Photos by Jon Anderson.
Rose Cook opened Visual Feast Gallery in Hoover’s Patton Creek shopping center in January, filling what she describes as a gap in the Birmingham area’s arts community. Cook, who has been making art for nearly 40 years, does not require exclusive contracts with participating artists — a deliberate departure from the model used by most area galleries.
Rose Cook moved into Hoover’s Lake Wilborn community late last year, and it didn’t take her long to realize there’s a gap in the arts community here.
There are not a lot of art galleries in the Birmingham area — particularly in Hoover — and she’s always wanted to start one, so she did, she said.
Cook, a Northern transplant who first moved to Alabama about 12 years ago, in January opened the Visual Feast Gallery in the Patton Creek shopping center. It’s a 1,000-square-foot space near the Dick’s Sporting Goods store and features Cook’s paintings and jewelry along with the works of about seven other artists, she said.
She believes she can accommodate at least four more artists in her current space and hopes to attract more work to display, she said.
Above: Ceramics by Hoover artist Lee Barnes. Right: Jewelry by Rose Cook and paintings by Steve Carmichael.
Currently, in addition to her abstract paintings and jewelry, the gallery includes photography, ceramics, and other watercolor and oil paintings, she said. Prices so far typically range from $200 to $1,800, but oil painter Steve Carmichael has some paintings that are larger that go up to $2,500, she said.
Other artists there include: Florida art teacher Barbara Casey; Birmingham photographer George Elliot; oil painter Joe Furman of Houston, Texas; Hoover ceramic artist Lee Barnes; animal painter Carolyn Mitchell; and Richard Brown, a light painter from Atlanta.
Cook, who has been doing art for nearly 40 years, said there’s a shortage of places in the Birmingham area for artists to display their work. Most of the galleries that are here require artists to sign contracts saying they will display only in that one location, she said.
She doesn’t like that model and doesn’t require exclusive contracts with artists in her gallery, she said.
Cook said she has a two-year lease in the Patton Creek shopping center and is hoping the center can make a turnaround with new owner RCG Ventures. She’d like to see more tenants in the numerous empty spaces in the center, she said.
Artists are having a tough time right now, Cook said. Inflation has made it tough for a lot of people to live, and art — a discretionary expense — suffers during inflationary times, she said.
Darla Williamson, a visual artist who is a member of the Hoover Arts Council, said she’s glad to see a new art gallery open in Hoover.
There aren’t many places in Hoover for artists to display or sell original artwork, she said. Daniel Moore’s New Life Art off Lorna Road and Alabama Goods in Stadium Trace Village are among the few, she said. Shades Mountain Mercantile in Shades Mountain Plaza has some original artwork, but it’s not a traditional gallery, she said.
And other studios have closed or moved. Amy Anderson closed her art studio and gallery in Bluff Park in 2023, and Liz Lane moved her art studio and gallery out of Bluff Park Village to downtown Birmingham in April of this year.
Cook was raised in New Jersey. She grew up poor on food stamps, she said. Her mother died when she was 19, and she took care of her two younger siblings for three years before moving on with her life, she said.
When she got a job in sales at IBM at age 28, her life and financial situation completely changed, she said. “I was the only woman in that office with 20 guys,” she said. “It was very entertaining.”
She stayed with IBM for three years and then began changing jobs every two to three years in an effort to keep advancing, she said. Most of her career was spent in marketing, sales and word processing training, she said.
She spent a lot of time in Manhattan and loved being in New York, but she moved to Alabama 12 years ago to be near her sister and met her husband, Bill Cook, who is retired as a pathologist from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
They lived in the Birmingham area for a short time before moving to Manhattan and then Mexico and more recently returning to Alabama to be near children and grandchildren.
“I love it because of all the greenery. I think it is a really pretty cosmopolitan community,” Cook said of the Birmingham area. “It’s lacking some of the things we were used to, but it’s just really pretty. … I’m getting adjusted. I also like the fact that the kids say ‘Yes, ma’am’ and ‘No, ma’am.’”
Opening the Visual Feast Gallery has been a challenge, but she’s determined to make her new art gallery work, she said. “I don’t give up on anything.”
For more about the Visual Feast Gallery, go to visualfeastbyrose.com.
