Do you recognize this album cover? Do you know the artist that collaborated with the lead singer in creating the cover? If you do recognize the artist or simply like the artwork, then you will want to check out Folk Fest. This annual festival celebrates Southern folk art and pottery, as well as primitive art, self-taught art and outsider art. The festival kicks off with a Meet the Artist party on Friday, August 15, and runs through Sunday, August 17, at the North Atlanta Trade Center. With 100 galleries and artists in attendance, you will be sure to see a wide range of styles and mediums full of local flavor! Some of my favorites, like Eric Legge, Sarah Rakes and Michael Banks, are bound to have their art represented; and, I am very excited to see new work by these artists and others that I have yet to discover!

If you are interested in learning more about folk art, check out these books:

• Contemporary American Folk Art
• The end is near! : Visions of apocalypse, millennium, and utopia : works from the American Visionary Art Museum
• Outsider art of the South
• Testimony : Vernacular art of the African-American south : the Ronald and June Shelp collection

The answers to the opening questions are R.E.M.’s Reckoning, and Howard Finster worked with Michael Stipe on the cover art.

1. Literary Inspiration
2. National Black Arts Festival!
3. The Ebony Stitchers Quilt Guild featured at the National Black Arts Festival
4. The Long Echo
5. When Lilacs Last in Stone Mountain Bloom’d