 Hi, my name is Carmalitta Freeman Dixson. Most folks just call me Carmie. Coming from the mountain region of upper East Tennessee, I have been surrounded by soft greens, browns, and grays of tall trees and rocky hillsides, sharp contrast of black and white in lightning and thunder of nighttime storms, splashes of orange, yellow, and red against bright blue skies of autumn, and the soft pinks and lavenders of flowers blooming in the spring. The colors of my native home and the textures and patterns in the rocks and pebbles I have collected since childhood are incorporated in my artwork in a multitude of ways.
I received my B.S. in Art Education from East Tennessee State University with a major concentration in crafts and have spent 28 years teaching art at the elementary level in the public school system, first in the Appalachian area of Southwestern Virginia, then in the Virginia Beach, Virginia school system and then returned to my home in Johnson City, Tennessee where I taught for 13 years. The last nine years I have been in an idyllic setting in the foothills of Clinch Mountain in Grainger County, TN., having added middle school and high school classes to my schedule. While juggling a career and motherhood with the need for personal creative expression is not always easy it is gratifying. I have experimented with many materials from watercolors to pottery to handmade paper and through the years I have made jewelry out of all sorts of things from pottery chards to fabric scraps depending on what my chosen medium of the moment was. Through the years, I have studied under many wonderful instructors including several at Arrowmont School of Crafts in Gatlinburg, TN. and the Appalachian Center for Crafts in Smithville, TN. There I learned the art of tinsmithing, producing unique pieces of metalwork for the home as well as jewelry for personal adornment. Most recently I have studied with Preston J. Reuther, Master Wire-Sculptor in Slidell, La. and Dale Armstrong of Cougarcreations in Riceville, TN. who have introduced me to a whole new approach to working with metal and stone.  A recent creative venture that combines brass keys that have been melted down into "blobs" with feathers, stones, glass and pottery beads has produced a line of wearable art that I am featuring as the Phoenix Series. My Mother Earth Series is comprised of round stones, many of which I brought back from creekbeds in the red rock areas of Arizona and the agate beaches of coastal Oregon. The strengths and healing properties of amethyst, malachite, lapis, rose quartz, hematite, jasper and many other non-traditional gemstones enhances these power pendants.
My artwork has received accolades in art shows from Tampa, Florida to Virginia Beach, Virginia and back to Tennessee where I recently took Best of Show with a collage featuring jeweled images of tomatoes combined with sculpted metal accents in the Grainger County Tomato Festival. The festival is held every year in late July in Grainger County, TN., 20 miles east of Knoxville, where I now live with my husband Jim, Shadow the cat, and a lovable Australian Shepherd named Willie. |
