“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,...

“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...

“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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

“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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

“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...

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...

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...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 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...

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...

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...

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...

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....

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....

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:...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

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....

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....

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...

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...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

“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...

“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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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....

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...

#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...

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,...

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...

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....

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...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

John Douglas Powers will be featured in an exhibition “Between Centers” where he will present his popular, kinetic sculpture Field of Reedsalongside a series of newly created video works. Of his work, Powers says, “The allure of the unattainable and its...

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...

“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...