Text by Fred Wharton
ISBN 13: 978-0-9791403-6-5 Distributed to the book trade by John F. Blair, Publisher. Also available in local bookstores
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The Bottle Chapel at Airlie Gardens:
The gatekeeper of Wilmington's historic Airlie Gardens from 1949 to 1974, Minnie Evans is considered one of America's most important visionary artists. Evans's take on color, mysticism, and symmetry made her garden-infused art unique. “It was therefore an inspired decision,” Airlie volunteer and author Fred Wharton writes, “to create the Minnie Evans Memorial Sculpture Garden—a garden within the garden, in the very place where she worked as a gatekeeper, where she experienced her visions, and where she created her art.” In this full-color book, Wharton chronicles the inspiration, design, and intense, year-long construction of the installation, including its centerpiece, a seventeen-foot-high, seven-sided chapel sculpted from thousands of glass bottles, cement, and metal armature by lead artist Virginia Wright-Frierson. To create a fitting memorial, vibrant with the symbolism and elaborate designs found in Evans's work, Wright-Frierson assembled a team of North Carolina sculptors to interpret the artist’s themes in various media. With over fifty photographs and a narrative based on interviews with all eight contributors, this book collects, for the first time, the story of Minnie Evans, her visionary art, and the garden that now memorializes her. |
About the Authors
Fred Wharton, a native of Great Britain, taught Elizabethan drama at Glasgow University in Scotland, and then at Augusta College in Georgia, where he chaired the English Department. A member of Airlie Gardens Guild, he is married to Rosemary DePaolo, Chancellor of the University of North Carolina Wilmington.
Susan Taylor Block, a Wilmington native, is the author of a number of Wilmington history books including Airlie: The Garden of Wilmington. Currently Airlie historian, she served as a screenwriter for the documentary Beneath the Airlie Oak and is a published poet.
Virginia Wright-Frierson earned her BFA degree in painting from the University of North Carolina, Greensboro and furthered her studies in Cortona, Italy; New York, and Arizona. She and her husband, Dargan, settled in Wilmington in 1977. Her record includes over thirty exhibitions in the southeastern US as well as Italy. Her work is included in museum, private, and corporate collections.
