Lee Cowan and her Stone County Art

Lee Cowan lives with her husband Mike Oglesby, two dogs Cork and Moon, and cat Ten Four (in addition to countless snakes, over a million chiggers and ticks and 35 acres of poison ivy) in a deep valley of the Arkansas Ozark Mountains--in Stone County, to be exact. Miles from pavement, she draws both inspiration and often raw material from the beauty around her, creating the hand-made, contemporary, often primitive, highly unique work she calls Stone County Art. Living her life so much in the out of doors, much of Lee's work is designed to remain as durable and beautiful in the garden as in the living room.

Leaving her professional life as a psychotherapist in Little Rock in 1998 to move to the country and explore her artistic side, by 2001 Lee's new creations were juried into the prestigious Arkansas Craft Guild. Soon various commercial outlets statewide began featuring her unique, hand-cast concrete mosaic outdoor furniture and sculptures. By 2003, she felt confident to enter her first art center competition, and her works have been placing in competitions since that time. Her work has been included in numerous group shows. In July of 2005, The Ozark Heritage Art Center and Museum in Leslie, Arkansas, hosted her first solo exhibit. In October of 2004, Cowan's work was selected for inclusion in the opening of the President Clinton Museum Store in Little Rock. Beginning in 2002, Lee continues to join other fine artists around Mountain View, Arkansas, every September for the the self-guided Off the Beaten Path Open Studio Tours (www.offthebeatenpathstudiotour.com.)

In 2009, Lee completed her very funny and profound memoir (reviews on-line) about their experience of creating new lives in their 50's. The book, Except for All the Snakes, I Just Love It Out Here, includes the process of how she became an artist and how her husband became a grape-grower and wine-maker. After winning several awards locally, in 2003 Mike won a Gold Medal from The American Wine Society in New York for his dry Cynthiana, and has continued winning awards since that time.