Dan Lawter Ferebee, interior designer and owner of Tryon’s Bravo, recently announced that renowned copper craftsman Joe Cooper has affiliated with the group of Bravo Artisans. Other artists include painters Linda Hudgins and Jim Shackelford, mixed media masters Diana Gurri and Bob Neely and photographers Mara and Ford Smith. The work of these artists and craftsmen can be seen at 83 Palmer Street in Tryon.
Joe Cooper said he works to bring art into everyday life. After he fell under the spell of the torch, he began to make welded art in New Orleans. He apprenticed with Lee Robertson and Arthur Silverman before setting up his own studio in Sarasota, Fla. in 1993. There, Cooper began to focus on innovative copper lighting fixtures and other forms of functional art. He began a continuing collaboration with a number of architects and designers who commission him to produce works for custom projects. In 1997, Cooper moved his studio to Western North Carolina.
Cooper is a member of the American Craft Council, the Southern Highlands Craft Guild, and HandMade in America. His work is listed in the World Crafts Council.
At Bravo, one can see Cooper’s copper light fixtures and water fountains among Hudgins’ abstracts, Shackelford’s impressionistic paintings, the Smiths’ archival prints, Gurri’s assemblages and Neely’s sculptures.
The Bravo Artisans were at Ferebee’s 83 Palmer Street design center during Tryon’s Christmas Stroll on Friday, Dec. 2, when visitors were able to talk with the artisans and find out who studied at Rhode Island School of Design, which one was a Tryon mayor, who traveled the continent for 10 years, which one owned an art gallery, who creates both realistic and impressionistic acrylics and whose life story is included in the Living History Program of the Georgia Institute of Technology.
– article submitted by Mara Smith