The Folk Art Center is located at Milepost 382 of the Blue Ridge Parkway, just north of the U.S. 70 entrance in east Asheville. The Southern Highland Craft Guild is a non-profit organization established in 1930 and is authorized to provide services at the Blue Ridge Parkway’s Folk Art Center under the authority of a cooperative agreement with the National Park Service.

The Southern Highland Craft Guild’s Folk Art Center’s Focus Gallery will exhibit the work of a regional ceramist and fiber artist until April 16.

The works are by ceramist Nancy Darrell (of Marshall) and fiber artist Bernie Rowell (of Candler). Both women have been active, long-standing members of the Southern Highland Craft Guild. Immediately evident in these new bodies of work are the sophisticated techniques that are the product of decades of fine tuning in their respective media. Also observable in this exhibition are inspired advances toward a new distinction, a freedom that reaches to incorporate disciplines from other media.

Rowell has spent most of her adult life in the southern Appalachian mountains, ob-serving the rocky landscapes, unique biodiversity and annual changes in nature. Her observations of the images and processes of nature have played a role in the evolution of her contemporary quilts. While quilt making historically implies coverings for beds, Rowell’s elaborate “painted quilts,” heavily embellished with metallic threads, vivid acrylic paints, and found objects like postage stamps, don’t invite one to snuggling under them. Her work still retains much of the essence of a quilt’s purpose. They connect the viewer to textile references of home and family by maintaining some basic quilting techniques. Her quilts have also been made as “shields” or “friendly armor.”

This new series of quilts focuses on landscapes, recreating the gentle flows and patterns that nature follows. The repeat patterns reflect nature’s many layers, created season after season, cycle after cycle. One piece abstractly illustrates the stratum of the forest floor, another brings the eye through a series of concentric frames toward a nest of bird eggs. Metallic fabrics and canvas provide the basis of these quilts, upon which layers of forms are stitched. Her stitching and painted details give the images a depth not often found in traditional quilts.

Darrell has worked in clay for more than 30 years, and for all but the first few she has concentrated on porcelain tableware from her own pottery in the Shelton Laurel area of Madison County. In the early 1970s, Darrell apprenticed with famed craftsman Charles Counts in Rising Fawn, Ga. Her wheel-thrown wares are distinguished by an articulate thinness, a simplicity of line with images of mountain landscapes against a creamy clay surface. This exhibition shows new developments that depart from her trademark patterns as she responds to fresh interests. In 1997, with encouragement from her partner John Kraus, Darrell began experimenting with wood block printmaking, an art form which had held a lifelong fascination. Carving images into wood led to carving into clay when she explored porcelain lampshades. Thin walled clay becomes translucent when carved, she discovered, prompting a line of porcelain lamps, lanterns and sconces.