Sculptor Joe King uses a hammer, chisel and his imagination to discover his own style as he fine-tunes his technique. Hailing from Leiper’s Fork, Tennessee, King presents sculptures including a farm boy made from limestone and a horse and a lady made from turtella agate. Commenting on his smooth, glasslike sculptures, King explains, “God gives me such pretty rocks to work with. I want it to show.”
Joe King, a well-respected carpenter in Leiper’s Fork for thirty years, is known for building and remodeling area homes, businesses, and several of Leiper’s Fork’s most cherished structures, including the Lawnchair Theater and the accompanying wisteria arbor adjacent to Puckett’s, as well as the building housing Leiper’s Creek Gallery and Leiper’s Fork Flintlocks. His remodeling career encouraged King’s artistic direction to create expressive, hand-carved stone sculptures. Coincidentally, a serious car accident occurred on the same day he changed careers. Throughout a long recovery, he painted quarry rocks at the kitchen table. As he improved, he began carving and has continued to develop his figurative sculptures using primarily native Tennessee limestone.
