Abigail Ruth Freed is a native Georgian, born in Atlanta in 1994. Growing up, she never wore shoes, and spent her summers in the Appalachian mountains living in the woods. She was raised on a diet of skillet cornbread, tomatoes, and homemade pecan pralines.
Her work is based on her personal experiences of growing up in a Southern family, conveying the nature of life in the Deep South through the use of storytelling and iconography. Using mainly handbuilt ceramic sculpture combined with other media such as quilts, textiles, and found objects, she explores the ideas of domesticity, sexism, and stereotyping to create narrative works that question how these ideas are perceived both as truths and untruths outside of the Southern United States to challenge the notion of “Southern” identity.