JIM GRAY

His love of nature and people is evident in his landscapes and portraits. His sculptures of East Tennessee icons Dolly Parton, Alex Haley and Andrew Johnson occupy public places. What the artist can't see, he has imagined in a series of paintings of the cosmos.

And somewhere right now, he actually is hurtling through deep space. In the 1970s, a National Geographic photograph of Gray working in his studio was included among the images of life of Earth placed on the Voyager I and II deep-space probes. So who knows how many fans Jim Gray has that we don't even know about?

Runners-up: Natalie Reagan and Robert Tino