SNEADS FERRY IMAGES ONLINE
Sneads Ferry Images is owned and maintained byThurston Art Gallery. This site is dedicated to images relating specifically to Sneads Ferry. All images and copyrights are through Thurston Art Gallery, and the artist Sherry Thurston. 2009
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Sherry Williams Thurston is a prominent North Carolina artist, especially well-known along the Carolina Coast. From her gallery, open for the past three decades in the scenic fishing village of Sneads Ferry, she has gained acclaim for her wide variety of works in various artistic media. Her trademark-a depiction of watermen’s' boots, are known in eastern North Carolina as “Sneads Ferry Sneakers," but have other names in other places.
Thurston’s “ Sunrise in Sneads Ferry” colorful depiction of the popular coastal festival in 2003 was chosen to adorn both festival posters and t-shirts. Sherry offers limited edtion giclee prints of it in her gallery. The lithograph prints were sold out. She has been the cover artist for Sounds Magazine, based in Hampstead , NC . She created“Turtle Love”, a litho in a mixed-media work celebrating the turtle hospital at Topsail Beach , North Carolina . Sherry had a 2002 exhibit at Hampstead Arts, a four-decade retrospective of art she has had on publication covers from Topsail Island Advertiser, Sounds Magazine, Coaster from 1993 to 2000.
Born in Rocky Mount, NC, she is a 1970 graduate of East Carolina University in Greenville NC with a B.S. in Art Education. Thurston also studied under the renowned Jerry Coulter of James Madison University at Orkney Springs, Virginia in 1998 and the summer of 2001. She is also an art instructor herself and currently heads up the art department at Dixon High School, outside Jacksonville, NC.
Ms. Thurston has been offering for sale tees, tanks, totes, ball caps, fine prints & poster prints with the “Sneads Ferry Sneakers” Boots!
In 1980 Ms. Thurston bought the Thurston Studio now Thurston Art Gallery on 328 Peru Road, Sneads Ferry, NC. It was first a teaching and working studio for the artist. The local scenes were the attraction to her. The town was known for its shrimping, fishing and farming businesses. The fishermen were wearing boots that were orange and black, then somewhere near 1992 they were attracted to the white fishing boot. Ms. Thurston drew the design and sent the copyright off. Little did she know that the tee shirts were going to sell for years to come.
These products of the Sneads Ferry Sneakers put her art gallery on the map! The Chamber of Commerce of Onslow County sends a scavenger hunt leadership team out once a year to her
gallery to seek out the “Sneads Ferry Sneakers!” Ms. Thurston has been featured in several TV business spotlights, (“Country Rover”, twice and UNC-TV on “Down East Today”, 2005 with her "Sneads Ferry Sneakers" and her beautiful coastal North Carolina scenes. The “Sounds” tabloid of Hampstead, NC featured her “Sneads Ferry Sneakers” on their Summer 2000, Vol. 13 #2 cover.)