Quirky and quixotic, the works of artist Lucile Stephens are sure to bring a smile to your face, or at least make you go, “Huh?”

“Art is my life,” says Lucile. “I couldn’t function without it.” Now that she’s retired (she taught art in public schools for 25 years, after graduating from the University of Georgia with an advanced degree in art education), she relishes the role of being a full-time artist. Several days each week, she makes her way from her farmhouse in the middle of a pasture near Arden to her studio in the River Arts District.

To what does she attribute her talent? “It seems everyone in my family was an artist,” says Lucile. “My mother had a music degree but taught art, as the schools where she lived had no music programs.” Her younger sister, too, became an art teacher. And one of her three daughters is a sculptor.

Lucile lived for 50 years in Cornelia, Georgia. After retiring from teaching, she moved first to St. Simon’s Island in Georgia, and later to Jacksonville Beach, Florida. “After a while, I grew tired of that. I wanted to move to New York City, but I decided I couldn’t afford it.” But she knew she wanted to live in “an arty town” as she describes it, and so she chose to move to the Asheville area.

She had an interest in welding and so began attending several different trade schools. “When I started some 20 years ago, I was the only woman in the welding class,” says Lucile. “By the time I’d finished going, about half of the students were women.”

Her eyes light up when you ask where she finds the material with which she makes her sculptures. “We have two wonderful junkyards right here in the River Arts District,” she exclaims. Adding, “I love to weld!” The junkyards, she says, are treasure troves of bits and pieces and bases for her works. “Nothing excites me more than a twisted pile of rusty steel in a junkyard.”

She also creates pieces in clay. “I worked at Odyssey for three years and did a lot of glazing. Now, however, most of my pieces are fired without glazing.” And she paints. “I don’t do much in oils as I don’t have a good ventilation system where I live,” says Lucile. “So most of what I use are acrylics.”

But back to the quirkiness of her works. The headless chicken titled “Did I Forget Something?” for example. Or her new series “Book Rests”—clay figures draped lazily over books she’s purchased at garage sales. Where do these ideas come from? “I guess my whole family has a twisted sense of humor,” says Lucile, her eyes twinkling as though there’s another joke in there. “We’re always making something different out of some- thing someone said.”

Lucile Stephens is a sculptor and a painter, a welder and a wit. Stop by and meet the artist, and enjoy her works on display at Constance Williams Gallery at the CURVE studios & garden in the River Arts District.