and Lynn met at the University of Iowa, where they both earned MFAs. This body of work began when they attended the Signal Fire artist residency in 2017, and since, they have been collaborating on work that explores the American experience of the landscape. Hargrave is an artist and professor based in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Lynn is an artist and curator based in Tallahassee, Florida.

Carlton Nell: Compositions

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

April 19 - June 29, 2019

Compositions will showcase large-scale, abstracted landscapes by artist Carlton Nell. Nell is a professor at Auburn University and his paintings have been exhibited in museums and galleries nationwide and are included in various public and private collections. His illustrations have appeared in numerous publications, most recently on the cover of the historical novel series, Drums of War.

From the artist:

“In a recent issue of Modern Painters magazine, Merlin James wrote of the Welsh painter Thomas Jones as ‘… actively apprehending the world by depicting it; not just describing the world as one sees it, but seeing it as one describes it.’ My work is based on the idea of using simple aesthetic language (pure color, shape, texture, line, scale, etc.) as a framework for seeing—as a means to extract and embrace the poetry of our surroundings.

A mere copy of nature seems redundant, but intentionally zeroing-in on these abstract pictorial qualities gives me a wonderful tool to focus my observation—and thus gain a more concentrated perception of the subject. The pictorial language aids me in understanding my surroundings as it offers a path to observe and contemplate and reckon with the world. The attempt with the work is to bring into equilibrium the shared visual language of the material painting and the natural subject depicted in the paint. Hopefully, these paintings acknowledge the observed world while offering a unique and moving experience of it with others.”

Youth Art Month 2019

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

March 2019

As Long as the Waters Flow: Native Americans in the South and East

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

July 19 - September 28, 2019

Carolyn DeMeritt is an established, self-taught photographer who has shown extensively across the United States. A native of Charlotte, North Carolina, DeMeritt’s work focuses on personal connections and an intimacy with her subjects. WMA will exhibit As Long as the Waters Flow: Native Americans in the South and East , her series of photographs of Native American culture, including portraits from 33 Native American communities from Maine to Florida and the Great Lakes to Louisiana . A collaboration with writer Frye Gaillard in the 1990s, the series documents the conditions of Native American communities and tribes at the end of the 20th century and serves to honor tribal members and their tribal identities.

Artists-in-Residence: “Where You Come From is Gone” – Jared Ragland and Cary Norton

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

April 18 - 20, 2019

During an April 18-20 residency at WMA, collaborative artists Jared Ragland and Cary Norton will visit historic Native American sites throughout the Wiregrass as part of their ongoing project, Where You Come From is Gone . Created during Alabama’s bicentennial celebration , Where You Come From is Gone explores the importance of place, the passage of time, and the political dimensions of remembrance through the wet-plate collodion photographic process. Ragland and Norton’s images seek to make known a history that has largely been eliminated and make visible the erasure that occurred in the American South between Hernando DeSoto’s first exploitation of native peoples in the 16th century and Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act 300 years later. Using a 100-year-old field camera and a custom portable darkroom tailored to Ragland’s 4×4 truck, the two photographers have journeyed more than 2,000 miles across 20 Alabama counties to locate, visit, and photograph indigenous sites.

Read more about Jared and Cary’s collaborative work as GUSDUGGER here .

Jared Ragland is a fine art and documentary photographer and former White House photo editor. He is the photo editor of National Geographic Books’ The President’s Photographer: Fifty Years Inside the Oval Office and has worked on assignment for NGOs in the Balkans, the former Soviet Bloc, East Africa and Haiti. In 2015, Jared was named one of TIME Magazine’s “Instagram Photographers to Follow in All 50 States,” and he is a recipient of a 2017 Alabama State Council on the Arts fellowship. His work has been exhibited internationally and collected by institutions including the Archive of Documentary Arts at Duke University, the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University, Birmingham Museum of Art, Chrysler Museum of Art, Contemporary Art Center New Orleans, and the Phoenix Art Museum. Jared is an alumnus of LaGrange College and a graduate of Tulane University with an MFA in Photography. He resides in his hometown of Birmingham, Alabama.

Cary Norton is a fine art and editorial photographer, camera builder, and beekeeper. In 2009 he received worldwide recognition for building a 4×5” field camera from LEGO blocks, and he is currently at work constructing a custom mammoth-plate large format camera from locally-sourced lumber and iron. Cary has worked on long-term assignments in London and Baghdad and worked with NGOs in India, Kenya, and Uganda. In addition to client work for Ford Motor Co., Regions Bank, Verizon and Whole Foods Market, his photographs are in the collection of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art and have been published by Smithsonian Magazine, Southern Living, and The New York Times. Cary is an alumnus of Samford University, and he resides near his apiary in the Avondale neighborhood of Birmingham, Alabama with his wife, Stephanie, and their two Dachshund rescues, Fin and Munch.

Frank Stella: Prints from the Permanent Collection

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

October 18 - December 14, 2019

American abstract artist Frank Stella has inspired generations of artists and continues to influence the art world through his constant evolution. One of the most prolific artists of modern times, Stella cemented himself in the art history books early on. Although Stella is revered as a master painter, pioneering the use of shaped canvases, and eventually adding objects into his paintings, the artist has had a successful career as a printmaker as well. Always more concerned with the basic elements of art, he drew an early parallel to his paintings with his first print series in 1967, which focused on color, shape and composition.

Creating some of the most complex work in printmaking history, Stella often experimented with techniques, layering various printing processes. A testament to the advances possible through the arts, Stella’s early work gave him the name ‘Father of Minimalism,’ while later works that utilized multi-colored palettes were the inspiration for movements in post-painterly abstraction and color field painting. As a young artist in the 1960s, Frank Stella inspired generations of artists while his work inspired movements. No matter the medium Stella works in he constantly strives to maintain and reinvigorate the field of abstraction.

Frank Stella: Prints from the Permanent Collection will consist of thirteen works created over the last five decades, spanning the period from 1967 until 1996. WMA holds one of the largest public collections of Frank Stella in the Southeast and this exhibition will outline the artist’s innovations in the medium of printmaking while providing a visual history of the work that has inspired so many others.

In Flux

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

July 19 - December 28, 2019

Jessica Smith is a visual artist who lives and works in western Alabama. She has taught at the University of West Alabama for fourteen years and currently serves as an associate professor of art.

Of her work, she says:

“Each sculpture is comprised of many clay gummy bears that are assembled into a tessellating composite. Moldmaking is my effort to celebrate systems of mass-production while recognizing the tender reality that each cast offers slight fluctuations. Inferior pressings experience rebirth through the clay reclaim process. Ultimately, there is an erosion of the original mold because a mold breaks down the more it is used. These sculptural forms speak toward obsessive compulsion and the comfort of smallness. Movement, chance, and rhythm are concerns explored during the fabrication state. Ceramics is a material that effectively captures and responds to an environment.”

Smith grew up in the Chicago area, completed a B.F.A at the New York State College of Ceramics, and received her M.F.A. from Tulane University in New Orleans. When she is not in her studio, chances are good that you can find her baking pastries in her kitchen or swaying on her yoga mat.

wolf-lightseparating gold from gravel:new encaustic works on paper by zdenko krtić

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

October 18 - December 21, 2019

Zdenko Krtić’s creative agenda reveals the artist’s increased interest in a dynamic idea of history — one that is always mutable and reflective of subjective and (infinite) narrative potential. The artist’s work is an exploration of beauty among the mundane. Krtić’s interests continue to be about the investigation of perception and representation, explored here through introspection and personal experiences of light, weathering, weather phenomena, decay, and the passing of time.

In his most recent work, the artist examines and experiments with inherent incompatibilities and contradictions of two distinct visual processes contained within the autonomous mediums of painting and photography. Most images created for this exhibition were captured through the process of scanography, which utilizes a flatbed scanner as an image capturing tool and is characterized by extremes of limited, shallow depth of fields, but also of high image resolution potential. The painting process sometimes precedes, and at other times follows the development of these scans. Sometimes Krtić will paint directly on a flatbed scanner, or he may follow up by layering pigmented molten wax on the already printed surfaces. The use of beeswax helps imbue the work with translucency and depth, and with pronounced tactile qualities that make actions of the artist’s hand visible.

A brief note about the artist:

Zdenko Krtić is a practicing artist whose work has been featured in numerous group and solo exhibitions both in the US and in Europe. His work consists mainly of mixed media encaustic paintings, works on paper and photography. His two most recent solo exhibitions took place abroad, in Rome, Italy: Vernal Pools – Recent Encaustic Paintings at Temple Art Gallery (2015), and Rome Drawings – Selected Works on Paper at UARC Rome Center (2017). Closer to home, his paintings were featured in Melting Wax – a Survey of Works by Alabama Encaustic Artists (Georgina Clarke Alabama Artists Gallery, Montgomery, 2016-17) and in Showcase 2018 (Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Auburn University, 2018).

Zdenko Krtić has received numerous grants and awards, including the Alabama State Council on the Arts’ Fellowship and an Excellence in Research Award from Auburn University, where he has been teaching painting for many years. The artist has also completed three visiting artists residencies at the American Academy in Rome, Italy.

Beverly Erdreich – Continuum: 1808 to 2017 / Goya to Erdreich

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

April 19 - June 29, 2019

Beverly Erdreich’s Continuum series takes an unflinching look at atrocities that have impacted society through incredible acts of brutality. Inspired by Francisco de Goya’s 19th century series Disasters of War , Erdreich draws direct parallels from Goya’s etchings to modern acts of inhumanity. Reproducing and enlarging a selection of Goya’s images, Erdreich then works into each an additive and subtractive process of drawing, collage, erasure, and text. The images speak to us with an urgency to point out how little the world has changed in the centuries since Goya’s pioneering series of first-hand war reportage.

A native of Dothan, Alabama, Beverly Erdreich earned her degree in art history from Newcomb College in New Orleans, Louisiana. Her work has been exhibited nationwide and is in the permanent collections of the Wiregrass Museum of Art, the Birmingham Museum of Art, as well as private and corporate collections throughout the United States. Erdreich lives and works in Birmingham, Alabama.

Continuum has been shown at Space One Eleven in Birmingham, Alabama; the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts in Montgomery, Alabama; and the Center for Contemporary Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The exhibition is intended to honor those who have experienced war, violence and acts of hate. Related programming will be presented throughout the run of the exhibition, looking at global events and their effects on local history. The full schedule of events is listed below.

Continuum Public Programs

Use the links below to view details about the programs

View new Intergenerational Learning Project videos by clicking the link below.

Video Playlist

As We Are: Photography by Sean Crutchfield

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

June 17 - December 31, 2020

Sean Crutchfield explores the region in which he lives, capturing the everyday sites he sees along the way. Whether an abandoned home, a roadside attraction, or a group of passersby, his photographs are haunting and beautiful at once. Crutchfield experiments with film photography as his medium, documenting small towns throughout the Wiregrass.

Sean Crutchfield is a film photographer and native of the Florida panhandle with an affinity for the people, landscapes, and vernacular architecture of the American South. He can be found driving around the Florida, Georgia, and Alabama tristate area looking for images to share on his Instagram account, @the.grain.silo , and his website, crutchphoto.com .

WMA Artist-in-Residence Sydney A. Foster

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

Spring 2020

Her work explores beauty and fashion, capturing the essence of the men and women she photographs and showing the rawness and transparency of her subjects. Sydney A. Foster is passionate about the African-American community – especially the women – and ensuring that they are represented equally in all things.

Foster will spend several weeks over the spring and summer in the Wiregrass community, exploring and capturing what makes Houston County unique. Her intent is to create a more colorful and unified community by discovering the unseen gems of the county, be it it’s rich agricultural history, raw and authentic faces, and places of the Wiregrass. She has completed similar projects in Montgomery, Alabama, the subject of her first museum exhibition in 2019 at Wiregrass Museum of Art and Macon, Georgia, as part of a group exhibition “Bright City,” curated by Dashboard, U.S.

Sydney A. Foster, 25, is a veteran, image-maker, and creative director based in Montgomery, Alabama. She was hand-selected at the age of 21 by Alabama Governor Kay Ivey to be a staff photographer. She is a U.S. Senior Airman who was recently deployed to Southwest Asia with the 187th Alabama Air National Guard. Sydney has worked under prestigious photographers including Keith Major, Danielle Levitt, and Jason Rodgers. She owns a multicultural creative agency, USSPECTS, which is an entrepreneurial ecosystem, cultural space + safe place to develop creative, conscious and fresh works while promoting positivity + unity. She received an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Alabama State Council on the Arts in 2019. Foster believes that being able to inspire people through the beauty of imagery is more than power — it is life.

Resident Artist: Lily Reeves

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

Spring 2020

Spirit Kin is meant to highlight the rapid loss of biodiversity in North America, and for this project specifically, the artist’s home state of Alabama, the Wiregrass region, and the Gulf of Mexico. Spirit Kin is intended to be a visual story that rewrites the lineage of human-centered divinity in the rural South to refocus our understanding of what defines a spiritual being, and what it means to have a transcendent experience.

The project will expand notions of martyrs, angels, and saints by illustrating critically endangered plants and animals in neon light, positioned as miraculous visions in landscapes that are part wild, part human-tempered. Idolized as messengers of God (who has many names), these ‘angel’ plants and animals become bearingers for a world that is more complete, understanding, and empathetic of non-human histories, and formulates an uncertain but hopeful prophecy.

The Wiregrass will be the launch site for Spirit Kin before traveling across the U.S.

Lily Reeves’ sculptural work encourages emotional and physical well-being through a holistic lens of personal, societal, and environmental healing. She uses light, space, immersive installations, and audience participation performance as tools to address contemporary culture. She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Alfred University and her Masters of Fine Arts at Arizona State University in Phoenix, AZ. She currently lives and works in Birmingham, Alabama, where she runs her art and design studio full time.

Youth Art Month 2020

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

March 3 - 28, 2020

Held every March, Youth Art Month is a national celebration of student artists during which WMA partners with elementary, middle, and high schools throughout the Wiregrass region to display student artwork in the museum. The contest is open to PreK-12 students from public, private, and home schools in the region. Youth Art Month emphasizes the value of art and art education for all children and encourages the public to support quality school art programs.

In conjunction with Youth Art Month , WMA will once again host the 2 nd Congressional Art Competition. The competition is open to all high school juniors and seniors in the 2 nd Congressional District. The winning piece from Alabama-District 2 will be displayed for one year in the U.S. Capitol alongside artwork from other contest winners nationwide. The 2 nd Congressional Art Competition is an opportunity to recognize and encourage the artistic talent in the nation, as well as in our Congressional district. All winning pieces from each Congressional district will also be considered for selection as the National Congressional Art Competition winner.

We are also thrilled to recognize another year of our popular student installation challenge, Out of the (Art) Box , open to both middle and high school students in 2020. Teams of students will create original installations using moveable “boxes.” This year, students will once again be challenged to completely transform their material and think outside of the “(art) box.” The completed “boxes” will be created at the museum over two days and then displayed in the museum during the month of March. The winning team will receive a donation to their school’s visual art program.

B14: Wiregrass Biennial

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

This year’s participating artists include:

James Rodger Alexander
Dan Bethune
Phillip Counselman
Stephanie Davenport
Rachel David
Claire Lewis Evans
William Fenn
Jenny Fine
Scott Fisk
Joanne Fogle
Annemarie Furlong
Brian Glaze
Joni Gruber
Amy Guidry
Christine Hager-Braun
Andrew Hairstans
Richard Herzog
Jessica Hilvitz
Kaylee Hobbs
Stacey M. Holloway
Tonia Hughes
John Hyche
Amelia Key
Lauren Lake
Joan Lamb
Frederic Lecut
Melanie Morris
Julia Morrisroe
Sarah Nathaniel
Miriam Omura
Emily Quinn
Jane Segrest
Michael Vaughn Sims
Jessica Smith
Catherine McLeod Smith
Michael Swann
Bethany Taylor
Pamela Venz
Chelsey Williams

B16: Wiregrass Biennial

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

July 21 - September 24, 2016

B16: Wiregrass Biennial showcases the region’s most talented contemporary artists, illustrating the South’s rich cultural heritage. The exhibition is open to artists living in Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Florida and Louisiana and serves as an opportunity for artists living and working in the Southeast to take part in a museum exhibition and to strengthen their professional portfolios. The WMA encourages innovative and progressive work that utilizes a variety of art forms and media and will feature paintings, sculptures as well as mixed media, new media and installation art.

This year’s participating artists include:

Synchronized Swimmers

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

January 17 - February 22, 2020

My grandmother was in her mid-sixties when she learned to swim. Her lessons began the day she had an in-ground pool installed in her back yard. It was then that my grandmother, my sisters, and I began our love affair with water. Her pool became our most frequented place of play. Holding our breath, stepping into the water, we slipped into our imaginations.

Synchronized Swimmers is a multimedia, photographic stage that juxtaposes the still against the moving, 2D with 3D, in an attempt to create a phantasmagoric stage for a highly costumed, multimedia performance to unfold. Relying on research and imagery from the Gulf Coast of Florida, including the Weeki Wachee Springs Mermaid Show, Synchronized Swimmers will source untrained performers from the hosting communities to embody the photographic space. Fog, animated lighting, and sound lure the viewer deeper inside the story towards a willing suspension of disbelief.

By incorporating forms of installation, performance, storytelling, folklore and regional cultural studies with a strong focus on the American South, my work overlaps the past with the present, and collapses the fourth wall established in the still image. I am interested in “reversing the camera’s crop” by enlisting community participation. Through this cooperative creative space-making, the audience and performer are one and the same. Participants are invited to step inside the photograph, inside the story, creating the latent image of a sensory experience that lives on in the mind of the viewer.

Synchronized Swimmers relies on generative research and will grow over the next two years as it travels across the southeastern United States. This evolving project will produce a series of large-format photographs and a short film for future exhibition.

— Jenny Fine

Jenny Fine (b. 1981, Enterprise, AL) is a visual artist and professor currently living and working in Alabama. Rooted in the photographic form, Fine’s practice employs time as material in an exploration of both personal and cultural memory, identity, and our shifting relationship to the photograph in our digital, image-saturated age. Fine has shown her work in solo exhibitions at Geh8, Dresden, Germany (2012), Dublin Arts Council, Dublin, Ohio (2014); The Sculpture Center, Cleveland, Ohio (2015), Children’s Museum of the Arts, New York, New York (2015); Wiregrass Museum of Art, Dothan, Alabama (2015); and Stephen Smith Fine Art, Fairfield, AL (2016).

Exhibition Programming

January 16 – Opening performance at Art After Hours / 5:30 p.m.

February 6 – Performance and Artist Talk / 5:30 p.m.

February 8 – Visiting Artist Workshop with Jenny Fine: Paper mâché props / 1-4 p.m.

February 22 – Closing Performance / 10 a.m.

Originial score for Synchronized Swimmers composed by Taylor Shaw.

Telling On Myself— recent works by Beverly West Leach

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

January 17 - December 31, 2020

Many ideas and experiences influence these mixed media assemblages and collages. Experimenting with different materials ranging from the use of found images and objects, to knickknacks collected along the way, each piece depicts an assortment of my varied interests and thoughts. Combining images, objects, materials and media reflects my eclectic nature and unique point of view on life experiences. Currently my work incorporates a personal iconography of physical objects, paper ephemera and photography, each piece telling its own story.

Our memories are stored in the manner of a collage rather than through single, literal images. Much of this body of work draws upon memories of childhood, experiences as a female and the feeling of not quite fitting into the places we end up. With my work I am fixing memories, the process allows me to explore my interior world. Ideas touching on the power of nature over humans, the vastness of the universe and our place within this world reoccurs to me often.

The rhythm, flux, and flow of daily life experience intrigues me. The juxtaposition of various elements to make a whole visual statement begins with a faint or fleeting indication about something I’ve considered. My reinterpretation reflects ruminations on socially conscious messages – or sometimes not, but still pondering on our human condition and the world we move through each day.

— Beverly West Leach

Beverly West Leach has been a professional artist for 34 years and her work has been exhibited throughout the United States in juried exhibitions and in solo and group shows. She received a BFA from the Columbus College of Art and Design in Columbus, Ohio, and an MFA from the Pennsylvania State University in State College, Pennsylvania. Her work is also part of several corporate collections and The Baltimore Museum of Art Prints and Drawings Collection.

Taking an experimental and eclectic approach, Beverly’s art captures sensations, impressions and moments of thought, through the juxtaposition of a variety of elements, materials, colors, textures, and forms. In addition to her artistic pursuits, Beverly has been a beekeeper for eight years. Traveling is a passion and she has been to eleven different countries, including India, China and Iceland.

Exhibition Programming

Virtual Artist Talk / June 23, 6-7 p.m.

B18: Wiregrass Biennial

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

July 20 - September 29, 2018

B18: Wiregrass Biennial showcases the region’s most talented contemporary artists, illustrating the South’s rich cultural heritage. The exhibition encourages innovative and progressive work that utilizes a variety of art forms and media and will feature paintings, sculptures as well as mixed media, new media, and installation art. This year’s show features forty-one artists from eight states.

Featured Artists Include:

Between Heaven and Earth

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

April 16 - June 26, 2021

Interested in light’s ability to simultaneously reveal and distort, in the slow moment of contemplation, in the mundane yet sublime, Chintia Kirana’s work is an exploration of duality, an accumulation of time passed, and a poetic representation of words unspoken.

For the past decade those interests have led to the exploration of an interdisciplinary approach to art making. Kirana’s research combines philosophical and geographical ideas from her upbringing: East/West, Christian/Buddhist, etc. She is interested in the dismal reality of inevitable collapse, especially in the fleeting nature of life; not only as a visual language but also as a creative process. In her studio practice, time becomes an important factor not only as a process but also as a material. Materials used to create the work such as ashes (to make ink) and carbon build up (which later are compressed into charcoal) are collected over time. Collecting is a way to materialize the ephemeral quality of time. These materials are accumulated through ceremonial ritual, daily consumption and collaboration with the local community.

Kirana is a multidisciplinary artist and art activist. Throughout the span of a decade, her work has been featured in solo, group, and juried exhibitions across the United States and abroad in venues such as Whitney Museum of American Art, Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Dhaka National Museum of Art, Sienna Art Academy, Zhou B Art Center, ISE Cultural Foundation, and Czong Institute of Contemporary Art, among others.

Born in Jakarta, Indonesia, she was captivated by the art world at an early age. Due to a political uprising in 1999, she and her family left Indonesia and immigrated to the United States. Chintia holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in Painting & Drawing from Southern Illinois University Carbondale. She is the founder of Expose Art and MAP (Montgomery Arts Project). She is the 2019-2020 Alabama State Council on the Arts Visual Arts Fellow.

For Keeps: Selections from the Permanent Collection

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

July 16 - September 25, 2021

Explore works from the museum’s permanent collection in the exhibition For Keeps , including painting and illustration, as well as large scale sculpture. WMA’s permanent collection has been acquired over a thirty three year period — from donations from artists and collectors, and from museum purchases. This work is representative of a permanent collection of over 700 objects which are cared for by WMA in the public’s trust.

Explorations through Printmaking by Troy University Students

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

January 21 - March 19, 2022

Prints from students in Troy University’s Introduction to Printmaking class work in a variety of techniques: monoprints, relief and intaglio. A wide range of subject matter and mark making is explored in this diverse group of prints, with self-portraits, landscapes, and societal topics as the departure points for the image making process.

Sara Garden Armstrong: Threads and Layers

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

October 16 - December 31, 2020

Threads and Layers surveys works by Alabama native Sara Garden Armstrong, representing an artistic legacy in Alabama and New York spanning six decades. This exhibition brings together handmade artist books, paintings, sculpture, and mechanical, light- and sound-based installations from the 1970s to the 2000s, as well as recent works covering Armstrong’s artistic production up to the present day. Many of these works have never been presented together before. Armstrong’s continuing practice interprets life cycles and metamorphosis using movement, color, sound, texture, and light.

Armstrong has exhibited nationally and internationally since the 1970s. She has had solo exhibitions at John Gibson Gallery, Dieu Donné, Souyun Yi Gallery, and the Bronx Museum of the Arts in New York; and the Birmingham Museum of Art, Maralyn Wilson Gallery, Space One Eleven, and the Alabama School of Fine Arts in Birmingham, Ala. Her work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions, including at A.I.R. Gallery and SculptureCenter, New York; Susan Hensel Gallery, Minneapolis; U.S. Embassy, Czech Republic, Prague; Stiftung für Konkrete Kunst, Reutlingen, Germany; Bellevue Arts Museum, Bellevue, Wash.; and the Contemporary Art Center of Virginia, Virginia Beach.

Her artist books and artworks are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and Time, Inc., New York; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Bibliothèque Nationale and Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, Ala.; and many others. Her atrium sculptures are included in the collections at the Civitan International Research Center at the University of Alabama-Birmingham and United Therapeutic Corporation, Silver Spring, Md. Armstrong now lives and works in Birmingham, where she founded the cooperative art gallery Ground Floor Contemporary</span . The monograph Sara Garden Armstrong: Threads and Layers will be published this fall. Learn more at: saragardenarmstrong.com .

The exhibition is guest-curated by Paul Barrett, who organized Sara Garden Armstrong: Threads and Layers at the University of Alabama Gallery and the Arts Council Gallery in the Dinah Washington Cultural Arts Center in Tuscaloosa. Barrett represented Armstrong’s artist books at the art gallery AGNES in Birmingham in the 1990s.

What Has Been Will Be Again

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

Fall 2021

Jared Ragland’s ongoing photographic project, “What Has Been Will Be Again,” will be the focus of a digital exhibition and archive launching later this year. Over the course of a year-long road trip across Alabama, Ragland has poetically explored the complexities of his home state by documenting sites of historical significance and generational injustice.

“Alabama has known a deep and complex history – from Native American genocide to slavery and secession, and from the fight for civil rights to the championing of Trumpist ideology, the state has often stood at the nexus of American identity,” Ragland says. “By tracing historic colonial routes including the Old Federal Road and Hernando de Soto’s 1540 expedition, the project reckons a haunting yet tender look at Alabama’s troublesome past and tenuous present.”

This digital exhibition has been made possible by the Alabama State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Jared Ragland’s project, “What Has Been Will Be Again,” is made possible with the support of The Do Good Fund and the Magnum Foundation.

Youth Art Month 2021

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

March 2021

Youth Art Month is a national, month-long celebration of student artists held each year in March, and WMA partners with elementary, middle, and high schools throughout the Wiregrass region to display student artwork in the museum. The exhibition is open to PreK-12 students from public, private, and home schools, and emphasizes the value of art and art education for all children, encouraging public support for quality school art programs.

In conjunction with Youth Art Month , WMA will once again host the 2 nd Congressional Art Competition, open to all high school juniors and seniors in Alabama’s 2 nd Congressional District. The winning piece from Alabama-District 2 will be displayed for one year in the U.S. Capitol alongside artwork from other contest winners nationwide. The 2 nd Congressional Art Competition is an opportunity to recognize and encourage the artistic talent not only in our Congressional district but throughout the nation, as well. All winning pieces from each Congressional district will also be considered for selection as the National Congressional Art Competition winner.

We will also recognize another year of our popular middle- and high-school art challenge, Out of the (Art) Box, but with a complete reimagining of the program for 2021 . There will be no teams competing against each other, but rather one big team working together to create a catalyst for change. A group of 12 area junior high and high school students who believe in art’s ability and power to create a better world will meet together virtually with three professional artist mentors to work alongside a local organization. The students will conceive and create an art-based solution to a problem the chosen organization is trying to address, amplifying the group’s message and encouraging action for their cause. Stay tuned to see what this new iteration of Art Box and these students will accomplish in our community!

WMA’s Out of the (Art) Box program has been made possible in part by a grant from the Alabama State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Exquisite Disorientation: Sarah Marshall

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

April 22 - June 25, 2022

This exhibition features hand-dyed fabric works and quilts by artist Sarah Marshall, which incorporate various printmaking techniques like screenprinting, cyanotype, and relief printing. Influenced by interests such as language, reading and book objects, architecture, and biological science, Sarah focuses on the processes of printmaking and drawing. Her works on paper and fabric show organic forms that become portraits and characters; repeated in various environments, these characters examine our ideas about decision-making and the ways we treat each other.

The daughter of a reference librarian and a composer, Sarah Marshall, grew up near Baltimore, Maryland. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Carnegie Mellon University in 1992 and, in 1999, her Master of Fine Arts degree from The University of Iowa. Sarah is currently employed as an Associate Professor of Art at The University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa.

Featured Above: Sarah Marshall, On The Blink , screenprint, relief printing, cyanotype, natural and synthetic dyes, machine quilting.

Helen Keller Art Show of Alabama – 2018

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

April 2 - May 19, 2018

For over a decade, WMA has hosted the Helen Keller Art Show of Alabama, an exhibition of work created by Alabama students with visual impairments, blindness, and deafness. The exhibition is juried statewide, travels from Birmingham to Mobile, and select pieces are also shown internationally. The Helen Keller Art Show of Alabama emphasizes creativity, color, and tactile media in the arts. The winning entry for the grand prize is selected by the Helen Keller Festival Board to receive the Patty Johnson Award, and will remain in the permanent collection at Ivy Green in Tuscumbia, AL, the birthplace of Helen Keller.

Don’t miss your chance to view these powerful works by a group of courageous and talented students. The Helen Keller Art Shows of Alabama will be on view from April 2nd through May 19th in the Coleman Gallery.

Helen Keller Art Show of Alabama – 2017

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

April 1 - May 13, 2017

For over a decade, WMA has hosted the Helen Keller Art Show of Alabama , an exhibition of work created by Alabama students with visual impairments, blindness, and deafness. The exhibition is juried statewide, travels from Birmingham to Mobile, and select pieces are also shown internationally. The Helen Keller Art Show of Alabama emphasizes creativity, color, and tactile media in the arts. The winning entry for the grand prize is selected by the Helen Keller Festival Board to receive the Patty Johnson Award, and will remain in the permanent collection at Ivy Green in Tuscumbia, AL, the birthplace of Helen Keller.

Don’t miss your chance to view these powerful works by a group of courageous and talented students. The Helen Keller Art Shows of Alabama will be on view from April 1st through May 13th in the Coleman Gallery.

Sonya Yong James: The Eye of a Needle

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

April 22 - June 25, 2022

“Cloth and fiber can sometimes hold the gift of memory. Textile art can provoke a desire to touch, thus awakening multiple senses at once. Color and texture can be heard like a sound while the desire to experience art by physically touching it is using the eyes of the skin.” – Sonya Yong James

Repurposed cloth and thread are the mediums of choice for artist Sonya Yong James who works with these materials to examine the intersection of our shared cultural mythologies and domesticity. She meticulously manipulates the materials, combining techniques like weaving, knitting, spinning, dyeing, felting animal hair and sewing, juxtaposing these with ceramic and found objects. Her wall sculptures move beyond traditional storytelling woven into textile arts such as quilts, creating new environments that explore the roles that sexuality, memory, and death play in the development of our personal relationships. What do your eyes tell you to smell? If you could touch the work, what do you think you would feel? Can you almost hear something from your memories? Our sensory experiences often directly tie to past experiences and relationships with an object, shape, or texture evoking emotion or memory. Lose yourself within this installation, and you might find the influence that textiles hold in our collective memories, and the power a needle and thread have in what they create.

Sonya Yong James lives and works in Atlanta, Georgia. She received a BFA in Printmaking from Georgia State University where she focused on etching and sculpture. She was the recipient of the Artadia Award in 2019 and the Idea Capital Antinori grant in 2021. James has exhibited in galleries and museums such as the Zeitgeist Gallery, Nashville; Whitespace Gallery, Atlanta; Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia; Atlanta Contemporary; Ogden Museum of Southern Art; Albany Museum of Art, Albany, GA; and the Zuckerman Museum of Art; Kennesaw, GA. She was formerly a resident at the Studio Artists Program at Atlanta Contemporary and is represented by Whitespace Gallery.

Youth Art Month 2022

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

March 2022

Held every March, Youth Art Month is a month-long celebration of student artists, in which WMA partners with elementary, middle, and high schools throughout the Wiregrass region to display student artwork in the museum. The exhibition is open to PK-12th grade students from public, private, and home schools in the region, and emphasizes the value of art and art education for all children and encourages the public to support quality school art programs.

In conjunction with Youth Art Month, WMA will once again host the 2nd Congressional Art Competition, open to all high school juniors and seniors in the 2nd Congressional District. The winning piece from Alabama-District 2 will be displayed for one year in the U.S. Capitol alongside artwork from other contest winners nationwide. The 2nd Congressional Art Competition is an opportunity to recognize and encourage the artistic talent in the nation, as well as in our Congressional district. All winning pieces from each Congressional district will also be considered for selection as the National Congressional Art Competition winner.

Youth Art Month Opening Reception is March 1st, 4-7pm. Open to the public. Free.

B20: Wiregrass Biennial

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

July 17 - September 26, 2020

B20: Wiregrass Biennial is a juried exhibition that encourages innovative and progressive work and showcases the South’s most talented contemporary artists, illustrating the region’s rich cultural heritage. Selected work utilizes a variety of art forms and media, including paintings, sculptures, mixed media, new media, and installation art. Three jurors chose from a field of over 130 entries for this year’s exhibition — the first virtual exhibition ever for WMA — featuring 39 artists from 11 states.

B20: Wiregrass Biennial is being held online this year due to the ongoing need for physical distancing in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Artists would normally travel from around the Southeast to deliver and install their work, attend the traditional exhibition opening, and hold in-person artist talks and workshops. This year’s online presentation will give the public new ways to engage with artists, with plans for virtual artist talks, online workshops, virtual studio tours, artist conversations, and social media takeovers. All programming will be archived on the website alongside the virtual exhibition.

Rather than postponing or cancelling B20, WMA made the decision to hold the exhibition in a new format, recognizing the benefit of providing exposure for participating artists, especially those who may be at the beginning of their careers. This platform to introduce their work to new audiences is especially important now as exhibitions and gallery shows have been cancelled throughout the country.

WMA will present five awards to this year’s participating artists: the Judge’s Award ($1,000); the new Alabama Award ($1,000), which will be given to an Alabama artist in the show; and three People’s Choice awards.

The winners of the Alabama and Judge’s awards will be selected by B20 judge Jackie Clay , the executive director at the Coleman Center for the Arts, a contemporary art space in York, Alabama. The People’s Choice Award will be decided through online voting by the public from the exhibition’s opening date through September 26. In addition to the $1,000 prize for the work that receives the most votes, a second and third place prize of $500 has been added this year to provide additional financial support to artists during these challenging economic times. The awards are intended to give artists funding to continue to develop new work and support their studio practice.

Featured Artists Include:

Helen Keller Art Show of Alabama – 2019

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

April 8 - May 18. 2019

Don’t miss your chance to view these powerful works by a group of courageous and talented students. The Helen Keller Art Shows of Alabama will be on view from April 8th through May 18th in the Coleman Gallery.

Helen Keller Art Show of Alabama – 2020

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

April 1 - May 16, 2020

Don’t miss your chance to view these powerful works by a group of courageous and talented students. The Helen Keller Art Shows of Alabama will be on view from April 1st through May 16th in the Coleman Gallery.

Helen Keller Art Show of Alabama – 2021

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

April 7 - May 22, 2021

Don’t miss your chance to view these powerful works by a group of courageous and talented students. The Helen Keller Art Shows of Alabama will be on view from April 7th through May 22nd in the Coleman Gallery.

Pattern and Void

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

January 22 - June 26, 2020

Since its founding in1985, the Sloss Metal Arts program has offered workshops, exhibitions, and conferences on all aspects of metal working but focuses primarily on the use of cast iron as a sculpture medium. This exhibition features sculpture created by a group of talented artists working out of Sloss Furnaces and the Sloss Metal Arts program.

In addition to Sloss Metal Arts, open studios and artist residencies give a regional audience of professional artists access to the foundry facilities needed to cast their own work, while regular sculpture workshops in casting, welding and forging are designed for people with no metal work experience. The Sloss Metal Arts portable foundry travels to locations all over the state bringing introductory casting activities and iron pour demos to children and adults at festivals, museums, universities and more.

Participating artists include Adam Bodine, Marshall Christie, Ira Hill, Heather Holmes, Katie Palmer, Ian Skinner, Savannah Smith, Holly McCreary, Joe McCreary, Ajene Williams, and Ashley Wingo.

Visit Slossmetalarts.com for more info.

Iron Pour and Workshop
Saturday, February 27, 2020

Wiregrass Museum of Art and Landmark Park will partner to bring Sloss Metal Arts to the Wiregrass for an Iron Pour. A demonstration and workshop will be held at Landmark Park.

Participants will make a 3.75”X3.75” scratch block tile, with the help of Sloss Metal Arts artists. Cost is $10 materials fee plus gate fee ($4 for adults, $3 for kids, and free for park members). Registration and prepaid materials fee required. To ensure social distancing, space is limited, and participants will register in 30 minute blocks (between 1 p.m. and 5 p.m.) of 20 people in each block. Visit www.landmarkparkdothan.com/park-events/ to register.

Go to the calendar page for this event for more information.

This program has been made possible in part by a grant from the Alabama State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Helen Keller Art Show of Alabama – 2022

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

April 1 - May 21, 2022

Don’t miss your chance to view these powerful works by a group of courageous and talented students.

Nice Work If You Can Get It

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

July 16 - December 31, 2021

Nice Work If You Can Get It borrows its title from a George and Ira Gershwin song of the same name. The exhibition explores the interests and idiosyncrasies of an Alabama collector who began acquiring work directly from artists in the 1980s and continues to this day. This selection of works displays some of the diversity of that eclectic collection in the hope that visitors to the museum will be inspired to pursue their own interests in supporting artists and acquiring works of art. Featuring acclaimed and emerging artists from across the United States and around the world, but with a particular focus on Alabama artists, Nice Work If You Can Get It showcases a variety of mediums including artist books, drawing, fiber art, mixed-media assemblage, painting, photography, and sculpture.

Sydney A. Foster: Reflections and Realities

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

October 22, 2021 - March 26, 2022

In this exhibition, Sydney Foster explores the unique characteristics of the Wiregrass Region through bright color and a care for our people and places. Since 2019, Foster has been traveling to Dothan and the surrounding areas to capture the realities of our community; and she has reflected on her own experiences along the way. Interested in telling the untold or overlooked stories across the South, these images offer a look at the complex realities of our region.

Sydney A. Foster was born in Montgomery, Alabama and lives and works in Atlanta, Georgia. At 21, Foster was hand selected as staff photographer for the Alabama Governor’s Office. Foster is also a United States veteran serving in the Air National Guard. Her work revolves around vibrancy, southern black culture, feminism, and the rawness of all people, places and things. Sydney’s work is heavily influenced by social equality, African American women, and being a voice of reason to those who too are afraid to speak up and out.

B22: Wiregrass Biennial

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

July 22 - September 24, 2022

The Wiregrass Biennial is a juried exhibition open to all artists living and working in the Southeast over 18 years of age. WMA’s call for artists began in December 2021 for submissions of original work completed within the last three years, and yielded a record number of applications from artists, which were juried by three regional arts professionals: Meredith Lynn, curator of the Museum of Fine Arts and director of Galleries for the College of Fine Arts at Florida State University; Tina Ruggieri, assistant curator at the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts; and Daniel White, director of the Paul R. Jones Museum of American Art, and the director of The University Gallery at The University of Alabama.

B22: Wiregrass Biennial is a survey of works being created by artists from across the Southeast region, and the group show strengthens the arts community in the Southeast by bringing regional emerging and established contemporary artists to a local Wiregrass audience. For area residents and visitors, this year’s biennial will continue to build on the museum’s reputation for showcasing work from artists from different backgrounds through diverse mediums – from painting and sculpture, to installation and multimedia, large-scale works, and more – offering visitors the opportunity to learn from and connect with the art and artists of our time.

Featured artists include:

Pavel Amromin (Panama City, Fla.)
Sarah Bryant and Holland Hopson (Tuscaloosa, Ala.)
Elton Burgest (Tallahassee, Fla.)
Kevin Chadwick (Lynchburg, Va.)
Derek Cracco (Vestavia Hills, Ala.)
Dariana Dervis (Birmingham, Ala.)
Heather Deyling (Atlanta, Ga.)
Scott Eakin (Atlanta, Ga.)
Karen Graffeo (Birmingham, Ala.)
Justin Quaid Grubb (Pensacola, Fla.)
Jason Guynes (Tuscaloosa, Ala.)
Roscoe Hall (Mountain Brook, Ala.)
Erin Harmon (Memphis, Tenn.)
Nancy Jane Lee Jones (Port St. Joe, Fla.)
Willoughby Lucas Hastings (Huntsville, Ala.)
Clarence Heyward (Clayton, N.C.)
Josh Hoggle (Birmingham, Ala.)
Dale Lewis (Oneonta, Ala.)
Mär Martinez (Winter Garden, Fla.)
Sophie McVicar (Birmingham, Ala.)
Micah Mermilliod (Mobile, Ala.)
John “Jahni” Moore (Huntsville, Ala.)
Chieko Murasugi (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
Jimmy Nicholson (Quincy, Fla.)
Tracie Noles-Ross (Birmingham, Ala.)
Raymond Padron (Chattanooga, Tenn.)
Elisabeth Pellathy (Birmingham, Ala.)
Jared Ragland (Columbus, Ga.)
David Clayton Robinson (Atlanta, Ga.)
Mary Robinson (Columbia, S.C.)
Jessica L. Smith (Livingston, Ala.)
William Steber (Murfreesboro, Tenn.)
Sergio Alan Suarez (Atlanta, Ga)
Janet Swigler (Columbia, S.C.)
Jessica Wohl (Sewanee, Tenn.)
Lauren Woods (Opelika, Ala.)
Tianxing Xu (Savannah, Ga.)

To encourage artists in their career advancement and studio practice, WMA will provide five cash prizes in 2022 for select artists in the Biennial exhibition: the Judge’s Award ($1,000); the Alabama Award ($1,000); and three People’s Choice awards. The winners of the Alabama and Judge’s awards will be selected by B22 judge Mario Gallardo, the founder and executive director for the Walnut Gallery, a contemporary art gallery, in Gadsden, Alabama. Mario Gallardo is also the division chair of Fine Arts at Gadsden State Community College. The People’s Choice Award will be decided through in-person voting by the public from the exhibition’s opening date through September 24. In addition to the $1,000 prize for the work that receives the most votes, a second and third place prize of $500 will provide additional financial support to artists. The awards are intended to give artists funding to continue to advance their careers and artistic practice in a way determined best by them.

textile | assemblage | place

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

January 18 - March 30, 2018

Sheri Schumacher is a designer and educator whose work is at the interface of architecture, public-interest design, and craft practices. In the exhibition, Schumacher sets out to “map” the sensory experience of place by recording cultural landscapes with textiles.

Schumacher uses repurposed materials, including linens and clothing in her work, often combining them with new textiles creating an innovative and improvised use of material. She has been particularly inspired by the quilters of Gee’s Bend, who use repurposed clothing and fabric to create compositions with a bold use of color and design. She is equally inspired by the unique characteristics of different places and explores ways in which her textile work can physically map the terrain and the experience of place.

The artist is an advocate for creative economies that encourage relationships between places of making, materiality, tools, and handmade production. Inspired by regional craft heritage and hand-stitching traditions, Schumacher’s recent textile assemblages explore narratives about cultural landscapes. Discovery through the act of making and the physical engagement with materials is central to her design process.

Self-Taught

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

July 16 - September 25, 2021

Showcasing work from the museum’s permanent collection, Self-Taught includes work by American folk artists. Often characterized as “self-taught”, these artists rarely have formal training and often use found objects and materials in their works. Self taught artists will paint from memories and personal experiences, depicting the world around them. Artists represented in this exhibition are Woodie Long, Jimmy Lee Sudduth, Mose “T” Tolliver, William Dawson and Bernie Sims. Having all started life with modest means, included artists went on to experience success in the art world, some having exhibited in some of the largest museums in the world.

Folktopia: American Self-Taught Art

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

October 20 - December 30, 2017

Folktopia: American Self-Taught Art explores the personal expressions of twenty self-taught artists. They have in common no formal training in art. Most of the artists have connections to Alabama and are included in important collections worldwide. This exhibition offers an opportunity to peer into the fascinating worlds of these unique artists–their memories, dreams and visions–rarely recorded in visual art. Included in the show are works by Mose Tolliver, Howard Finster, Woodie Long , Jimmie Lee Sudduth, B.F. Perkins among many others.

Folktopia is guest curated by Marcia Weber, owner of Marcia Weber Art Objects, a gallery in Montgomery, Alabama, dedicated to self-taught art including contemporary folk art and outsider art.

Make Others See: Selected Works from WMA’s Teaching Artists

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

June 8, 2022 - January 1, 2023

Degas once said, “Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.” The same sentiment is true of educators as they teach us how to see, how to think, and how to learn. They also make us see our talent and true potential when we have failed to see it in ourselves. This is their greatest gift.

This exhibition celebrates the work of WMA’s nine teaching artists: Aimee Burr, Amelia Ferrell, Sarah Ivey, Jennifer McCohnell, Brook McGinnis, Kira Nichols, Brandon Rice, Orran Christopher Scruggs, and Alexandria Turner. This diverse array of mediums and subject matter will inspire you to make others see your creative spirit and, perhaps, to sign up for a class from one of these gifted teaching artists!

Image: Alex Paige, Reverting Regal Gems , Mixed media on canvas

Full Circle – A Decade in the Deep South

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

July 21 - December 20, 2017

Full Circle is a sample of artist Mark Leputa’s career in glass over the last decade. It is a nod to the past, a glimpse at the present, and vision of what is to come – a retrospective of a decade of ambition and creation.

After completing an apprenticeship in New Zealand, Leputa moved to Ft. Payne, Alabama, where he has lived and worked since. His simple, abstract aesthetic of the ‘Cut Series’ was the springboard from where all of his future work would originate. Beginning this series in New Zealand, it wouldn’t take long for the South to give influence to new bodies of work, such as the ‘Capsule Series,’ ‘Crystalline Series,’ ‘Geothermal Landscapes Series,’ ‘Glacial Series,’ and the ‘Tensile Series.’ To mark the occasion of Leputa’s ten-year anniversary of what he calls his Southern residency, he has revisited and drawn influence from his past work for this exhibition.

Mark Leputa has shown his work in Philadelphia, at the prestigious SOFA International Art Expo, and around Europe including two exhibitions in the Netherlands. This is Leputa’s first solo museum exhibition.

Root & All: P.H. Polk Images of George W. Carver from the Paul R. Jones Collection at the University of Alabama

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

January 19 - March 31, 2018

P.H. Polk, born in Bessemer, Alabama in 1898, enrolled in Tuskegee Institute at age eighteen with hopes of becoming a painter. Discouraged by the school’s administration, he met C.M. Battey, the school’s official photographer, and changed course to photography. After studying under Fred Jensen in Chicago, Polk opened his first studio in Tuskegee in 1927. Just one year later , he was appointed to the faculty of the Tuskegee Institute Photography Department, and in 1940 became the college’s official photographer.

During Polk’s 45 years as college photographer, George Washington Carver was a faculty member and became on of Polk’s most photographed subjects. These photographs show Carver at work in his greenhouses and labs, teaching students, and lecturing. Although different from Polk’s studio work – photographs of Carver of often blurry, candid, and taken in whatever light was available – the series highlights his regard for a strong composition.

Renowned Alabama photographer, P.H. Polk’s photographs of well known botanist George Washington Carver during his days at Tuskegee Institute are on loan from The Paul R. Jones Collection at the University of Alabama.

Featured Above: P.H. Polk, George W. Carver in Greenhouse, 1938, gelatin silver print, © Tuskegee University Archives, Tuskegee, Alabama

Featured Below: P.H. Polk, George Washington Carver (painting flowers), n.d., gelatin silver print, © Tuskegee University Archives, Tuskegee, Alabama

entwined

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

October 21 - December 31, 2022

entwined is an exhibition of work by Pinky/MM Bass and Carolyn DeMeritt, long-time collaborators and friends. Addressing themes of incarnation, aging, death, and regeneration, Bass’s work explores the complexity of materials, with photography at the core and the body as subject. DeMeritt’s photography showcases Bass as subject, capturing her “infinite grace” while aging. Their work is both bold and vulnerable as it invites the viewer into a unique and complex world crafted over the course of 35 years.

About the artists:

Pinky/MM Bass is a self-described (feminist and spiritualist) seeker of life’s mysteries. At the age of 52, she earned her Master of Fine Arts in Photography at Georgia State University. In 1989, she received a grant for The Itinerant Photographer where she made the first of her giant pinhole cameras from a pop-up camper naming it Pinky’s Portable Pop-up Pinhole Camera and Darkroom , a mobile walk-in camera obscura. While most widely known for her pinhole and Polaroid photography, Bass works across media. Her large format images are made using alternative cameras and experimental processes and address issues of aging, death and the mythology of that journey. Her work is represented in numerous collections and museums including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Birmingham Museum of Art, and the High Museum in Atlanta. Her photographs have been published in The Polaroid Book , The Book of Alternative Photographic Processes , Aperture , and the Pinhole Journal . Her work has been featured in more than 50 solo exhibitions, and has been shown internationally and throughout the United States. Bass lives in Fairhope, Alabama.

A native of Charlotte, NC, photographer and videographer Carolyn DeMeritt concentrates on creating portraits of people or places that are underrepresented or undergoing dramatic change. She has received grants and fellowships and participated in numerous solo and invitational exhibitions across the country and internationally. Her work is included in museum, corporate and private collections, including the National Museum of Women in the Arts; North Carolina Museum of Art; Mint Museum of Art; High Museum of Art; Tweed Museum of Art and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

Path of Entry

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

April 16 - June 26, 2021

Remember the sky that you were born under, know each of the star’s stories. Remember the moon, know who she is. Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the strongest point of time. Remember sundown and the giving away to night. Remember your birth, how your mother struggled to give you form and breath. You are evidence of her life, and her mother’s, and hers. Remember your father. He is your life, also. Remember the earth whose skin you are: red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth, brown earth, we are earth. Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them, listen to them. They are alive poems. Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the origin of this universe. Remember you are all people and all people are you. Remember you are this universe and this universe is you. Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you. Remember language comes from this. Remember the dance language is, that life is. Remember. — Joy Harjo, “Remember”

Path of Entry is a group exhibition featuring the work of Bethany Johnson, Chintia Kirana, Hyomin Kwon, Joe Ren, Laura Lucía Sanz Giraldo, and Karen Stentaford. “Remember,” a poem by Joy Harjo, the first Native American United States Poet Laureate, serves as inspiration and a starting point for Path of Entry, which features works dealing with the environment, the process of reflection, and remembering.

Path of Entry explores the idea of “environment”– the natural and the in-between spaces, as well as the complexity of human communication. It examines the effect of change on the built environment and the evidence of past history. It investigates the relationship between reality and representation, both what it is and what we envision it to be.

The exhibition is a visual meditation on our natural world and our human attempts to capture, understand, and translate natural phenomena. It explores environments and images that oscillate between the abstract and the concrete, the ideal and the real.

Path of Entry is curated by Chintia Kirana, in partnership with Expose Art. Kirana is a multidisciplinary artist and art activist. Throughout the span of a decade, her work has been featured in solo, group, and juried exhibitions across the United States and abroad in venues such as Whitney Museum of American Art, Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Dhaka National Museum of Art, Sienna Art Academy, Zhou B Art Center, ISE Cultural Foundation, and Czong Institute of Contemporary Art, among others.

Expose Art is an arts organization dedicated to launching artistic initiatives and collaborations in order to shape the cultural landscape of our time. Expose Art works in partnership with Expose Art House and MAP (Montgomery Arts Project) to create an all-inclusive forum for creative minds to openly share their diverse, unique views on the role of art in society by providing opportunities for creative residencies, workshops, exhibitions with local and regional partners, and more.

seam/seem

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

October 21 - December 31, 2022

“My work explores the complexity of my relationship with the physical body, skin, and the cloth that covers it while expressing cultural concepts of gender, domesticity, and craft. By cultivating a sensitivity to materials and an attentiveness to narrative, I manipulate hand-dyed textiles, creating meaning through sculpted layers, openings and folds. My work frequently highlights themes of acceptance and rejection, drawing attention to both the hidden and the exposed.”

– Heather Baumbach

Heather Baumbach is pursuing an MFA from Lesley University in Boston and is a graduate of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts where she received a BFA in Costume Design. With over 20 years of design and production experience in stage, television, and film, her theater credits include The Theater Outlet, The Santa Fe Opera, The Los Angeles Opera, Fantasy Playhouse Children’s Theater, Main State Music Theatre, Center Theatre Group, Carsey-Warner Productions and Comedy Central. She currently works from her studio in Huntsville, Alabama.

Museum of Wonder

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

July 21 - September 30, 2017

Museum of Wonder showcases the work of Butch Anthony, a self-taught artist, storyteller, and maker of oddities. This unique exhibition of Anthony’s work explores the power of an “art environment,” when art’s meaning is influenced by the space around it. For this exhibition, Anthony will re-create portions of his art environment in Seale, Alabama, and will include installations in the museum’s gallery space, as well as in the public arena.

Anthony utilizes a number of techniques in his work – including painting, mixed media collage, large-scale sculpture, and embroidery – pushing the boundaries of found materials into new creations. Out-of-the-box and unique to Anthony’s imagination, he even invented his own term for what he does –Intertwangleism. His work uses found objects and often explores questions of identity. He is most recognized for the 19th century portraits that he finds in antique stores or yard sales, then paints over with skeletons and mythical creatures.

He also built “The World’s First Drive Thru Museum” out of shipping containers. It sits off of U.S. Hwy 431 in Seale, Alabama, and exhibits a rotating display of Anthony’s handcrafted curiosities and collections. Anthony founded the Possum Trot, a barbeque restaurant turned junk auction house, and the Museum of Wonder, where his wonderful creations and bizarre collections can be admired and purchased. His original designs and compositions are acclaimed both regionally and internationally.

This exhibition is organized by the Wiregrass Museum of Art and features the re-creation of the Museum of Wonder, Dothan’s very own Drive-Thru Museum, and a digital billboard campaign featuring the “intertwangled” portraits of local residents.

Thirty-five: Selections from the Permanent Collection

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

January 20 - February 18, 2023

On the occasion of WMA’s 35th anniversary year, the museum will present thirty-five works from the museum’s permanent collection which span the WMA’s history of collecting. WMA’s permanent collection is the foundation of the museum’s mission and inspires year-round public programming.

WMA is committed to telling diverse stories, highlighting the art and artists of our time, including excellent examples from artists across the country, and most especially from Alabama and the Southeast. Thirty-Five will include examples of WMA’s extensive printmaking collection, including works from internationally known artists such as Frank Stella and Robert Indiana. The exhibition will also include painting, sculpture, and mixed media works from Alabama artists as well as new acquisitions in photography.

Featured Above: Robert von Sternberg, American, born 1939, Fourth of July Parade , Pacific Palisades , 1973 Inkjet print

Helen Keller Art Show of Alabama – 2023

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

April 5 - May 20, 2023

Don’t miss your chance to view these powerful works by a group of courageous and talented students.

Mary Ann Sampson: Puppets and Poetry

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

July 22 - December 31, 2022

Puppets and Poetry is a holistic exploration of “the book.” Artist Mary Ann Sampson gives us a look inside and outside the book, guiding us through her process from conception to completion. From codex books to moveable books, Puppets and Poetry examines the origins and techniques of various book structures and bookmaking styles, encompassing six different types of book techniques and structures. This exhibition relays the prevailing themes that Sampson’s books embody – the puppets that she creates and the cadence of the written word of poets.

Sampson was drawn to performance and theatre at an early age, which has become a common subject in her artistic work as an adult. She is fascinated by the persona and mobility of puppets, and with this body of work, she asks the audience to share her curiosity and interest. The puppets and characters that Sampson illustrates could be perceived as comical, grotesque, or demented. However, Sampson does not construct the figures to shock or horrify. She simply nods to the theatre and theatrical caricatures, leaving the viewer to assign their own context and meaning. To her, the viewer is an active participant in the book arts as books are meant to be experienced page by page.

In this exhibition, Sampson’s unique books immortalize the written words of Dorothy Field, a writer and poet, former Alabama Poet Laureate Sue Brannan Walker, folklorist Jim S. Brown, and writer Jeff Weddle. Collaboration with poets and storytellers altered the direction of her career as she became increasingly inspired to print their work. In these cases, the writer’s words have strongly influenced the total vision for the books.

Sampson views her books as a stage. She says, “Flat works and three-dimensional pieces are mostly singular ideas that have fallen off the pages. It’s the plurality of techniques and materials that make them seem different.”

I, Too, Am Thornton Dial

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

January 20 - March 25, 2023

Wiregrass Museum of Art is proud to partner with the Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts at UAB and the Samford University Art Gallery to present a solo exhibition for the late Thornton Dial Sr. Curated by Paul Barrett, the presentation at WMA focuses on Dial’s works on paper. Although works on paper are sometimes dismissed, this exhibition makes the case that Dial’s drawings are as significant to his practice as his monumental assemblages, and powerful in their own right. The exhibition draws on loans from the Dial family, and public and private collections, with many works never before exhibited or published.

Thornton Dial Sr. (1928-2016) is one of Alabama’s most critically acclaimed artists, and his works can be found in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the High Museum of Art, the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, and the Birmingham Museum of Art and numerous other important institutions. Dial’s work was the subject of solo exhibitions at the American Folk Art Museum, the New Museum, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Indianapolis Museum of Art, New Orleans Museum of Art, Mint Museum, and the High Museum of Art. A catalog featuring new essays and many artworks never presented to the public will be available at the opening reception.

Featured Above: IMAGE CREDIT//Jerry Siegel / Thornton Dial, McCalla, Alabama, 2007 / Archival inkjet print / Courtesy of the artist / ©️ Jerry Siegel

Select images from the exhibition below.

Sara Bowen: The Witch Doctor’s Chapel

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

January 21 - June 25, 2022

The Witch Doctor’s Chapel was created by artist Sara Bowen to reconcile and honor complicated feelings about her late mother and the traumas of her Southern childhood. It’s a space for healing, holding conflicting truths in one space, and ultimately celebrating resilience and broken parts. She began this installation with the goal of creating a magical space in the vein of the medieval chapels she studied as an art history student. As she mixed materials like silk and porcelain with light, the feeling persisted that she needed something more to create the magic she was seeking. Meanwhile, Bowen was writing poems to process her childhood, grief, and difficult relationship with her mother, and along the way the poems and installation merged.

Sara Bowen is a potter from South Alabama, creating functional pots inspired by her natural surroundings, favorite flora, and the feminine form. Her ceramic installation and gallery work focuses on creating other-worldly spaces, often featuring light, fiber, and poetry. Bowen’s recent installation, “The Witch Doctor’s Chapel,” debuted along with her first book of poetry, “The Witch Doctor’s Hymnal,” both of which focus on healing and reconciling uncomfortable truths and childhood trauma. Find her work and see her process online at www.sarabowenpottery.com and on Instagram and Facebook ( @sarabowenpottery ).

We called Momma the Witch Doctor

and joked that she was crazy, with her apple cidah vinegah,

and endless hair treatments and seemingly made-up concoctions,

her more-than-occasional explosions.

I grew up hearing,

“In the south, we keep our crazy out on the front porch.”

Now I realize that was because crazy wasn’t allowed inside.

I grew up assuming the jokes about crazy were

validation,

but Momma had a lot of crazy she didn’t talk about.

Couldn’t talk about,

because despite the fun kinda crazy she played and put on,

she saw herself as a proper southern lady,

who kept the real crazy inside,

like a splinter stuck way deep under thick calloused skin. She

needed her icthymol to help draw it back out,

that old-timey, tar-like salve she was always so quick to slather

over anything that oozed, infected.

It’s a little late for ichthymol now, but,

I built us a chapel of potions and poisons, salves and psalms,

as a reminder that the crazy does belong out front,

but not as a joke.

It sits enshrined as a genuine attempt at healing,

as a reminder to everyone:

Hey,

me too.

This helped.

Come sit.

— Sara Bowen

Youth Art Month

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

March 1 - 31, 2023

Deadline to drop-off artworks: January 4th through February 4th

Click Here for artwork entry guidelines and to download the entry form.

Youth Art Month Opening Reception

February 28th | 4:30-7:30pm | Open to the public | Free

4:30-5:30pm: Prek through 2nd Grade
5:30-6:30pm: 3rd through 6th Grade
6:30-7:30pm: 7th through 12th Grade

AAEA: Transform. Reflect. Shine!

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

October 20 - December 30, 2023

To celebrate AAEA’s 100th Anniversary, the Wiregrass Museum of Art in Dothan Alabama is hosting an AAEA Member show to coincide with the 2023 Fall Conference. This juried show will highlight the incredible talents of our current AAEA members.

AIM to Heal: Selected works from medical students in the Arts in Medicine Club at the Alabama College of Osteopathic Medicine

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

June 7 - September 30, 2023

Medicine is a practiced science and an applied art. At the Alabama College of Osteopathic
Medicine here in Dothan, AL, the curriculum includes a Foundations of Modern Healthcare
lesson, (taught by Lisa Ennis, ) where medical students learn about creative arts therapies.
Students then create artwork that is meaningful to them and reflect on the role art has in
healing for themselves as future doctors and for their patients. This special showing, by
ACOM students, faculty, and staff, are the results of such discussions from Foundations of
Modern Healthcare and ACOM’s student organization Arts In Medicine.

The Day Series

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

July 21 - September 23, 2023

On the first Monday of August 2021, Ann Trondson started The Day Series. For one year, the artist created one work of art each day from Monday-Friday. Each collage and color gradient used the previous weeks’ New York Times Sunday Newspaper as the source for her color story and collage material. The series commenced on July 29, 2022. This is the first exhibition that includes all 260 pieces from The Day Series.

Ann Trondson is a Toledo, Ohio-based multidisciplinary artist and curator. Recent exhibitions of her work have been held at Gadsden Museum of Art , Gadsden, Alabama (2021); Austin Peay State University , Nashville, TN, (2021); Louis B. James Gallery , New York City (2014); College for Creative Studies , Detroit, MI (2013), and MAK Center of Art and Architecture , Los Angeles (2012). Her Video Art has been shown at Salon 94 Gallery , New York (2014) and the Palm Springs Art Museum (2010). In 2014, she was selected to participate in one of two United States artists fellowships in Giverny, France at the Terra Summer Residency . She received her MFA from the University of Southern California and is the Co-Director of Vinegar (Birmingham, Alabama), an artist-run, women-led nonprofit organization exhibiting new commissions from artists.

Remnant

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

January 20 - June 24, 2023

“Recently my research and studio practice has consisted of the exploration of liminal spaces that exist physically, spiritually, and emotionally. While working, I have sought to mark, map, and record observations that reflect my interests in ideas of lightness and darkness, presence and absence. My experiments often give way to images and objects that are at times flat, ordered, graphic and repetitive, and at others visually atmospheric, expansive, and transcendent.

This Installation of objects In Remnant made for the Wiregrass Museum of Art becomes a physical record of measurement, arrangement, and re-arrangement. The evidence of shifts and adjustments in material and form reveal and conceal embedded histories and the passage of time. Through analyzing and observing these tools and systems of measurement, I hope to deconstruct and investigate how I record, internalize and refine information.” – Kole Nichols

Kole Nichols is a multi-disciplinary artist from Florence, Alabama. Within their work Nichols utilizes the languages of printmaking, drawing, sculpture, and painting as an expanded approach to art making in order to navigate diverse conceptual interests. Recent exhibitions in which they have been featured include the 44th Montgomery Art Guild Exhibition at the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts and the Red Clay Survey: 2020 Exhibition of Contemporary Southern Art at the Huntsville Museum of Art.

Featured Above: Images courtesy of the artist

Kudzu Soliloquy

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

April 21, 2023 - June 24, 2023

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

– William Faulkner

Kudzu Soliloquy is a discourse on the landscape of southern identity through a Southern Gothic lens, observing and considering what was and still is. In the American South, the visceral struggle between the past and the present is pervasive. With a pull towards tradition and a resistance to progress, we experience a panorama that is often decaying yet uniquely beautiful.

Is the south gothic by nature? The past whistles a familiar tune in the present while the ‘new’ rests on the ‘old’ – side-by-side. Deficient and failing ideologies, symbols, and histories haunt us. Monuments dedicated to the transgressions of our ancestors are affixed in small-town squares. Once immaculate, neoclassical architecture is now adorned with peeling paint and crumbling roman columns serving as a reminder. A reminder that darkness is invasive, like kudzu. This exhibit aims to conjure a feeling rather than explicitly articulating what it is to be southern or the meaning of southern culture.

By combining contemporary art and traditional craft, Kudzu Soliloquy interprets the blended nature of our existence in the South as traditions tend to inform our present-day practices. And through this exhibition, we explore Southern Identity by portraying the Southern Gothic aesthetic of our environment, living culture, folklife traditions, and craft. Exhibiting artists include Michael Acuff, Sarah Adkins-Jablonsky, Gwen Chafin, Zoe Fitch, Cathy Fussell, Aaron Sanders Head, Alicia Henry, Bethanne Hill, Glenn House, George Jones Jr., Jessica Peterson, Jerry Siegel, Marjorie Williams-Smith, and Lynette Youson.

Kudzu Soliloquy is curated by Holly Meyers.

Charlie Lucas and Yvonne Wells: What I Knew How to Do

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

October 22 - December 31, 2021

Charlie Lucas and Yvonne Wells: What I Knew How To Do takes its name and inspiration from a quote by Maya Angelou. The quote reads, “I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.” The exhibition of works by two self-taught Alabama legends focuses on their mutual love of storytelling, which both artists use to share family histories, biblical and spiritual parables, and Civil Rights and American history. This exhibition was organized by the Shelby County Arts Council and curated by Paul Barrett.

About the Artists:

Charlie Lucas is a descendant of many generations of craftspeople. His mother and grandmother were skilled quilters and ceramicists while his maternal grandfather and great-grandfather were blacksmiths. His great-grandfather made sculptures from discarded metal that Lucas saw as a boy. Lucas learned how to work on car engines from his father, who worked as an auto mechanic, and studied blacksmithing and metalwork with his grandfather. It was through his grandfather that Lucas learned to make toys for other children when he was young, and due to his influence that Lucas was later inspired to pursue art as a career. In 1984, at the age of 33, Lucas fell off the back of a truck on a construction site and was bed-ridden for nearly three years. Through his recovery, he found his artistic practice once again. Lucas’ work has featured in early, transformative exhibitions of Southern vernacular artists including the High Museum of Art’s groundbreaking 1988 exhibition, Outside the Mainstream: Folk Art in Our Time , and Souls Grown Deep: African-American Vernacular Art of the South at the Michael C. Carlos Museum during the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. His work was in Pictured in My Mind: Contemporary American Self-Taught Art , Birmingham Museum of Art, 1995; Charlie Lucas: The World Through My Eyes , Birmingham Museum of Art, 2008; The Roots of the Spirit in Venice during the 2011 Venice Biennale, and Charlie Lucas: Talking to the Ancestors , Paul R. Jones Museum, 2020- 21. Lucas’ work featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions over the last four decades including the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Paul R. Jones Museum, Rosa Parks Museum at Troy University Montgomery, and Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, NC. His work is in numerous books and catalogs including Charlie Lucas – Tin Man published by University of Alabama Press in 2009, and he recently received a 2022 Visual Arts Fellowship from the Alabama State Council on the Arts. Lucas makes art in his studio in Selma, Alabama where he has hosted art camps for kids for many years.

Yvonne Wells is a self-taught quilter from Tuscaloosa, Alabama best known for her story quilts depicting scenes from the Bible and the Civil Rights Movement. Her mother taught elementary school and her father was a Presbyterian minister. Wells earned her Bachelor’s degree in Physical Education at Stillman College and began teaching PE in 1965 at her alma mater, Druid High School. She taught at Tuscaloosa High School from 1970 until her retirement in 2000, experiencing the struggles of integrating the formerly all-white school firsthand. Despite those challenges, she earned her Master’s degree in Physical Education in 1973. Wells did not grow up in a quilting tradition and made her first quilt in 1979 at the age of 40. She began creating her signature “story” and “picture” quilts in the mid-1980s, incorporating a diverse range of found materials and sewing mostly by hand. Wells first exhibited her quilts at the 1985 Kentuck Art Festival in Northport, Alabama. One of her first exhibitions outside Alabama was the 1989 traveling exhibition Stitching Memories: African-American Story Quilts, organized by Williams College of Art in Massachusetts. Wells has exhibited in galleries and museums including the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, Flint African American Quilters Guild, International Quilt Museum, and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. Her quilts have also appeared on Hallmark cards, and in 1993 Wells was invited to design an ornament for the White House Christmas tree. Wells received the 1998 Alabama Arts and Visual Craftsmen Award and the 2019 Governor’s Arts Award from the Alabama State Council on the Arts. Her work is in the collections of the Birmingham Museum of Art, the International Quilt Museum, Kentuck Arts Center, Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, among others. Wells is collaborating with Stacy Morgan, Professor of American Studies at the University of Alabama, on a forthcoming book that documents her artistic career.

WATER GROUND: River Raft Quilts by Coulter Fussell

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

April 21 - June 24, 2023

“This continuing series of sculptural quilt-works act as open-ended narrative vessels for stories of personal escape and tales of dream-seeking. The archeology of deciphering donated and trashed textiles for use as my sole material leads the way in terms of story, but themes recur: the physical labor of Craft, uncovering human connections across time and distance through personal stories and the infinite promise between mother and child. Drawing from a childhood growing up in a river-town that owes its existence to cotton and textile mills, I sew my stories and envisaged stories of others as outfitted rafts and guide-maps, set to journey on an imagined river rolling through valleys amidst the Southern economic fallout’s reign upon the natural world.” – Coulter Fussell

Coulter Fussell was born and raised in Columbus, Georgia, an old textile town. She is the youngest family quilter, hailing from multi-generations of seamstresses and quilters. Her work uses discarded and donated textiles as her sole materials.

Fussell is a 2021 Museum of Arts and Design Burke Prize Finalist, the Jane Crater Hiatt Fellow and winner of the 2021 Mississippi Museum of Art Biennial exhibition. She is a 2019 United States Artists Fellow in Craft, the 2019 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Visual Arts Inductee, and a Finalist for the 2017 SouthArts Southern Prize. Fussell has exhibited across the U.S. and lives in rural north Mississippi with her family.

Featured Image: Courtesy of the artist

Shape Shifting: 35 Years of Late Modernist Prints

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

July 21 - September 23, 2023

With modern advances in technology, the late 20th century saw the proliferation of the inexpensive printed image. Against the backdrop of the Xerox machine, artists embraced novel digital processes while finding renewed relevance in the traditional techniques developed over generations. Saturated matte oranges, yellows, and reds join unexpected hot pinks and lime greens, punctuated by clean, crisp lines and occasional texture. In the abstract meeting of color and shape, space is created for your interpretation, response, and imagination. The exhibition explores the alchemy of geometry and form, arranged during this pivotal moment in print history.

Featured Image: Jose Luis Rochet (Puerto Rican, born 1942), Teatro #2 , 1971, serigraph, on loan courtesy of Florida State University Museum of Fine Arts

Above: Exhibition gallery view at Florida State University Museum of Fine Arts

WMA’s exhibition program serves as an extension of the museum’s permanent collection – exploring artists, themes and mediums found in the works held in the museum’s care. Shape Shifting is one such exhibition, on loan courtesy of Florida State University Museum of Fine Arts, and including artwork by Victor Vasarely. WMA has 7 works by the artist in our collection. In addition to this traveling exhibition, you can see work by the artist in WMA’s permanent collection galleries.

Above: Victor Vasarely (Hungarian, 1906 – 1997), Untitled, n.d. , Serigraph, Gift of Mr. Louis Z. Hammer, 1997.8.10

Victor Vasarely was trained as an artist in Budapest in the Bauhaus tradition. In 1930 he left Hungary and settled in Paris and was influenced by Constructivism, but by the 1940s his characteristic style of painting animated surfaces of geometric forms and interacting colors, had emerged. Vasarely’s style reached maturity in the mid-1950s and 1960s. His experimentation with color and special elements earned him the distinction of being one of premier artists of the Op Art movement.

Youth Art Month

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

March 1st -March 30th

The exhibition is open to PK-12th grade students from public, private, and home schools in the region, and emphasizes the value of art and art education for all children and encourages the public to support quality school art programs.

This year WMA had over 800 submissions from local schools and organizations, we are so proud of this years exhibition and we hope you will join us for the month of March.

WMA would also like to thank the following sponsors:

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alabama

Dothan Area Chamber of Commerce

Dothan Pediatric Dentistry

Publix Super Market Charities

Dothan Housing Authority

Find more information about Youth Art Month under WMA’s learn tab. Questions? Call 334.794.3871 or email info@wiregrassmuseum.org

Helen Keller Art Show of Alabama

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

April 12, - May 28, 2024

For over a decade, WMA has hosted the Helen Keller Art Show of Alabama , an exhibition of work created by Alabama students with visual impairments, blindness, and deafness. The exhibition is juried statewide and travels from Birmingham to Mobile. Select pieces are also shown internationally. The Helen Keller Art Show of Alabama emphasizes creativity, color, and tactile media in the arts. The winning entry for the grand prize is selected by the Helen Keller Festival Board to receive the Patty Johnson Award, and will remain in the permanent collection at Ivy Green in Tuscumbia, Alabama, the birthplace of Helen Keller.

Don’t miss your chance to view these unique works by a group of courageous and talented students. The Helen Keller Art Show of Alabama will be on view from April 12th through May 25th in the Coleman Gallery.

A Trillion Verses

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

October 20 - December 30, 2023

Jakob Dwight was born in Mobile, Alabama. His mother is a doctor of speech pathology and his father is a computer scientist. His early interest in art was influenced by the pottery his mother collected.

Dwight has exhibited nationally and internationally since the mid 2000s, presenting work in group shows in New York and Atlanta in the United States, and Salzburg and Vienna, Austria. In the early 2010s his work was featured in Berlin and Kassel, Germany, and in Los Angeles and New York (where he participated in the New York Electronic Arts Festival in 2013).

His work was included in the 2015 exhibition Disguise: Masks and Global African Art which was organized by the Seattle Art Museum and traveled to the Fowler Museum at UCLA in Los Angeles later that year and to the Brooklyn Museum in 2016. Dwight’s works feature on the front and back covers of the exhibition catalog.

Dwight has since shown with 50Golborne Gallery in London, New York, and Paris, and in the group exhibition Digital Combines at Honor Fraser Gallery in Los Angeles. He is represented by Maus Contemporary in Birmingham, Alabama.

Most recently, Dwight contributed an essay to the catalog for Thornton Dial: I Too Am Alabama in 2022 and talked about his work with fellow Alabama artist Richard Dial in an online discussion hosted by the Wiregrass Museum of Art during the exhibition I, Too, Am Thornton Dial . New paintings were included in a group show titled Anyone Can Move A Mountain at Maus Contemporary in Birmingham, which featured artwork by all the artist contributors to the Thornton Dial catalog. That exhibition led directly to Dwight’s first Alabama solo exhibition, Various Analysands , also at Maus Contemporary earlier this year. A Trillion Verses is curated by Paul Barrett, and marks Dwight’s first solo museum exhibition in Alabama.

Jakob Dwight says of his upcoming exhibition at the Wiregrass Museum of Art:

“A Trillion Verses is an ode to the evolution of naturalism and structured human observation (better known as science) from the first human beings to now, visual letters through time to the first artists and observers…an offering to the Human Superorganism, evolutionary biology’s description of our being a hive species, innately and ultimately for one another.

“A Trillion Verses references scale, complexity, and the difficulty in truly understanding the immensity of things – time, geology, space and celestial bodies, distances, populations, the human genome for instance.

“Additionally, the works in the show mark a return to my training in painting after spending the last 24 years as a digital artist. So the title also refers to the lines of code beneath the thousands of images that were created through generative processes over the years, but ultimately ending in my resuming analog and ancient mark-making in the forms of drawing and painting. This shift coincides with many of us in society beginning to rethink how useful digital life continues to be for our daily lives.”

Exhibition curator Paul Barrett says:

“Having worked with Jakob Dwight and the Wiregrass Museum of Art before, it’s exciting to bring this body of work to Dothan. Jakob is an intensely intellectual artist and incorporates a deep appreciation and understanding of science and philosophy into his work–without sacrificing a casual viewer’s capacity to enjoy the aesthetics of a beautifully rendered painting or drawing. The artworks in this exhibition expand on a body of work that’s very new to Jakob’s practice in terms of execution, but conceptually continue thought processes that have been present in his work for years. I hope visitors to the museum will appreciate his process and attention to detail in reimagining computer-influenced patterns with old school methods that date back centuries as a poetic statement on the interconnectedness of all things and all people.”

Artist In Residence : Sarah Painter Hayes

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

October 07-November 20, 2024

Sarah Painter Hayes will be in residency at WMA through early November, where she will be researching Alabama ecology and our natural landscapes. She will be working full time in the Wiregrass to expand and advance her studio practice and will work to complete a new, large scale painting based on Alabama’s people and places, in the style of her “Florida Girls” paintings.

You can visit Painter Hayes during open studio hours at WMA, every Wednesday from 12-5pm through November 6, as well as during WMA’s Pumpkin Patch event on October 26 from 10am-2pm.

Mama These Look Like Lost Souls

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

April 19- June 22, 2024

“Mama, These Look Like Lost Souls” is a direct quote by the youngest of artist Soynika Edwards-Bush’s four children, after watching her work during a studio residency with Alabama Contemporary Art Center in Mobile in 2020-2022. Edwards-Bush’s work sources family photographs, drawing from her memories and direct relationships to create paintings that ultimately blunt the identities of her kin, to make way for a broader conversation about Black identity, Black History, and Black love.

Soynika Edwards-Bush is a self-taught artist, mother of four, and wife, born and raised in Prichard, AL. Her painting work is bolstered by her dogged participation in the community she comes from, ever striving to present new models and find ways to uplift. “Mama, These Look Like Lost Souls” originated in 2022 by Alabama Contemporary Art Center, Mobile, Alabama. It is an exhibition about what is remembered, what is lost, and what is truly knowable within a human life.

Selections from the Permanent Collection

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

Ongoing

Founded in 1987, the Wiregrass Museum of Art is dedicated to inspiring a lifelong appreciation for the visual arts by providing innovative educational programs, access to its permanent collection, and a diverse schedule of exhibitions each year. WMA’s programs engage a diverse audience of all ages, through the interpretation of the the Museum’s primary collection, which includes American fine, decorative, and design arts from the early twentieth century to the present.

With over 600 objects, the Museum’s Collections consist primarily of works on paper, including pieces by Robert Indiana, Josef Albers, as well as the largest public collection of Frank Stella prints in the State. Prominence is also given to the work of acclaimed Alabama artists, including Dale Kennington, John Kelly Fitzpatrick, Carolyn Sherer, and Scott Stephens, among others.

The permanent collection inspires ideas for exhibitions and programs throughout the year, and each program is delivered in ways that reduce barriers towards engagement. Come and find your favorite piece, while learning a little bit more about who we are through our collection.

Above: Kathryn Tucker Windham, American, 1918-2011, The Long Wait , 1972, gelatin silver print, museum purchase made possible by a grant from the Alabama State Council on the Arts, 1999.7

The Hodges Effect: Forever Impacted!

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

January 19 - March 23, 2024

Connie Hwang, Sean Miller, and Sean Taylor

On November 30, 1954, Ann Hodges was struck by a meteorite while in her home in Sylacauga, Alabama. She is documented as the first survivor of a direct strike from a meteorite. This exhibition is an exploration of The Hodges Effect, the hypothesized, long-term physical changes or existential crisis that occurs after a person encounters material from outer space. Through a series of works including illustration, photography, sculpture, and more, the artist challenges us to consider the profound influences of space on the human psyche and the material world. It is Ann Hodges’ remarkable survival, and the years after, that becomes a catalyst for exploring and identifying the impacts of cosmic encounters, and perhaps will encourage us to reflect on the broader implications of our place in the universe.

Sean Miller’s visionary approach will take viewers on a visual and conceptual journey, navigating the intersections of art and science, and using objects and art to illuminate new ideas. Known for his use of collaborative practices, the artist has partnered with a broad range of institutions, artists, and scientists in his exploration of the effects of space and believes that benefits of The Hodges Effect include curiosity, wonder, and increased spatial awareness.

Prior to this exhibition, The Hodges Effect team worked with colleagues in Ireland, the U.K., and the U.S. to launch a campaign to lobby the U.N. for an International Meteorite Awareness Day for Ann Hodges. The campaign included billboards, free public art and science lectures, performances, and letter-writing. Billboards appeared in Cork City, Ireland and panels and performances took place at Bob Rauschenberg Gallery in Ft. Myers, Florida, and Blackrock Castle Observatory, National Sculpture Factory of Ireland. Connie Hwang, Sean Miller, and Sean Taylor also produced a zine titled Hodges Effect: Field Guide for Hurtling through Space which includes a series of hand exercises to increase the impacts of The Hodges Effect. This is the first exhibition exploring The Hodges Effect in the state of Alabama.

To get a sample of the exhibit click the following links and check out the first radio show the “ Hurtling Spherical Menagerie Radio Show” and the Ballad of Ann Hodges

Sarah Painter Hayes: The Florida Girls

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

October 18 - December 28, 2024

Artist Statement:

Mural-making and painting are central to my artistic practice, both from a socially conscious perspective. I have a deep admiration for portraiture and its intrinsic qualities; the ability to capture not just the likeness, but the essence, of a person through painting is deeply inspiring. My “Florida Girl” series aims to showcase the often forgotten natural beauty and unique biodiversity of Florida through a feminist perspective. Inspired by my childhood spent growing up in Tallahassee, I paint young girls standing as protectors of Floridian inhabitants, amidst a wide-range of Florida’s natural environments.

I position these figures to create a Madonna and Child motif, and implement a gold leaf frame to encourage this iconographic style. My work is principally informed by Kehinde Wiley, Helen Bur, Norman Rockwell, and Frida Kahlo, whose works resonate with themes of identity, environment, and societal reflection. I strive to present a narrative through painting that is both intimate and universal, personal yet profoundly collective. I want my work to empower young girls while also sharing how special the natural side of Florida is.

Biography

Sarah Painter Hayes is a native of North Florida and has worked across the United States as well as in Haiti, Spain, Portugal, and Canada as a painter and muralist. She has received commissions from the Office of the Vice President, Coca-Cola Bottling Co., as well as many other major corporations, municipalities, and nonprofits. Hayes graduated from Florida State University’s College of Fine Arts. She resides in Tallahassee with her husband and fellow artist, Cosby.

Enduring Images: Highlights from the Permanent Collection

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

October 18 - February 15

WMA’s permanent collection exhibition offers a rich and comprehensive view of its decades-long collecting activities, showcasing a diverse array of works that reflect the museum’s dedication to preserving and celebrating art for the benefit of the community. This exhibition will highlight both new acquisitions and pieces that have been part of the museum’s collection for years, providing visitors with a deeper understanding of the evolution of artistic practices and movements. The museum invites audiences to explore the dynamic relationships between different periods, styles, and mediums, emphasizing the ongoing relevance of art in our everyday lives.

A museum collection that is available to the public is crucial for fostering a deeper cultural connection and shared experiences across the Wiregrass. It allows people to experience art firsthand, offering opportunities for learning, reflection, and inspiration. By providing regular access to its permanent collection, WMA ensures that the community can engage with artworks that might otherwise remain hidden in storage, bringing to light pieces that have shaped the museum’s identity over the years.

In addition to offering a glimpse into its longstanding collection, WMA is dedicated to continuing to expand and evolve its holdings by acquiring new works from contemporary artists. This annual exhibition will serve as a platform to introduce select, new acquisitions to the public, allowing the public to engage with the art and artists of our time. The inclusion of recent works highlights WMA’s role as a living institution that not only preserves history but also embraces innovation and new voices and perspectives.

Beyond the Horizon: Landscapes from the Permanent Collection

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

January 17, 2025 - March 30, 2025

This exhibition showcases the beauty and diversity of landscape art through the eyes of a remarkable range of artists. Featuring works by Barry Anderson, John Carroll, Joseph DiGiorgio, and notable Alabama artists Liza Butts and John Kelly Fitzpatrick, the exhibition invites visitors to explore how artists interpret and engage with the natural world. Spanning mediums from vibrant oil pastels and delicate watercolors to evocative photography, the exhibition demonstrates the many ways landscapes can inspire and resonate across time and artistic styles.

All of the works in this exhibition are drawn from WMA’s permanent collection, highlighting the museum’s commitment to preserving and celebrating artistic excellence. With some pieces making their debut to the public, Beyond the Horizon offers a unique opportunity to encounter hidden gems and rediscover beloved favorites. This dynamic selection showcases not only the breadth of the museum’s holdings but also the universal appeal of landscapes as a genre—connecting viewers to the natural world and the artists’ perspectives in meaningful ways.

By highlighting works from the permanent collection, this exhibition underscores the importance of sharing and reinterpreting the museum’s treasures for new audiences. Beyond the Horizon serves as a reminder of the enduring power of art to transport us, provoke reflection, and deepen our appreciation for the world around us.

Adding Layers: Selected Works From WMA’s Studio Artists

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

October 08-March 30, 2024

This exhibition showcases the work of WMA’s eight studio artists: Jacqueline Furlong, Latasha Hyatt, Robin Johnston, Joan McDonald, Brandon Rice, Austin Smith, Alexandria Turner, and Janin Wise. This diverse array of mediums and subject matter celebrates the vital contributions of artists who not only create but also inspire, educate, and mentor through their teaching practices.

Through a curated selection of artworks, visitors will explore how studio artists inspire and guide students, revealing the profound connection between art, education, and personal growth. Be on the lookout for future workshops with these amazing artists.

Youth Art Month

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

March 1, 2025 - March 29, 2025

Denise Treizman: Hard Yes, Soft Excess

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

April 18 - June 21, 2025

Known for her dynamic installations and sculptures, Denise Treizman works with found objects, ready-made materials, and textiles to create immersive environments that challenge the boundaries between mass production and craft. Featuring site-specific arrangements of foam mattress toppers, tires, and other discarded materials, juxtaposed with wall hangings, drawings, and woven pieces that share the same vibrant materiality and energetic color palettes, this exhibition invites viewers into a world of material transformation, where industrial and everyday objects are reimagined through intuitive, playful assemblage.

Treizman’s practice is rooted in the act of stockpiling and repurposing, embracing the excess of consumer culture while reinterpreting its discarded remnants. Her installations thrive on fluidity, where objects that may appear rigid and industrial—such as rubber or foam—are softened and woven into compositions that feel both organic and painterly. This intuitive process of accumulation results in works that blur the line between order and chaos, permanence and impermanence. Many of her wall-based works, including her weavings and drawings, echo this aesthetic, incorporating foil, tape, lighting, and painted marks that pulse with spontaneous energy.

Color plays a central role in Treizman’s visual language, with pastel and neon hues creating an atmosphere of joy and curiosity. From balloon weavings to sequined sculptures embedded with unexpected objects like worn sneakers and Mardi Gras beads, her work exudes a sense of improvisation and play. These vibrant compositions recall childhood fascinations with collecting colorful trinkets and later, the thrill of scavenging discarded treasures on the streets of New York, where she lived and worked for almost a decade. This tension—between an attraction to bright, seductive consumer aesthetics and a critique of their fleeting nature—runs throughout her work.

Through a careful balance of improvisation and control, Treizman constructs environments where overlooked materials find new meaning. By merging the rigid with the soft, the industrial with the handmade, her work transforms everyday excess into poetic and tactile experiences. Her work invites audiences to reconsider the potential of discarded objects, revealing how material culture, labor, and reinvention shape our understanding of value and creativity.

Denise Treizman is a Chilean-Israeli artist based in Miami, Florida. She earned her MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York and has exhibited internationally in prominent institutions and galleries, with shows in the U.S., Chile, and Europe. Through her bold use of color, found objects, and unconventional techniques, Treizman continues to challenge perceptions of value and permanence in contemporary art.

Create Dothan

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

Ongoing

The first exhibition featured artist Hannah Edgman, whose series Beauty Beyond the Orange used clay, acrylic, and watercolor to reimagine familiar scenes like construction zones and rural intersections. Through her work, everyday imagery was transformed into bold reflections on beauty, resilience, and community.

Featured Artists Schedule

July 2025 – Hannah Edgman
October 2025 – Erica Bey
January 2026 – Joan McDonald
April 2026 – Kennedy Rose Kimbrough
July 2026 – Latasha Hyatt
October 2026 – Robin Johnston

More information about the partnership and exhibitions was shared at wiregrassmuseum.org and visitdothan.com .

CONSTRUCTIONS: Contemporary Fiber

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

July 17-December 27, 2025

From the paper we use to the clothing we wear, fiber remains central to our lives on a daily basis. The invention of weaving dates back to the earliest known human communities. Weaving, and creative use of the textiles that resulted as long ago as the ancient Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and Greek civilizations, contributed directly to divergent (yet overlapping) traditions of utilitarian works concerned more with functionality and artisanal works concerned more with aesthetics.

Without fiber, we would not enjoy books or photographs as we know them today. Fashion as we know it would not exist if our ancestors had not pounded tree bark and other plants flat to create useful materials for their day to day needs, and later stained or dyed that material with berries and pigment. Modern and contemporary technological advancements challenge traditional practitioners to match machine-made wonders with hand techniques, and appropriation adds new interpretations to an already rich and complex body of artwork.

Constructions: Contemporary Fiber incorporates works by twenty artists from across the United States who work with fiber art in different ways. These works utilize some of the most primitive and most technologically advanced materials available. They explore weaving, sewing, dyes, printing, and found objects to tell stories, recount history, and repurpose found objects.

“Constructions” is funded in part by a grant from the Alabama Humanities Alliance.

Rupture and Bloom

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

October 17, 2025 - December 29, 2025

Rupture & Bloom by Ann Marie Auricchio is an exhibition that explores the cycles of breaking and becoming through the inclusion of large-scale collaged paintings. At its center are four major pieces, one composed of forty-one fractured parts and three layered panel paintings. Each work is distinct yet connected by their origins in collage. Together, they form a constellation of works that share a common source, brought into dialogue within gallery walls painted in an atmospheric color gradient in order to create an immersive environment.

Auricchio’s process begins with cutting into her own paintings, dismantling them to uncover new possibilities. Through this act of rupture, fragments are reassembled into turbulent, morphing forms that embody both instability and renewal. The installation channels the ephemeral qualities of natural and emotional landscapes, evoking the paradox of destruction as a generative force, like forest fires that clear ground for renewal or volcanic ash that fertilizes the earth. Smaller works in the exhibition, ranging from intimate collages on paper to irregularly shaped paintings in oil, extend these themes through vivid chromatic intensity. Their surfaces reference natural phenomena, from water’s shifting depths to the fiery tones of emotion, mapping the interplay of fragility, rupture, and resilience.

Through Rupture & Bloom, Auricchio reframes overwhelm not as an ending but as a threshold for growth. Her dynamic forms and layered compositions underscore the paradox of breaking and becoming, inviting viewers to witness the possibilities that emerge from fracture. Ultimately, the exhibition meditates on resilience and renewal, offering a powerful visual language of disruption and hope, and affirming the bloom that follows rupture.

About the Artist

Ann Marie Auricchio lives and works in New Orleans, LA. Auricchio earned her BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art, and has attended residencies at the Joan Mitchell Center and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Recent solo exhibitions have been held at Ferrara Showman Gallery (New Orleans, LA), the Spring/Break Art Show NYC, and Michael Warren Contemporary (Denver, CO). Auricchio previously held a 25-year tenure in the entertainment industry as a scenic artist and designer for film, theater, and television. Included in many private collections nationally, her work is also a part of the permanent collections of McNeese State University, Azamara Cruise Lines and the Scott Companies.

Sun Boxes: Immersive Outdoor Sound

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

May 14

Sun Boxes is an immersive outdoor sound installation by contemporary artist Craig Colorusso. Installed on May 14 and running throughout the day, the work invites visitors to step into a tranquil sonic environment designed for wandering, pausing, and reflection. The installation features twenty speakers powered entirely by solar panels, each playing a continuous loop of a single guitar note. Together, these notes form a B♭ chord that slowly evolves as the loops—each a different length—overlap and shift over time. Often described as both soothing and energizing, Sun Boxes encourages participants to slow down, listen closely, and experience the subtle changes in sound as the composition unfolds. A special live performance by the artist will accompany the installation from 4:30–6:30 p.m. inside the museum galleries.

Colorusso is known for creating immersive sound sculptures and installations that blur the boundaries between art, environment, and experience. Inspired by his early career as a touring punk rock musician, his work explores how sound can shape our perception of space and bring people together. Often installed outdoors and powered by sustainable technologies, his pieces invite audiences to engage with art in natural settings while becoming more aware of their surroundings. Colorusso’s work has been presented internationally and exhibited at major institutions including Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, MASS MoCA, the Anchorage Museum, and the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum.

Life of the Party

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

July 18 - September 27, 2025

Life of the Party is an exciting new exhibition by the ascending Southern artist Vitus Shell. He was the 2021 Louisiana Artist of the Year and received an NPN Take Notice Fund in 2022. In 2023, he was included in the group exhibition Multiplicity: Blackness in Contemporary American Collage organized by the Frist Art Museum in Nashville, Tennessee. In 2024, Multiplicity traveled to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and The Phillips Collection in Washington D.C.

Life of the Party features portraits by Vitus Shell of Black youth from Dothan and the surrounding areas, as well as others throughout the Deep South. In preparation for Life of the Party , Shell visited the Wiregrass Museum of Art and ArtFolk. to conduct photoshoots and interviews with his subjects. The resulting portraits are beautiful, bold, and psychologically nuanced depictions of community members whose likenesses are superimposed on backgrounds of collaged advertisements and articles. Seeing these large-scale portraits in person is empowering, especially for those who know Shell’s subjects and can see themselves in his work. Shell’s multidimensional, collaged backgrounds illustrate how black bodies and white bodies are, for better and worse, depicted by the media. The juxtaposition between the portraits and collaged elements in the work creates a rich framework for analysis.

Shell’s frequent use of gold paint as a framing device is also noteworthy. It signifies traditional economic and political values; values he ironically critiques through use of gold paint rather than precious materials associated with fine art through the ages. Like his collaging, his material choices of gold paint and unstretched canvases, reference hip-hop culture’s urge to sample and reimagine the world through a Black lens.

The cultural push and pull created by Shell’s images and materials illustrate the aspirational goals of youths and how hip-hop culture can subvert cultural norms. This dichotomy often appeals to corporations when it suits their needs. The same can be said of the exhibition’s title, Life of the Party . This title addresses how Black youth culture is marketing gold for corporations and can also be used to mobilize political movements. While it is difficult to determine if any culture caught up in marketing campaigns and the 24-hour media cycle has agency in that context, it is not the case in Shell’s work. Shell emphasizes joy and pride within his work, embracing the notion that existence is resistance.

This project was made possible through a partnership with the Alabama Contemporary Art Center (Mobile, AL) whose mission is to support cultural production, provide space for courageous conversations that shape identity, and seed growth in the greater creative economy.

Artist Biography

Mixed media collage painter, Vitus Shell lives and works in his hometown Monroe, LA, where he is an Assistant Professor at the University of Louisiana at Monroe. He was the 2021 Louisiana Artist of the Year and received an NPN Take Notice Fund in 2022. He has exhibited in solo exhibitions at IBIS Contemporary Art Gallery in New Orleans and 5 Points Art Gallery in Milwaukee, WI. His extensive list of group exhibitions includes Multiplicity at Frist Art Museum in Nashville, TN and Louisiana Contemporary at Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans.

His work is geared toward the black experience and giving agency to people from this community through powerful images deconstructing, sampling, and remixing identity, civil rights, and contemporary black culture. In 2007 while attending the University of Mississippi, Shell was honored with the MFA Grant from the Joan Mitchell Foundation. Public Collections include the Center for the Americas at Vanderbilt University and the Elliot Perry Collection, among others. Additionally, Shell has taught at Grambling University and Louisiana Tech University. He is also the president and co-founder of the Black Creatives Circle of North Louisiana.

Curator Biography

Ben Hickey is the Executive Director for the Center for Exploratory and Perceptual Arts in Buffalo, New York. Previously he was curator of exhibitions and Emily Cyr Bridges Endowed Professor of Art at the Hilliard Art Museum on the campus of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Most central to his curatorial practice are projects that blend social history, sense of place, and interdisciplinary collaborations. With over one hundred exhibition credits, artists whose work he has exhibited include Brian Kelly of the Marais Press, Letitia Huckaby, L. Kasimu Harris, Robert C. Tannen, Richard Landry, Pat Phillips, Beili Liu, Sonya Clark, Hasan Elahi, Dawoud Bey, and James Surls.

Helen Keller Art Show of Alabama

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

April 10 - May 23, 2026

For over a decade, WMA has hosted the Helen Keller Art Show of Alabama , an exhibition of work created by Alabama students with visual impairments, blindness, and deafness. The exhibition is juried statewide and travels from Birmingham to Mobile. Select pieces are also shown internationally. The Helen Keller Art Show of Alabama emphasizes creativity, color, and tactile media in the arts. The winning entry for the grand prize is selected by the Helen Keller Festival Board to receive the Patty Johnson Award, and will remain in the permanent collection at Ivy Green in Tuscumbia, Alabama, the birthplace of Helen Keller.

Don’t miss your chance to view these unique works by a group of courageous and talented students. The Helen Keller Art Show of Alabama will be on view from April 10th through May 23rd in the Coleman Gallery.

Humble: Cloth Stories

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 14:56:14 GMT

January 17, 2026 – June 27, 2026

Humble: Cloth Stories brings together artists who explore the quiet power of cloth as a keeper of memory, identity, and lived experience. Rather than focusing on fiber as ornament or technique, the exhibition honors everyday objects and pieces shaped by touch, use, and necessity. These works reveal how fabric holds the presence of past lives, how repairs become records, and how beauty often appears not in extravagance but in the modest, the weathered, and the mended.

Artists draw on practices such as natural dyeing, hand-stitching, upcycling, layering, and collaging. Through these methods, they examine ideas of sustainability, imperfection, emotional repair, and the deep human instinct to care for what is fragile. Many of the exhibition’s guiding ideas emerge from the rhythms of handwork:

Living small and sustainably through conscious making and material stewardship
Finding beauty in utility, modesty, and imperfection
Foraging the codes of memory and identity, where scars, stains, and rips reveal a life lived
Mending as evidence of survival, both material and emotional
Cloth as a memorial of affection and importance, holding warmth, loss, protection, and transformation

Woven throughout the exhibition are several core principles that echo both the ethics and poetics of the work. The artists honor the long life of materials through practices of reducing, reusing, recycling, and respecting what already exists, while their work marks “the thread of the hours and the order of years” through visible traces of wear, touch, and time. Cloth emerges as a carrier of identity, linking outer form to inner experience, and mending becomes a powerful act of healing by repairing rupture, restoring connection, and nurturing community. In this way, the humble object becomes a site of meaning, where ordinary materials open to meditations on resilience, memory, care, and the quiet endurance of the everyday. Together, these ideas shape Humble: Cloth Stories as an exhibition about more than fabric, but about the lives embedded in it. The show encourages viewers to reconsider their relationship to consumption, attention, and the value of the ordinary. It proposes that through slowing down, mending, and honoring what already exists, we reconnect not only with materials but with one another, discovering strength, tenderness, and continuity in the humble act of clothmaking.

Exhibiting artists include Nadene Mairesse, Aaron Sanders Head, Jody Alexander, Sarah Marshall, Lotta Helleberg, Soude Dadras, Sheri Schumacher, Matthew Fasone, Cicely Hill, and Chiharu Takahashi & Douglas Baulos. The exhibition is curated by Doug Baulos, Yuko Kojima, and Sumiyo Iwasa.