Celebrating Twenty Years of the Alabama Folk Arts Apprenticeship ...

Eric Miller
Brent
Pottery
Traditional potter Eric Miller learned to make
pottery from his father Hendon Miller and
older cousins Kenneth Miller and Sherman
Hughey. When Eric was young, his father
moved the family pottery shop from Perry
County to Bibb County on Highway 5 near
Brent. Eric worked with sons Steve and
Wayne on the Alabama Folk Arts
Apprenticeship Program. Steve has since
become a production potter. Even though
the Millers moved their shop more than 40
years ago, Eric and Steve still dig clay in
Perry County and bring it to Brent. The
Millers make glazed utilitarian ware, such as
pitchers, bowls and jugs, as well as a wide
variety of unglazed horticultural ware such
as bird baths and flower pots.
Lucy Mingo
Boykin
Quilting
Lucy Mingo was a member of the Freedom Quilting Bee of the 1960s and
70s and is a current artist at the Gee’s Bend Quilting Cooperative in
Wilcox County. At 14, she learned to piece string quilts from scraps of
fabric on her mother’s treadle sewing machine. Today she still prefers to
make quilts from old clothing and searches thrift stores for the right
materials. While raising her family, she worked in the local school
cafeteria and then for the county extension service teaching people how
to prepare and store food. Photos of Mrs. Mingo’s work are included in
the book Gee’s Bend: The Women and Their Quilts. In the Apprenticeship
Program, she taught quilting to her daughter Polly Raymond, a
schoolteacher in Demopolis.
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