Meet the artists of the Red Clay Survey Week Three

Condon is an accomplished artist who has exhibited her work throughout the East, Southeast, and Midwest. She was one of six ceramic artists in the country selected for an exhibition in Chicago on emerging talent sponsored by the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts. She was one of 11 women chosen to represent Tennessee’s best artists at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. She says, “Asking me why I do art is like asking why I breathe—it seems like such a natural output of my life.”

Just as extensive as Condon’s experience as an artist is her teaching background. She has taught elementary, middle school, and high school students and also taught at community colleges, universities, and community centers. Condon loves being around children, and she says that “being able to teach what I love to those I love is a great combination.” Judy teaches art to all sixth graders at Baylor.

Among the highlights of Condon’s work at Baylor have been the annual sixth grade art exhibition, the creation of two fifty-square quilts, (students learned to use a sewing machine as well as to hand stitch), and the construction of a mosaic fountain to be installed in front of Academic Hall near the end of the 2005 school year. Condon calls her Baylor students “receptive, bright, frenetic, and enthusiastic,” and she is amazed at how much they can do. For example, she teaches PhotoShop to the sixth graders, and they create work that rivals college-level graphics.

Judy and her husband, David Andrews, have a son, Elijah.

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Dori DeCamillis

Hoover, AL 

Dori DeCamillis graduated with a BFA in painting and art history from the University of Colorado, Boulder in 1987. After college she lived on the road in a vintage motor home, selling her artwork at outdoor festivals around the country, where her miniature oil paintings gained popularity and recognition. After three years of traveling she chose to settle in Birmingham, Alabama, a favorite place encountered in her travels. 

She exhibited her paintings in museums and galleries across the country and abroad, including a solo show at the Birmingham Museum of Art in 2000. Sherry Frumkin Gallery in Los Angeles hosted 5 sell-out shows of her work from 1996 through 2002. Her work has been featured in national newspapers and magazines, and she has won over 40 exhibition awards.

Dori is now co-owner of Red Dot Gallery in Birmingham, a teaching space, art gallery, and working studio. Her paintings evolved into large, iconic mixed media panels that combine oil painting on wood and copper with handmade ceramic tiles. in 2007 she received the Alabama State Council on the Arts Individual Artist Fellowship, which inspired Exhibit A, Paintings of Alabama Places. The series was exhibited at the Mobile Museum of Art April through August of 2011.

Dori has written two memoirs. “The Freeway” recounts the three adventurous years she lived on the road selling her artwork. In  “My Steamboat” she tells stories of growing up with her quirky family in Steamboat Springs, Colorado as it was turning from a small rural town to a big-time ski resort. Link to Book page.

Dori’s current work is a series of self-portraits depicting her own mind-states. Each piece is a character in a private mythology designed to personify ever-changing thought patterns, habits, and perspectives. The Huntsville Museum of Art featured a solo exhibit of this series from February through June of 2015. Link to Without a Net Blog, the written part of this exploratory project.

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Virginia Derryberry

Asheville, NC

Virginia Derryberry’s current work includes large scale oil on canvas figure paintings along with fabric/costume constructions, that blend narrative elements from mythology and alchemy, the forerunner of modern science. The intent is to suggest multiple interpretations rather than straightforward illustration of a specific narrative. At first glance, it seems that a “real” space is being defined, but in fact, the painted images are constructed from multiple viewpoints and lighting systems. Passages of volumetric rendering set next to more abstract, painterly areas result in the creation of a virtual, shifting world where nothing is quite what it seems.

Derryberry’s work is shown regularly in solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States, and her paintings have been written about in an extensive list of publications including exhibition catalogs, New American Paintings magazine and Oxford American Magazine. Her solo exhibition, Private Domain, first shown in February, 2016, at the S. Tucker Cooke Gallery, UNC Asheville, has traveled during the past 3 years to venues in South Carolina, Alabama and Pennsylvania. Another solo exhibition of paintings and hybrid fabric pieces, Truth To Tell, has recently been shown in Pennsylvania and Las Vegas, NV in 2019. Fabrication, a group exhibition by artists who combine painting and fabric/sewing traveled to over 10 locations across the country, 2014-2018.

Derryberry has received such awards as Outstanding Artistic Achievement from the Southeastern College Art Association; Visiting Artist at the American Academy in Rome; the Distinguished Teacher of the Year Award and the Feldman Professor Award for scholarship from UNC-Asheville; the Annual Artist Fellowship from the Southeastern College Art Association. Residencies have included Moulin a’ Nef, Auvillar, France and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her drawings and paintings are in numerous private and public collections is also represented in two major public art commissions: a site-specific installation of 16 paintings at the Hartsfield-Atlanta International Airport and a 10 piece multi-panel painting at the Knoxville Convention Center. She has taught drawing and painting in a number of universities, most recently as a Professor of Art in the Department of Art and Art History, UNC Asheville, 1996-2015 and at the New York Academy of Art, 2016. Her contributions as a teacher were recognized in 2017 when she received the Distinguished Teaching of Art Award from the national organization, the College Art Association.

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Kimberly Dummons

Murfreesboro, TN

Kimberly Dummons is an Associate Professor of Art and Design at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, TN, where she primarily teaches Two-Dimensional Design and Three-Dimensional Design.  Originally from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, she earned her B.A. in Art from Xavier University of Louisiana, and her M.F.A. in Studio Art, with a Sculpture concentration, from the University of New Orleans.  Her research is mainly sculpture, with some printmaking, focusing on the female figure in various media.
Her work is included in several collections, including the Amistad Collection, housed at Tulane University, and the Blanche and Norman Francis Collection, housed at Xavier University of LA. In addition, she has a public sculpture, commissioned by the City of New Orleans, Buddy Bolden, located in Louis Armstrong Park. Her work has been reviewed and published, both regionally and nationally, in various publications, including: Sculpture magazine and Art Papers.

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Jessica Eichman

Nashville, TN

Jessica Saterstrom Eichman is an artist who works and lives in Nashville, Tennessee. A native of Natchez, Mississippi, Jessica earned degrees in Art and French before living and working in Paris, France; Corvallis, Oregon; and Boston, Massachusetts. Jessica’s early career in graphic design and illustration gave her a love of visual composition, and an awareness of the communicative power of shape, line, and color. These elements took on new life in 2011 when she began to shift her creative focus to public art and painting. She is now a full-time working artist.

Jessica’s works have been shown in numerous group and solo art exhibitions, where she has won awards for her paintings. Her 2012 design for a public art sculpture, “City Irises,” selected as a winner by Nashville Metro Arts Council, was cast in steel and installed in Nashville’s Hermitage Park.

In 2020, Jessica’s work was selected for the Red Clay Survey at the Huntsville Museum of Art in Huntsville, Alabama. This prestigious exhibition of contemporary Southern art happens every three years and only accepts 7% of submissions. Also in 2020, Jessica’s work was featured in  Art Folio 2020, a juried collection of contemporary art curated in a coffee table book. In 2018 Nashville Metro Arts chose Jessica for ArtWORKS: 40 for 40, in which her work was inducted into the permanent art collection in the Historic Metro Courthouse. The Frist Art Museum selected Jessica in 2017 for the Frist Bollard Project.

Jessica is a member of the Contemporary Collective and the Nashville Artist Guild. She is frequently featured on Saatchi Art; she was chosen for the Inside The Studio series in 2017, and was featured in the Saatchi Art printed catalog in 2019. Jessica is represented by dk Contemporary in Marietta, Georgia. Her work can be found in public and private collections across the country and internationally.