Helen Groover Callaway enjoyed painting and other forms of art in her sunroom at her home on Sims Street. This year’s Washington Connections Premier Art Show and Sale is dedicated to her memory. The second annual Washington Connections Premier Art Show and Sale will be held November 5-6 on The Square in historic Downtown Washington. This year it is dedicated to the memory of Helen Groover Callaway.

This fall event is sponsored by the Washington-Wilkes Foundation for the Arts and Performing Arts and will present the outstanding works in a variety of genre and mediums of invited artists who are regionally, nationally, and internationally know, and who have some special connection to Washington-Wilkes.

The board of directors of the Arts Foundation has chosen to honor Mrs. Callaway’s memory because of her lifelong interest and support of the arts. She was one of the invited artists who exhibited her work in the last year’s Washington Connections program.

Mrs. Callaway was born and reared in Atlanta and graduated from the University of Georgia in 1939. In 1942, she married Wilkes County Native Adolphus Sanford Callaway and moved to this area with him where they reared their children – two sons, Sandy (deceased) and Alan; and two daughters, Lucy and Gartine.

The Callaways lived first in Washington on Liberty Street before building a home and farm in 1952 on original Callaway property owned since 1783. In 1980, seven years after the loss of her husband, Mrs. Callaway moved to her Barksdale Drive home in Washington where she lived until her death on August 31, 2005.

Mrs. Callaway’s creative ability is widely known through her painting, but her interests in the arts were much broader. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, she expressed her talent through the beauty of nature as an avid floral gardener and active garden club member. She and her friend, Mary Darby, co-owned a successful floral concern and were well-known for their beautiful arrangements.

After moving to their Wilkes County farm in the 1950s, she established another business, “The Hobby Horse,” in Rayle where she concentrated on acrylic painting, decoupage, and ceramics while continuing her zeal for floral gardening and garden club work.

It was during these early farm years that Adolphus (Dolph) Callaway took his wife and family to their first Tennessee Walking Horse Show. This was the beginning of son Alan’s career in the horse industry and Mrs. Callaway’s new love of nature, beautiful horses, which she began to incorporate into her art. After her husband’s death, she donated a building on Liberty Street to the Washington Little Theater Company in support of the performing arts, allowing them to expand.

Her enjoyment of and devotion to the arts, flowers, and horses continued to grow through the years. In 1999, she began painting again, joining an art class in oils taught by local artist, Dolores McAvoy.

During Thanksgiving 2002, Mrs. Callaway suffered a broken leg from which she would never fully recuperate. Spending weeks and weeks in confinement, she committed her time to painting, avowing that her art, her family, and her devoted friends kept her spirits high.

Members of her art class volunteered to move to Mrs. Callaway’s sunroom where they continued their art instruction with Mrs. McAvoy until 2005. Painting became her passion and daily labor of love. During the last three years of her life she produced an astounding body of work coveted by her family and friends.

In 2004, a series of Mrs. Callaway’s work entitled “ARTistic Melodies” was exhibited in the Mary Willis Library in Washington. Each painting was whimsically named for the title of an old song. This exhibit introduced the general public to Mrs. Callaway, the artist, and created a much wider interest in her talent.

“ARTistic Melodies” will again be on display in the former Washington Wilkes Chamber of Commerce building on Liberty Street in Washington from October 29 until November 12 to coincide with this year’s art show November 5-6.

The general public is again invited to enjoy this exhibit as the memory of Helen Groover Callaway is honored and her life is remembered.