Snellville Days Favorite Leaves This World Alive with Color

Eddie King, Bottle Artist Extraordinaire, Passed Away at 81
June 8, 1931 - February 4, 2013

If you are an avid and attentive Snellville Days patron, then you are surely to have met "Bottle Art Eddie" who has been a popular artist at the festival for a number of years. 

Eddie mastered his vision and craft by spending hours in his basement workshop utilizing only acrylic paints and his fingers. With what I describe as a Pollack-like technique, Eddie has recycled bottles of all shapes and sizes and perfected them into magnificent creations.

Eddie created a considerable continuum of bottle designs and concepts such as popular sports teams, infamous bands, and exuberant blondes like Marilyn Monroe, my personal favorite of which I have many.

Eddie's Beatles, Kiss and Marilyn designs tend to display dramatically dark tones of reds, purples, blues and blacks - where as his sports and fun-time concepts demonstrate energetic and cheerful color gamut's that are vibrantly panache beyond that of the Wizard's Oz and Wonka's Chocolate Factory combined.

Eddie's imagination of color combinations as coupled with each design concept was accomplished with amazing ability that always proved for a fascinating translation to each and every bottle he touched.

And Eddie's touch of talent is only the tip of a tall goblet of gifts in which he leaves us to remember him by. 

Eddie was a true one-of-a-cool-kind of dudes with well-deserved celebrity status around the Atlanta art scene.  His stories and humor would surely put a smile on your face and leave laughter in your heart for days to come.

Close friends and musicians on the festival scene say that Eddie loved to do the merengue and salsa dance; they even say "he was pretty good at it".  Not surprising given his obvious passion for life, love and all things fun.  I can find no words great enough to express the "warm-fuzzy" that Eddie would bring to a long and exhausting festival day.

Eddie was a holocaust survivor who was born in Poland at the start of WWII.  In 1941, Eddie landed in New York City where he ultimately retired from a successful career as a salesman at the age of 70. It wasn't until after retirement that Eddie embarked on his new career as an extraordinary artist, painting everyone's world bigger and brighter, far beyond the bottle.

So many were saddened earlier this year when Eddie was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and not given much time to live.  On February 4, 2013, Eddie left this world for the next at the age of 81.

Eddie leaves here with his fans, an adoring family who also cherished him greatly; his wife of 30 years, three daughters, a son, a step-son, a brother, eight grandchildren and two great grandchildren.

Visitation and a memorial service will be held on Tuesday, February 12th at Southcare Cremation & Funeral Society in Alpharetta, Ga. The family will receive friends at 1:00pm with the service beginning at 2:00pm. In lieu of flowers, the family desires that donations be made to the Jewish National Fund for Israel, NYC, N.Y. and the Muscular Dystrophy Association of America.

Eddie will certainly be missed by many in Snellville. His personality and epic life experiences will always live on through his art which will draw you into his indescribable universe of tragedy, recovery, and his ultimate creation of a majestic "bottle-land" filled with the mystique of a magical man, the drama of a million moon-rivers, the energy of seven suns, and laughter destined to live on forever.

And because you became forever mesmerized by the majesty of bottle-land, finding it impossible to choose just one of King Eddie's amazing creations, you take with you a crown full of treasures to share with your own kingdom.

I know I did, and everyday these treasures remind me of how blessed I am to have met this remarkable artist, adored by so many. I wonder what colors of acrylic are on Eddie's fingers right now as he paints the walls of heaven?  I wonder indeed.