Why We Cowee

Kim Keelor

This week we sit down at the Cowee School with resident artist Kim Keelor.  Kim Keelor is a fiber and textile artist and painter living in the mountains of far western North Carolina, and a resident artist at the Cowee School Arts & Heritage Center there. She also works and teaches in Charleston and areas in the upstate of South Carolina. Keelor's work has been selected for more than twenty juried exhibitions since she began showing professionally in 2020. She was awarded the Best of Show prize at the Palmetto Hands Fine Craft 2024 Annual Juried Exhibition out of more than 300 entries, also earning Honorable Mention and Traveling Show prizes there in earlier years. Her work has been exhibited or sold at the Bascom and the Fine Arts League of Cary gallery in North Carolina; the Middleton Place Museum Shop, Charleston Artist Guild and Preservation Society of Charleston in South Carolina and locations in Georgia. Keelor’s most recent work, a mixed fiber installation titled Tawney, Bourgeois, O'Keeffe, and the Hats of the Master Potter, was selected for a juried exhibition at the Bascom in Highlands, North Carolina. It incorporates design elements from artists who influence her practice, including the 85-year-old local master potter who challenged her to make something from a bag of old wool hats he'd worn and stored in his barn for decades.. Keelor is currently leading a collaborative, large-scale, climate crisis art installation being constructed in her studio that began in the fall of 2023; partially funded by a N.C. Arts Council grant, to be exhibited in the Carolinas in late 2025 and 2026. Keelor intends to compel the mind and enliven the spirit while promoting planet health and positive mindsets. She strives to master the ancient textile process of felt making through sculptural works and teaches felting in the Carolinas.  For more on Kim and her work list: carolinaartworks.com [https://www.carolinaartworks.com/welcome.html]

Matt Gauck

This week we sit down at the Cowee School with Matt Gauck. Matt is a painter, printmaker (screenprinting for the political stuff, linoleum printing for the artistic stuff) and a vegan. He works in oil paint, from both photos and in real life.  His work deals with the relationships and interactions we have with the natural world. He paints, in oil, landscapes I am drawn towards; and then, he paints incongruous, often humorous, trompe l'oeil aspects to add a layer of our human, personal alterations of that landscape. For more on his work visit mattgauck.com [https://www.mattgauck.com] and his Vegan Patches Etsy page [https://www.etsy.com/shop/retirementfund/?etsrc=sdt].   Eat plants and have fun out there <3

Jeremy Brooks

This week we sit down at the Cowee School with Jeremy Brooks.  Jeremy Brooks (a.k.a sketchbrooks) is a cartoonist best known for his sketchy style that can be seen in both his fan art and self-published titles Ruby and Rubbish, Mystic Melon, and Radd Tuffman. He is a native of Dillsboro, NC and currently a resident artist at the Cowee School. Follow him at @sketchbrooks on social media and visit his website to learn more about his work: sketchbooks.com [http://sketchbrooks.com]

Ashlyn Miller

This week we sit down at the Cowee School with Ashlyn Miller.  Ashlyn Miller is a lover of all things wild, mystical, mythical, creative, and holistic. Her story and offerings traverse the inner and outer landscapes of what it means to be alive, interconnected, and empowered. As a holistic practitioner, she weaves the teachings of yoga, ayurveda, somatics, animism, story, and collective transformation into a felt experience through group and private sessions to nurture awareness, agency, and authenticity. It is her intention to co-create ripples of individual and collective transformation that bring us home to ourselves, each other, nature, and the mystery. For more on Ashlyn: innerwovenwellness.com [https://www.innerwovenwellness.com/]

Cricket Woodward

This week we sit down at the Cowee School with Cricket Woodward. A long-time resident of the western US, Cricket Woodward currently lives in North Carolina near her family and just down the road from Cowee School Arts & Heritage Center. "I love how the folks at Cowee hold community rooted in nature and creativity of all types." Cricket's degrees are in biology and graphic design, and in a way, that sums up the myriad of seemingly disparate jobs she's worked, including skinning birds, fixing computers, guiding by horseback, assisting a veterinarian, framing art, building websites, playing music, designing and proofreading books for independent authors. And, like her father, Doug Woodward of Franklin, NC, she's been a photographer all her life — including work in portraits, events, products, art and photojournalism. Now that she's nearly retired, Cricket creates more music and art. The band she's part of in NC, Bloodroot, is known for their sweet harmony vocals. And she keeps adding various forms to her multi-media art: handmaking prints and bookforms, weaving, sumi ink, metal, art photography … that's why she calls herself an "ampersand person."  For her, it's all about exploring and capturing the essence of connection: humans to each other and all beings of our world. She seeks the how and the beauty. The why and the awe. lynnwoodwardphotography.com [http://lynnwoodwardphotography.com]