Contemporary folk artist Eldridge Bagley was born in 1945 and raised on a farm outside Kenbridge, Virginia, where he continues to live with his wife, Beth, and their son, Wade. Inspired by his home region of Southside Virginia, he began painting in 1973. He is wholly self-taught and paints, as he says, “straight from the heart.” While many of his…

Birchill set up a workspace in his backyard and started carving figures, chiefly animals, out of stone. All of his work is created by hand—that is, he carves only with a hammer and various chisels. He believes that most work done with power tools looks as if the tools controlled the artist and not the other way around. To an unusual degree, the…

A prolific painter, printmaker, and sculptor, Slonem has become best known for his neoexpressionist paintings of tropical birds, which are often based on or inspired by a personal aviary he has maintained over the years. Now one of America’s most renowned artists, his work is included in more than fifty major museum collections, including those of the Smithsonian American Art Museum,…

The Morris Museum of Art celebrated the fifteen-year history of King Snake Press with a special exhibition that featured nearly three dozen unique prints by many of the important artists who have worked with the press and its founder, Phil Garrett.

Phil Garrett studied at the University of South Carolina and the Honolulu Academy of Arts before earning a BFA at the San Francisco Art Institute in 1974. He lived and worked in the Bay Area until 1979, when he returned to South Carolina, where he has lived since. He founded King Snake Press in 1998. Blues Haiku represents something of…