Alice Woodruff

Alice Woodruff - Master Potter, Feminist and Political Sculptor

"I'm not me without everyone else. I can still hear how much I look like my father, James (Jim) F. Woodruff, the family’s emotional center, and my childhood savior.  My mother, Ann T. Woodruff, was a powerful and successful businesswoman. My daughter, Ann K. Woodruff, has all my mother's strongest qualities and is magnificent all on her own.

I will always remember an idyllic childhood with my brothers, Jeff, Jack and David Woodruff; but as a product of the feminist movement and coming of age of the 1960's, I have bucked traditional roles and caused a bit of family friction, eventual chafing, but later found healing and reconnection with them, their wives and the next generation.”

Born in 1952 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and raised in Athens, Georgia, Alice Woodruff first became interested in clay when a University of Georgia professor visited her high school in 1968 and invited Alice to UGA’s ceramic studio. Summer intensives at Haystack Mountain School in Maine and a pottery apprenticeship in a small studio in Tucson, Arizona, soon followed.

Over the next three decades Woodruff found success as a production potter. She owned and operated four studios in Oconee County, GA, shipped her ceramics to galleries, gift shops and museums across the country, and exhibited in solo shows across the Southeast. Alice claimed that she pursued a life of poverty and back pain, all while breathing in heavy metals and dust, but it was her happiness.

In her forties, experiencing the growing physical challenges of bending over a workbench, lifting 50+ pound pieces into a kiln and building rock walls in her garden, Woodruff returned to school. She graduated with full honors from each of these intuitions: The University of Georgia, BSN, The Medical College of Georgia, RN, and Georgia State, FNP. She focused her career as a Nurse Practitioner in neurosurgery and spine rehabilitation. “Not bad for a single mom and non-traditional student who struggled with dyslexia.”

Woodruff’s artistic passion called again after 13 years of nursing. Moving beyond production potter to master clay craftswoman, she addressed her grief over the suicide of her 18 year-old son in “Transitions: Vessels for Sam.” Of Sam, Alice observed, “He was an arboreal creature, never attached to this earth.”

In 2018, Woodruff was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer. During treatment she channeled her deep emotions and compromised energy into 33 new sculptures representing illness, gender inequalities and injustice and speaking to the universality of pain and the human experience.

During Covid-19 isolation, Woodruff expanded those 33 figures to 100 “Warrior Women” and their stories, often sourcing details about women across the globe over coffee and the morning reading of the news. This remarkable social/political collection has been exhibited at the Oconee Cultural Arts Foundation, the University of Georgia Special Collections Libraries, the historic Taylor-Grady House in Athens, GA, Callanwolde Fine Arts Center in Atlanta, with additional pieces shown in Ceres Gallery, in New York City, and most recently at the Madison Artist Guild, in Madison, GA.

Over the past two years Woodruff summoned her whimsy and produced “Woodland Critters,” almost 50 charming, life-size sculptures of hares, opossums, armadillos, squirrels and chipmunks, each bearing a name, unique personality and story.

Last summer, around the time Woodruff was healing from a hip transplant, climbing trees with a chainsaw to trim dead branches and leading efforts to create a native plant meadow in her beloved Watkinsville Woods, Alice’s cancer returned with fury. Hospice was summoned. Family, friends and neighbors surrounded Woodruff with laughter and tears, love and sadness, respect and gratitude for her presence in their lives.

Over many years Woodruff’s daughter Ann served as the artist’s manager, agent, tech expert and inspiration, while Alice fulfilled the role of “unpaid wife,” cleaner, gardener, career support and additional mother to the next generation. Of their mother/daughter relationship, Ann claimed proudly, “We are the best kind of codependents there is.”

Together Ann and Alice raised Ann’s daughter Luna with an eye toward independence, creativity, strength and kindness. Luna suffers no fools and represents both Ann’s and Alice’s hopes for art, gardens and a better world. Luna’s dream, in her own words: “I want to be 10 years old with Elsie [her name for her grandmother], go on adventures in the woods, build secret hideouts and get into trouble with her.”

“Good trouble, like John Lewis,” Alice added, giving her granddaughter a fierce hug.

In lieu of cut flowers, please consider supporting the Watkinsville Woods woodland meadow project to plant native flowers for the enjoyment of our community, this fund is getting set up in the near future. OR contribute to Canopy Studio’s Fund for Outreach at the Athena Area Community Foundation. This fund was started by Alice 3 days before the diagnosis and entry into Hospice. Her intention was to seed a fund to support the work of her daughter, Ann Woodruff, Canopy Studio’s Executive Director for decades to come. https://athensareacf.fcsuite.com/erp/donate/create/fund?funit_id=6544

And, whatever you do, hold your people tight and make good trouble.