By Barry Wise Smith
The Homewood Arts Council is currently presenting Two Men, Two Friends, Two Visions: Works by Ted Metz and Scott Vaughn Owen, an exhibition bringing together two accomplished Alabama artists and friends whose distinctly different bodies of work share a deep connection to craftsmanship, materials, construction and the process of making. The exhibition is on view in the lobby of Homewood City Hall through November 13.
Ted Metz is a sculptor and educator whose career has spanned more than five decades. Born in Ohio, Metz earned his BFA from Old Dominion University and MFA in sculpture from the University of South Carolina. He joined the University of Montevallo faculty in 1973 and retired as Professor Emeritus in 2016. During his distinguished teaching career, Metz received numerous honors, including Alabama Professor of the Year.
Metz’s sculptures have been exhibited nationally and internationally, including exhibitions in Italy and at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Gallery in Washington, D.C. He is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts grant and two Visual Arts Fellowships from the State of Alabama. His recent work explores abstract mixed-media assemblage using cast aluminum, bronze, glass and iron, structural steel, vintage tools and other found materials. Drawn to 19th century industrial design and craftsmanship, Metz allows the history of his materials to remain visible, preserving rust, welds, grinding marks and naturally distressed surfaces as integral parts of the finished work. His use of vintage tools also pays tribute to the craftsmen and trades those objects represent.
Included in this exhibition are sculptures from two of Metz’s ongoing series. The Consequences of Extraction explores the harvesting of materials from the earth and our complicity in that process as users and consumers. The Master/Apprentice series honors the traditional educational model through which generations of men and women learned skilled trades, reflecting Metz’s longstanding interest in craftsmanship, tools and the passing of knowledge from one generation to the next. “I am grateful to the Homewood Arts Council for inviting Scott Owen and me to exhibit our work. The venue is perfect,” Metz says. “I have produced a lot of sculpture over the past 50 years. This exhibition includes recent sculptures that are being shown for the first time in the Birmingham area. Scott and I are pleased to introduce this work to a new audience.”
Scott Vaughn Owen grew up in Columbiana, Alabama, and studied fine art at the University of Montevallo. Over a career spanning more than four decades, he mastered typography, painting, carving, gilding and dimensional design. First developed through his award-winning work as a sign maker, those disciplines now form the foundation of his distinctive fine-art practice.
In his constructed works, Owen builds outward from the painted image. Graphic patterns, symbolic figures and artist-designed frames come together as one complete composition. The surrounding structure does not simply contain the artwork; it carries its color, rhythm and narrative beyond the image itself. Within these layered environments, familiar figures and objects suggest moments of humor, tension, vulnerability and personal reflection.
Owen’s work has been exhibited throughout the southeastern United States, including at the Carnegie Visual Arts Center in Decatur and Huntsville International Airport. His paintings have also appeared in galleries in Dallas, Texas, and London, England.
Though Metz and Owen create distinctly different work, both approach art as makers as much as image-makers. Materials, tools and craftsmanship are central to each artist’s practice. Metz brings together industrial and found materials whose surfaces reveal evidence of their histories, while Owen extends his paintings into dimensional, constructed works in which image, frame and structure become a unified composition.
“Bringing Ted and Scott together gives our community a chance to experience two very different artistic voices while also discovering the common ground between them,” says Shannon Schneider, Chair of the Homewood Arts Council. “Both artists have spent decades developing their craft, but neither has stopped exploring and experimenting.”
