“It’s Appalachian art,” Turner said. “I grew up around clay — I was born in Hazard, Ky. I’d always messed with clay when I was a kid because it’s all over the hills.”
Turner, 68, learned his craft as a teenager. After losing both his parents at a young age, Turner enrolled in Berea Foundation Academy in Berea, Ky., when he was 14. Turner described it as a school for kids from broken homes and said they all had to work for their tuition.
Turner paid his way selling pottery out of a gift shop, where he met Paul Hudgens, a 25-year-old ex-convict who learned to make pottery in prison. Hudgens, who wanted an education and worked for his tuition at Berea in the pottery department, trained Turner in the craft.
Turner picked it up quickly and decided to pay it forward.
“With that training, I decided that I wanted to work with the Peace Corps in the Appalachians and do pottery demonstrations,” he said.
The idea, Turner said, was to get children interested in clay and art while teaching them to sell it in order to make a livelihood and draw them out of the hills and away from the coal mines.
“And a lot of those kids we taught went down to Berea and started crafts, and now Berea is one of the biggest craft towns in all of the United States,” he said.
Spending so much time with so many different types of people gave Turner a love for others, said Jeananne Smith, his daughter.
“What makes him unique is because of his diverse experiences, he appreciates humanity and has learned to treasure people,” Smith said.
That’s what Turner’s wife, Deborah, said attracted her to him when the two became friends after meeting on the library steps at Ambassador Bible College in Milford, Ohio, in 1972.
Deborah Turner said she knew Cooley had a heart for people when he picked up a hitchhiker in their car in 1972.
“Cooley gave him his coat because the guy didn’t have a coat and he didn’t want him to go without one,” she said. “So then Cooley didn’t have one.”
Turner’s talent with visual art sets him apart from his family, but he did pass on a little creativity. He said his daughter is very talented in theater and drama, and his granddaughter, Anabelle Smith, 14, dances in the Dayton Ballet and attends Stivers School for the Arts in Dayton.
Turner said he’s always trying to do things with art that have never been done and plans to experiment with gluing dryer lint on a canvas and painting “The Lord’s Supper” over it, hopefully creating a 3-D effect. He said he’s also always trying to think of new things to do with pottery.
“I once thought about making drinking cups and putting a whistle on them out of clay so that you could whistle for the waiter to fill your cup up again,” he said, laughing at the idea. “You just get funny ideas like that when you’re messing with clay.”
Ideas like that and general creativity give Turner a unique approach to life, Jeananne Smith said.
“The way my dad views things is so unique and creative,” she said. “I wish people could look through his eyes sometimes and see things the way he sees them.”
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