Athens artist wins top honors at Southworks exhibition

Athens-based artist Caroline Montague, who earlier this month received Best in Show honors in the Oconee Cultural Art Foundation's 16th annual Southworks juried art exhibition, admitted she accepted the award with a little sadness.

Montague's bronze-and-marble piece titled "New Stag," is part of a long-term artistic project she's pursuing on chickens, and the sculpture she submitted for Southworks consideration was inspired by a Brazilian-Thai-Aseel cockerel she purchased from California named Bolo.

"He turned out to be such a character that I found myself drawing him and photographing him a lot," Montague said. "He had quite an exuberance about him, so I wanted to make a sculpture."

Unfortunately, Bolo never was able to receive the adulation appropriately accorded to him as he died a few weeks before Southworks opened.

"A few weeks before the show, he just fell over off his perch, fell over dead," Montague said. "I was so shocked. I took him to the (veterinary) diagnostic lab at (the University of Georgia) and they determined that it was a genetic thing and he only had one lung. He died of a heart attack."

And while Bolo is gone, the sculpture lives on, as does his offspring.

"I immortalized him, I guess," Montague said. "I don't have Bolo, but I've got a lot of photos and I've got a lot of his chicks running around."

A Virginia native who has lived in the Athens area for the last six years, Montague has submitted her work to various OCAF exhibitions, but this is the first time she's won recognition for her creations.

"I used to participate in the pottery shows; I probably was in three of those," she said. "And I've been included in Southworks four times. I feel very honored for my sculpture to be awarded. It's really wonderful because it will enable me to make more. OCAF is a pretty terrific gallery. I think it's wonderful to have that type of organization in a community."

"I really like her pieces," said

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