Garden of Edom

Forty years of artisanship turned this East Texas hamlet into a destination for arts, eats, and garden treats

By Randy Mallory

As I stroll into Potters Brown Gallery, I’m glad to see that the humble, 1920s wood-frame building still pulses with usefulness and artfulness.

The gallery’s stoneware embodies practicality—from large platters to small cups. But the pottery’s bold designs—swirls of cobalt and cerulean blues, pinwheels of yellow ochre and chromed black, strokes and splashes of umber, maroon, and opalescent pearl—make each piece a work of art.

“We buy dirt and sell art,” pottery founder Doug Brown

reminds me with a grin. “We are painters who make the canvas and the paint.” I’ve followed Doug’s work for years. He and his potter wife, Beth, create their useful art in a studio-gallery in the heart of Edom, where FM 279 and FM 314 intersect between Tyler and Canton.

Doug moved to Edom in 1971 to make pottery. Never mind his short hair and 12-hour workdays; some locals still pegged the California transplant as a hippie. Suspicions subsided when he attracted other artists to town and helped start a wildly popular craft festival (now called the Edom Festival of the Arts, held each October). Galleries cropped up, and visitor dollars poured in. Edom became a magnet for art lovers, like me, who found the place an authentic gem tucked in the East Texas woods.

Last fall, I returned to Edom with my wife, Sallie Evans, to take the creative pulse of a craft community entering its fifth decade.

We begin our day with a rousing breakfast of eggs, sausage, and fresh-baked biscuits at The Shed Cafe.

The Shed began serving homestyle cooking in 1966 in a small building next door, where  Peggy and Johnnie Lamb now sell antiques, Limoges porcelain, and fine glassware at Lamb’s Antiques.

After art put Edom on the map, The Shed grew into a spacious dining destination for chicken-fried steaks and fresh pies, and today features café-owner Mary Ellen Malone’s clothing and gift shop in the lobby. The eatery recently added Black Angus steaks and lighter fare such as grilled fish and chicken wraps, manager Matt Malone (Mary Ellen’s son) tells us.

Despite its artistic tendencies, Edom remains a real town, we’re happy to find, as we slide into lime-green rolling office chairs to chat under the metal awning at Edom Service Station. In between changing tires and visiting with locals, lifelong residents Dwayne Nipp and his son Brandon show off Dwayne’s white-over-blue 1955 Chevy sedan. They invite us to their monthly cruise night (March to October), which fills downtown with classic cars.

From his catbird’s seat beside Edom’s only traffic light, Dwayne has watched the arts change his hometown. “Some people didn’t know what to think about the artists at first,” he recalls. “But everybody learned how to work together.”

See the full article in the February 2012 issue.

Subscribe

Order back issues