by Arlene Wright-Correll

This weekís artist is Rosie Hays of Bonnieville, KY

We revisited Rosie Hays by driving a back road in the wooded area of Bonnieville. Rosie Hays, potter, artist, organic gardener and a “mother earther” who truly believes in “Voluntary Simplicity”. This multi-talented gal, who is a native of Germany, shares her life with her husband, Sam, who is a native of Eastern KY on their self-sufficient, eco-friendly homestead.

Rosie, who gets more out of each day than anyone I know, finally has her pottery studio set up, her new kiln in and is finding time each day, among the farm, gardening, butter making, cheese making chores, to create lovely works of art in pottery and candle painting.

Completely self taught, Rosie loves the art of pottery and has been doing it for over 17 years. She says “clay has so many possibilities and clay is so forgiving. When one does not get it right, one can just mush it all together and start all over again.” She often uses the under glaze method of painting her pottery and then firing it. Some times she uses the Majolica method of painting onto the glaze and quite beautiful and each one a truly functional work of art that can be used daily in oneís life, from pitchers to colanders to canisters to dishes and bowls.

Rosie says, “The old style painting that I do on some pieces is an old and traditional way of painting dating back to the Renaissance times that was done a lot on furniture. It is full of symbolic meaning. Tulips mean riches; roses of course stand for love, a bird for fidelity, a stylized pomegranate for fruitfulness and so on.  You get an idea how old this style of painting is when you consider that tulips were an exotic and very costly flower and the Dutch had a monopoly on it, hence the riches. So basically it amounts to good luck painting.”

This year Rosieís work can be seen at her booth at Deck the Halls in Horse Cave, KY. Her email is samhays@yahoo.de

(Contact Arlene Wright-Correll at 270 524 9567 or email her at askarlene@scrtc.com  if you want to be next weekís column of Whoís Who in Artís and Crafts)