Renowned Alabama artist Frank Fleming died Sunday.

The 77-year-old Marion County native and creator of the Storyteller Fountain in the heart of Birmingham's Southside, died unexpectedly at St. Vincent's Hospital after a brief illness. He was surrounded by family and friends.

Those closest to him said Fleming "loved his family dearly and had many close friends throughout his distinguished art career."

Fleming grew up on a farm in rural Bear Creek during the 1940's and was immersed in nature at a very early age. Having a speech impediment as a child, he chose not to speak until he was about 8-years-old, instead building a close bond with nature, his family said. That unique connection with the natural world remained an important creative force throughout Fleming's art and life.

Upon graduating from the University of North Alabama in Florence, Fleming worked at Boeing/NASA as a technical illustrator before attending graduate school in ceramics at The University of Alabama.

After a trip to San Francisco in 1972 where he was exposed to the work of Robert Arneson, Peter Volkus and Marilyn Levine, Fleming set up his Birmingham studio in 1973. The following year, Fleming had his first one-man show at The Birmingham Museum of Art where he received rave reviews and his work gained the attention of curators from around the country.

He exhibited his works in more than 40 solo exhibitions and more than 100 group exhibitions, as well as lectured and conducted numerous workshops around the country and abroad, inspiring other artists and all those who experienced his artwork.

In 1983, Birmingham art dealer and anthropologist specializing in pre-Columbian art Malcolm McRae was murdered. McRae was known in the Southside community for his home that he transformed into an art gallery by day. He was listed as a missing person for six weeks, until his body was found in the woods of Helena.

McRae's mother, Jane, commissioned Fleming to make a piece of art in Southside in honor of her son. What Mrs. McRae envisioned as a tile rim around the garden in Five Points South quickly transformed, with the help of Cecil Roberts and Mayor Richard Arrington Jr.'s aide Anne Adams, into the Storyteller Fountain. Gerald Wayne Lawley, 31 at the time, was convicted in 1984 of killing McRae.

The final fountain wasn't installed until 1992. There was a grassroots effort to raise money for the fountain. Eventually enough money was raised, and the statues were cast in bronze and then installed in Five Points South. Fleming originally planned for the Storyteller in the fountain to be a lion, representing McRae. He later changed his mind and made the sculpture into a ram.

Much to Fleming's surprise, and disappointment, many in the Birmingham community believed the statues to be satanic or pagan. "It really depressed me... it really did," Fleming said in a 2016 interview with AL.com.

Fleming returned to Birmingham from Huntsville in 2015 and a show at the Birmingham Museum of Art put his work back on the map. A local collector who collected many of Fleming's pieces in the 1970s and 1980s let the museum feature his collection. Fleming enjoyed the show, and even stopped in at the museum's Summer Art Camp to talk with kids who were making their own pieces while admiring his work.

In October, the inaugural Southside Storyteller Festival was announced to be held that month in Birmingham's Five Points South.

Fleming's work was highly individualized - his voice authentic southern. "Fleming was an artistic genius whose love of nature and mankind came alive with his unique talent, whimsical insight, and craftsmanship,'' his family said in a Sunday-night announcement of his death.

Funeral arrangements have not yet been announced.