Turned Wood and Quick Brushstrokes at ArtsNatchez

Each month Arts Natchez Gallery contributes color to downtown Natchez's merchant open house by launching a new featured artist exhibit. This time that means new work by husband-and-wife artists Johnnie and Loraine Griffin. Johnnie is a former apprentice to locally famous wooden bowl maker D.W. "Red" Bryant. Today he creates highly stylized turned wooden bowls, furniture, and sculpture crafted mostly out of found wood or naturally fallen trees, using pecan, magnolia, walnut, maple, cherry, elm, cedar, and pear woods. 

Born in Chicago, Loraine Griffin is a painter who combines bold colors and quick brushstrokes, painting directly onto the found wood speciments that her husband prepares and smooths for her. Thus she decorates both flat panels, and the turned wooden bowls made be Johnnie, in an attempt to express the couple's love for nature and the spirit and soul of the wood. All welcome at the exhibit's opening reception from 5 pm–7 pm on Saturday, October 8. (601) 442-0043 or email artsnatchez@gmail.com