Last week, we went to the beautiful Alabama Theatre – well, actually the Hill Center next door for the Cooper Green Mercy Hospital Urban Arts Fundraiser. Like so many hospitals, Cooper Green stays perpetually underfunded, but particularly so because they accept patients without regard to their ability to pay. The Urban Arts fundraiser allows them to raise money for diagnostic equipment and other services.
This year, the featured artist was the potter Larry Allen (see those large pots on the center table, below?). Around the display of his pottery were other artists who were painting pictures of their representations of it:
We were there to support the fundraiser as well as our friend, Joe Minter (who has the excellent African Village in America environment) who took Shug’s baby crib spring frame and made it into a piece that was part of the fundraiser’s live auction.
I was lucky enough to be able to support the fundraiser by adding a giant bowl by Tena Payne / Earthborn Pottery to my collection of her work through the silent auction.
I really-really liked this painting on the right of a wedding couple that was part of the live auction:
I am going to love telling Shug more when he gets older about how part of his baby crib was made into art by *Joe Minter* and how it went on to help Cooper Green!
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The Chattanooga Times Free Press did an article last week about how some storms last month damaged Howard Finster’s Paradise Gardens. Trees missed the folk art chapel (below) but did fall on the roof of another building.
