S.C. Arts Awards Spotlight Series: Ann Phillips
Folk Heritage Award: Artist Category
As the day nears for the 2022 South Carolina Arts Awards, The Hub is focusing on this year's recipients: four receiving the South Carolina Governor's Awards for the Arts and three receiving the Jean Laney Harris Folk Heritage Award, which are managed jointly by the South Carolina Arts Commission and McKissick Museum at the University of South Carolina.
For centuries, South Carolina women have contributed to their communities artistically, culturally, and socially through the making of quilts.
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Ann Phillips, seated, receives the Folk Heritage Award May 19, 2022 from Jane Przybysz of McKissick Museum at UofSC. Click image to enlarge. McKissick Museum photo.[/caption]
Though Alabama born, ANN PHILLIPS of Sumter is a 40-year contributor herself. As a child, seated under her mother’s quilt frame, she threaded needles and learned to make a secure knot. However, she didn’t begin quilting until her husband’s military job landed the Phillipses in Sumter; Phillips felt their new country home needed quilts.
Central to her approach is taking a traditional quilt block pattern and using it in a new way to great visual effect. Phillips has shown immense creativity and elevated the artistry of quiltmaking. She will change the set of a block, put it on point, or frame it with multiple borders or use non-traditional fabrics and colors with the same pattern. Quilting groups in South Carolina invite her for trunk shows and presentations to demonstrate taking a traditional, simple quilt block design and doing something new with it.
Phillips’ work is regularly included at the South Carolina State Fair, and she shares her skill in her community: Through partnerships at her church, she assists in making quilts for a Sumter pregnancy center, all babies born to Shaw Air Force Base families, and for area assisted living centers.
The South Carolina Arts Awards are coming live to SCETV on Monday, June 13, 2022 at 9 p.m. ET. South Carolina ETV, the state’s public educational broadcasting network, will broadcast the awards ceremony through its 11-station TV network that spans the state. Viewers can access the broadcast via livestream on the homepage of SCETV.org; by using a digital antenna; or through cable, satellite, and streaming live TV providers. Further information about accessing SCETV is available here.
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From his roots in the Trenton area of Edgefield County, JUSTIN GUY has achieved acclaim as a potter after working in the craft more than 30 years. Fascinated by the pottery from a young age, he graduated from the University of South Carolina, earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a focus on ceramics. After school he was artist-in-residence at Taiwan’s Tainan National University for the Fine Arts, where he learned Taiwanese and other Asian ceramic processes, specifically as they relate to the tea cultures in Japan, Korea and Taiwan. Additional travels across the U.S. and Europe yielded further revelations a professional ceramicist should know. Guy returned to South Carolina and began a teaching career in higher education institutions, serving multiple times at UofSC Aiken with stops at Columbia College, and Piedmont Technical College in between. Additional artist residencies during his career include the McKissick and South Carolina State museums, the Columbia Museum of Art, and area schools. His works have received honors in multiple instances of the Palmetto Hands Fine Craft Competition and Exhibition and the South Carolina State Fair. Guy is currently the master potter of the Phoenix Factory’s Old Edgefield Pottery, which has produced pottery in South Carolina for more than 200 years.
Ann Phillips | Sumter | Artist, Quiltmaking
For centuries, South Carolina women have contributed to their communities artistically, culturally, and socially through the making of quilts. Though Alabama born, ANN PHILLIPS of Sumter is a 40-year contributor herself. As a child, seated under her mother’s quilt frame, she threaded needles and learned to make a secure knot. However, she didn’t begin quilting until her husband’s military job landed the Phillipses in Sumter; Phillips felt their new country home needed quilts. Central to her approach is taking a traditional quilt block pattern and using it in a new way to great visual effect. Phillips has shown immense creativity and elevated the artistry of quiltmaking. She will change the set of a block, put it on point, or frame it with multiple borders or use non-traditional fabrics and colors with the same pattern. Quilting groups in South Carolina invite her for trunk shows and presentations to demonstrate taking a traditional, simple quilt block design and doing something new with it. Phillips’ work is regularly included at the South Carolina State Fair, and she shares her skill in her community: Through partnerships at her church, she assists in making quilts for a Sumter pregnancy center, all babies born to Shaw Air Force Base families, and for area assisted living centers.
Duncan Rutherfurd | Aiken | Advocacy, Custom knifemaking
The gift of a knife to elementary-aged DUNCAN RUTHERFURD sparked an interest that resulted in tireless dedication to raising public awareness and appreciation of South Carolina’s knifemaking tradition. Rutherfurd is an encyclopedia of information on knifemakers in the state, though he is not one himself, and today’s knifemakers have him to thank for advocacy efforts that keep the tradition strong. Knifemaking, though specialized, has roots in blacksmithing—an essential trade for the farmers of a state dominated by agriculture. Though blacksmithing is no longer widespread anywhere, knifemaking proliferates in South Carolina because of Rutherfurd’s modernizing influence. In late 1970’s he helped organize and promote a knife show for the Aiken Arms Collectors Association. At the time, such shows were the primary way makers reached large audiences. At one of those early shows, while exhibiting his vast collection of South Carolina knives (which he still does today), he conceived of what became the South Carolina Association of Knifemakers (SCAK), a network of support and learning as makers and marketers during the pre-internet 1980’s and 1990’s. As internet usage exploded, Rutherfurd used his IT background to mentor SCAK members on using it to market their wares and themselves as makers. SCAK members recognized Rutherfurd’s tremendous contributions to South Carolina’s knifemaking community with an honorary membership. He served as an advisor to McKissick Museum’s curatorial team on the exhibition Carolina Knives: The Roots of a Revival in 2021. Rutherfurd’s collection was core to one of its storylines and provided a bridge between the older generation of knifemakers and a new generation, which recently organized the South Carolina Custom Knifemakers’ Guild.
English-style pieced quilt medallion from the 1950s. Provided by McKissick Museum.[/caption]
As the day nears for the 2019 South Carolina Arts Awards, The Hub is taking 15 days to focus on this year's recipients: nine receiving the 
Dorothy Glover is well-known for her distinctive use of traditional quilt design elements and patterns from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Born in 1925, she was the child of farmers Essie and William Glover creates exquisite quilt tops incorporating improvisational design methods that were popular among quilters whose social and economic status did not allow for the purchase of store-bought fabric for use in quilt making.
Like most farm girls of her time, Glover was introduced to quilting by watching her mother make the quilts beneath which she slept as a child. These family treasures were created from strips and blocks of fabric salvaged from various articles of family clothing that were worn out and no longer wearable. The quilt backings were made from feed sacks and other pieces of old cloth from around the household. As a young adult, Glover took up the tradition and in time, through her patient and persistent devotion, she became a master of the art form.
After marrying, Glover and her husband, Curtis, made their home in Lincolnville, where they raised their children. Continuing the family tradition, all three children slept each night beneath the quilts made by their talented mother.
Lincolnville Town Hall, across the street from Glovers’ home, became an important artistic oasis. It was there that Ms. Glover embraced a community of women who organized an ongoing quilting bee, via which they shared an infinitude of creative ideas and tales of town history. This unique quilting bee, among other significant achievements, pieced together a group quilt to provide an historical timeline of Lincolnville—a place that had been founded by freed African-Americans following the Civil War. The women’s powerful history quilt paid homage to the days of the Reconstruction era, when Lincolnville became a haven to which formerly enslaved families came for a better life and community support. This special bee came, in time, to capture the hearts (and hands!) of many of the women of Lincolnville.
For decades, Glover has inspired countless quilters, young and old, to join her in her artistic journey. Glover’s quilt reputation does not stop at Lincolnville. Quilters from throughout the state come to seek out her impressive quilting knowledge. Interested quilters watch her work painstakingly on intricate patterns like the “The Cathedral Window,” a quilt design known for the artist’s use of “invisible hand” applique stitches and precision piecing.
Glover gracefully transforms thoughts and visions onto fabric and encourages other quilters, regardless of skill level, to experiment with patterns, colors, and designs. She generously shares her knowledge with all who want to learn and makes herself available to younger artists who seek out her experience and guidance.
