Thomas Earl Flowers – February 17, 1928-December 13, 2020

We received this obituary from Mark Flowers about his father:

A native of Washington, DC, Tom was born in 1928. He attended Mount Vernon High School and Furman University on a football scholarship graduating with a BA degree in Art. He also went on to The University of Iowa for his MFA. After a short stay in the United States Air Force, he was drafted into the United States Army during the Korean conflict.



He taught at Furman University for 30 years from 1959 to 1989. In 1989 he was awarded Faculty Emeritus. Tom was Chairperson of the Art Department for most of his tenure at Furman. Previously to Furman, he taught at East Carolina in Greenville, NC, and Ottawa University in Ottawa, Kansas. Tom cherished all of his friendships including many of his former students. No services are planned right now, but a contribution can be made to the Thomas E. Flowers Art Scholarship c/o Furman University, 3300 Poinsett Hwy., Greenville, SC 29613



Tom exhibited widely as an artist winning many awards including Springs Mills Best-in-Show, Art in Architecture Award from the South Carolina American Institutes of Greenville for a carved/painted constructed mural for the City Hall in Greenville, SC. He was selected as one of the 100 Artists/100 Years exhibit at the SC State Museum in Columbia, SC. He has had many shows in the Mid-West, South, and Southeast. Many of his works are in permanent and private collections including the South Carolina Arts Commission, Springs Mills, Greenville County Museum of Art, Asheville (NC) Art Museum, Columbia (SC) Museum of Art, Florence (SC) Museum of Art, as well as Citizens and Southern Bank, South Carolina National Bank, Federal Reserve Bank of Virginia, and Nations Bank.







Tom was one of twelve artists from SC whose works were presented in the South Carolina National Bank exhibit, The Bicentennial, An Interpretive Approach. His work was also included in the Portrait of the South exhibition in Rome, Italy. He has served as President of the Greenville Artist Guild and a board member of the Guild of South Carolina Artists. He is a former member of the Board of Trustees of the Greenville County Museum of Art, a State Representative of the American Crafts Council, a member of the Advisory Board of the Guild of SC Artists, and a Pickens County Arts Commissioner.

Tom is survived by his loving friend and partner, Mary Alston, his children; Mark Elliot Flowers and his wife Kristy Lynn Higby (Asheville, NC), Metta James and her partner Gary Von Cannon (Reidville, SC), Tate Thomas Flowers (Honolulu, HI), Taylor Mary Flowers (Spartanburg, SC), Tia Quinn Flowers (Chicago, IL); three grandchildren, Carson Thomas Higby-Flowers and his partner Kristin Finegan (San Francisco), Morgan Elliot Higby-Flowers and his wife Virginia Spencer Griswold (Nashville, TN), Carter Elizabeth Davidson, and two great-grandchildren; Hazel Griswold Flowers and Ada Griswold Flowers (Nashville, TN). He is also survived by his sister, Janet Kealey of Alexandria, VA. His family thanks his caregivers from Open Arms Hospice and Comfort Keepers for their excellent care in his final days.

For further information contact Mark Flowers:
FB-Mountain Tea Studios
Instagram-@markflowers
37 Mountain Tea Lane
Alexander, NC 28701
717/658-0915

A Message About the Pending Celebration of SC Artist Alex Powers’ Life

Alex Powers, 79, was born in Coeburn, VA. He passed away on Wednesday, March 25, 2020, in Garden City, SC, of severe dementia. William Alexander Powers was preceded in death by his parents, Elsie May Weston Powers and William “Bill” Coscar Powers; and brother, Michael Thomas Powers. Surviving are family members, Emma Lou Powers of Williamsburg, VA, and Allen Weston Powers of Bell, FL.

Work by Alex Powers

Alex graduated from Coeburn High School in 1958, where he was admittedly not a serious student but was a very good athlete. He was selected Captain in all three sports (football, basketball, and baseball at which he had a workout with the Chicago Cubs) in his senior year. He attended and graduated from Emory and Henry College in Emory, VA, with a degree in Mathematics in 1963. After trying his hand at teaching math and art in Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida he was hired by the fledgling space program, NASA, where he was a computer scientist. This was so new that he had not studied computers in college, so he had to learn on the job. He related later with a grin that he had spent three days looking for a misplaced comma in a program. While in the Cape Canaveral area he became familiar with a group of serious artists and pretty soon decided that he wanted to follow that lifestyle.

Work by Alex Powers

In order to make a living starting in 1970 he supported himself by doing caricatures of tourists on the beach at Myrtle Beach at $4 each. He gradually gained knowledge and a following for his work and became a popular painter (won the 1997 American Watercolor Society Gold Medal), and taught classes in his apartment studio and in other venues like the annual SpringMaid Workshops, and workshops in Taos, NM, with several teachers and lots of students who rotated around from day to day. He also has judged many art shows all over the United States and a few foreign countries.

He authored a book “Painting People in Watercolor, a design approach” which stayed in publication for 17 years and was translated into French and was published in France. We are all proud of a boy who grew up among the coal mines of the Appalachians to do it his way!!!

Work by Alex Powers

Due to the current pandemic there will be no service at this time, but with the help of his long-time artist friend and helper in his group classes, Vera Tracy we are planning a celebration of life for Alex in Myrtle Beach this fall.

For further info contact Vera Tracy by calling 423/360-3005 or e-mail to (Tracyvera@gmail.com).