Accidentally, and with no proclamations, April unofficially became Elizabeth Brim Month for Penland’s renowned metal artist and blacksmith.
A career retrospective of Brim’s work ends this coming weekend at the Bo Bartlett Center in her hometown of Columbus, Ga., while the Mitchell County premier of Iron Pearls, a documentary film by E. Vincent Martinez on Brim’s life and career, will be screened at Penland School of Crafts on Wednesday, April 22. Finally, on Saturday, April 25, the 20th annual Fire on the Mountain blacksmithing festival will take over downtown Spruce Pine, featuring Brim (who has helped shape the event for nineteen years) as the featured demonstrator.
Brim has been a fixture in the local arts community since the 1980s.
Local residents might best know Brim for her sculpture "Sarvice Tree," which accompanies Spruce Pine’s town clock just west of downtown.
On Monday evenings, Brim can usually be found competing at 670 on Oak’s Trivia Night, sipping a beer and winning any round where the category is rap music.
“It’s my favorite background sound in my studio,” Brim admits.
Otherwise, she’s one of Penland’s long-term instructors, ruling over the school’s iron studio for decades, and founding a scholarship for young artists that bears her name, something that Brim is extremely proud of.
Brim also takes great pride in the fact that she’s a native of Columbus, like the writer Carson McCullers.
“It used to be that the city didn’t know what to do with girls like us,” Brim says laughing.
In 1979, Brim graduated with an master of fine arts degree in printmaking from the University of Georgia and was immediately hired as an adjunct instructor by the art department back home at Columbus College (now Columbus State University). The department head, Jamie Howard, urged Brim to consider applying for the position of ceramics instructor at the college.
“I told him I knew nothing about ceramics, and he told me I should go to Penland and learn,” Brim remembers.
She mastered ceramics at Penland but kept returning for more classes. One summer, she decided on a blacksmithing course there.
“I thought it would be a hoot,” Brim says. Instead, it became a life.
Brim’s mother had raised her to be a Southern belle, so a sudden career shift into blacksmithing came as a shock to her. Brim’s trademark string of pearls, which she wears with her soot-covered overalls, dates from this time: She became an "iron belle," humorously acknowledging her mother’s disappointment.
Finally established at Penland full-time, Brim became involved with the Fire on the Mountain Festival after its first year.
“It was originally called “Hammerin’ on the Toe,” Brim recalls, “and had a child Elvis impersonator. I thought it could be more.”
It could. The festival is now one of the most wellknown blacksmithing events on the East Coast.
On Saturday, Brim will be found in the forging tent in Downtown’s pocket park. She’ll be the blacksmith with pearls.