Hand painted ceramic ornaments by Asheville artist Carolyn Ford.

Carolyn Ford was born in middle Tennessee deeply influenced by Southern oral culture of storytelling, exaggerations, yarns, and colorful southernisms. After a childhood in the suburbs outside of Nashville amongst the children of country music stars, her father decided to move the family to their pre-Civil War family farm. With the combination of the creativity from the songwriters’ lyrics, her Grandmother’s Weekly World News papers, and the rural yarns spun, she began to expand upon her own stories. As an avid traveler, she relishes learning odd folklore of each place she experiences thus attempting to sneak in some humor or stretch the truth in her art.

Ford attended Middle Tennessee State University where she earned her BFA with an emphasis in Ceramics, Drawing, and Painting. There she studied abroad and exhibited in Italy. She then earned her MFA from Washington State University in Ceramics and Drawing where she studied under Ann Christenson and Patrick Siler. Ford currently lives in Gaffney, South Carolina with her husband Logan Richardson where she has been the Chair of the Art Department at Limestone College since 2010. She enjoys teaching a wide range of courses from drawing, ceramics, crafts, to sculpture.