Georgia Blizzard
American ceramic artist (1919–2002) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Georgia Blizzard (May 7, 1919 – June 2, 2002) was an American ceramic artist from Virginia. She was self-taught and her work is in the permanent collections of several American art museums.
Georgia Blizzard | |
|---|---|
| Born | May 7, 1919 Saltville, Virginia, U.S. |
| Died | June 2, 2002 Glade Spring, Virginia, U.S. |
Blizzard was born in Saltville in 1919.[1] She claimed Apache and Irish ancestry.[2] When she was little, she and her family moved to Plum Creek.[2] Her mother taught Blizzard and her sister how to create art using a pit-fire method.[3] During the Great Depression, she left school in order to be part of the National Youth Administration.[4] She worked in a munitions factory in Bristol during World War II and after that, worked at a textile mill in Chilhowie until 1958.[5] Blizzard had contracted black lung and lost one of her lungs.[3] Her husband was crippled in an accident in a coal mine and eventually their marriage failed.[3] Her husband died in 1954.[2] Blizzard developed paranoid schizophrenia after these events and her art helped her deal with visions she saw and the feelings she needed to work through.[3]
She began making art for sale in the late 1950s and sold her pottery in her daughter, Mary's, store.[6] In the early 1980s, her neighbor, Michael Martin, contacted a friend to take some of Blizzard's work to a gallery in Buckhead run by Judith Alexander where Jonathan Williams discovered her work.[7]
Blizzard died in Glade Springs on June 2, 2002.[3]
Blizzard's pottery is hand-built.[6] She used to find the material to create her ceramic art in the creek behind her house in the Appalachian hills.[8] At first, she used a coal kiln built by her neighbor, Michael Martin, but later in life used an electric kiln.[2]
She is a self-taught artist.[9] Her art "expressed her memories, surroundings, and religious views."[4] The work is dark in terms of theme, as Jonathan Williams describes it, "they make you think twice about human despair."[5]
Her work is in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum,[1] the American Folk Art Museum,[10] the Milwaukee Art Museum,[11] the Asheville Art Museum, the High Museum and the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Museum.[3]
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