Artist Studios & Galleries Around Helen

Past the Bavarian storefronts, the hills around Helen hold a working arts scene: potters throwing stoneware, painters, glass and fiber artists, and folk artists whose pieces end up in galleries across the South. Most of it is a short drive from downtown, and a lot of it is free to visit.

Hours at small galleries change with the season, so call before you make a special trip.

The Sautee Nacoochee Center lists two art galleries on campus, a Folk Pottery Museum, art classes and a community contra dance. The Helen Arts & Heritage Center runs a pottery studio and the Art-Oberfest, Mistletoe Market and WinterFest events. Around Back at Rocky's Place says it carries work by hundreds of Southern artists and a large collection by the folk painter Cornbread (John Anderson), known for guineas, foxes and other animals painted on metal, wood and canvas. Plan to make Dawsonville its own trip; it's a ways from Helen. Hickory Flat Pottery is in Clarkesville, and Mark of the Potter is a longtime craft shop in Clarkesville.

Studios that are quiet most of the year open their doors on tour weekends, and the festivals put dozens of artists in one place.

Details: artstour.org for the studio tour and the Helen Arts & Heritage Center events page for Art-Oberfest, Mistletoe Market and WinterFest. See the events calendar for more.

The folk pottery you'll see at the Sautee Nacoochee Center belongs to a long Georgia tradition. According to the New Georgia Encyclopedia, Georgia's folk potters were working artisans who made jugs, churns and jars for neighboring farms, and the craft was handed down in family shops. Mossy Creek in southern White County, the county Helen sits in, is the oldest pottery center in northeast Georgia, begun in the 1820s by potters of the Davidson, Craven and Dorsey families who migrated from North Carolina.

Helen's own artistic turn came later. Residents remade the town in an Alpine style starting with a 1968 lunch of local merchants, and artist John Kollock of Clarkesville supplied the watercolor sketches, as the New Georgia Encyclopedia's Helen entry tells it. For more on the mountain craft tradition, see the Foxfire Museum guide.