The Fruit Jar Parables is now on display in the Macon County Public Library.

Brent Martin lives in the Cowee community of Western North Carolina in what is known locally as the Doc Clark house. He paints Mason jars and related esoterica on pressed tin that he is removing from the ceilings of this old farmhouse.

He first got hooked on blue ball Mason jars while watching his grandmother can Brunswick stew each summer after the family’s annual July 4 reunion. He also spent a lot of his childhood digging through trash piles behind old abandoned houses looking for them and other interesting glassware.

Martin also writes poetry and essays and has published three chapbook collections — Poems from Snow Hill Road, A Shout in the Woods, and Every Breath Sings Mountains, with writers Thomas Crowe and Barbara Duncan.

He currently serves as the Southern Appalachian Regional Director for The Wilderness Society in Sylva.