Smart Bets: Basil King

"Today I go back and forth between painting and writing, on two different floors of my house in Brooklyn," Basil King says on his website. "One feeds the other and in both I bring disparate things together." An immigrant to the U.S. from England, he discovered Black Mountain College at age 16. He went on to work in San Francisco and New York, producing covers and art for poetry books since the late ’50s. In ’85, following "a series of disappointments," King began to write in earnest. The 22 sections of his book, Mirage, follow his life story. The 22-minute film of the same name, created by Nicole Peyrafitte and Miles Joris-Peyrafitte, pays homage to that written work. King takes part in a reading and film screening of both forms of Mirage at Asheville Art Museum. Thursday, Jan. 9, at 6 p.m. Free and open to the public. ashevilleart.org.

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