HAMILTON, SMITHSONIAN POTTER JERRY BROWN DIES

PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
HAMILTON, SMITHSONIAN POTTER JERRY BROWN DIES
March 4, 2016

It is with heavy hearts the Northwest Alabama Arts Council announces the passing of our beloved Jerry Brown. Jerry passed away late this evening at North Mississippi Medical Center in Tupelo, Mississippi after a brief illness.

“On behalf of the arts council and Jerry Brown Arts Festival, we extend our prayers and sincerest condolences to Jerry’s wife, Sandra, and his entire family,” stated arts council president Tony Williams.  Williams continued, “”Jerry and Sandra Brown expressed a sincere desire for the Jerry Brown Arts Festival to go forward as planned. It will be held in his honor and memory.”

Upon completion of arrangements by the family with the funeral home, memorial service information will be released to the public.  In 1992, the ninth-generation potter was awarded the National Heritage Fellowship and currently has five pieces of pottery on exhibit in the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. The Alabama State Council on the Arts awarded the Alabama Folk Heritage Award to him in 2003. Also in 2003, the Jerry Brown Arts Festival was created in his hometown of Hamilton, Alabama, a juried arts festival which has been recognized as a Top 20 event in the Southeastern United States for six of the last eight years. The festival is attended by several thousand people from 15 to 20 states annually the first weekend in March.

Additionally, Jerry Brown Pottery, in business since 1982, is one of the top destinations for tourists in north Alabama, with people traveling from all across the country to see Jerry, his mule Blue, and the primitive groundhog kiln, in what is believed to be the only operating mule-powered mill in the United States. Brown’s pottery is featured in homes, offices, governmental buildings, exhibition halls, and museums all over the world.

Besides being one of the leading spokespeople for the State of Alabama’s arts and tourism departments, one of Brown’s favorite programs he participated in has been the “Molding Hearts, Hands & Minds” program. This program, created by the Northwest Alabama Arts Council, involves fourth-grade students studying the Alabama History curriculum who are selected each year to come to the pottery shop. With Brown’s assistance, they make their own piece of pottery, which is then displayed at the festival. Children from every school in Marion County have participated in this program over the past decade.