At the turn of the last century, the space situated three stories above 52 Broadway was a meat freezer. Now, a quick walk up two flights of creaky wooden stairs leads to The Asheville Loft, downtown’s newest art gallery. That gallery is actually the common room and occasional studio space for owners and residents David […]
After years of city planning and public forums, another year of designing, sculpting and painting and a month-and-a-half of installation, Daydreamer, Asheville’s newest piece of public art, is finished. Asheville muralists Alex Irvine and Ian Wilkinson took down their scaffolding on Wednesday, Nov. 5, revealing the first unobstructed view of the new work. Daydreamer, formerly […]
For 41 years, photographer Rob Amberg has kept an acute documentary eye on Madison County. With his camera, he’s created an insightful, ongoing narrative that’s familiar yet analytical of every back road, kitchen and front porch in a bucolic landscape. Amberg’s intimate and personal views of the county’s residents have long been among his most […]
The Syrian Civil War has left nearly 200,000 dead and 9 million displaced since it began in March 2011. Of those displaced, roughly 3 million have fled the country, settling in camps resting, in some cases, mere yards from the Syrian border. It’s these camps that are the focus of (DIS)PLACED:Life As A Tent City Refugee, an […]
A four-person crew containing some of Asheville’s most notable muralists and painters recently took to the walls of Cullowhee. But those artists — Gus Cutty, Hannah Dansie, Alli Good and Ian Wilkinson — haven’t scaled the exteriors of Cullowhee’s restaurants, overpasses or collegiate edifices, as one might expect.
Art and literature unite for the sake of the French Broad River on Thursday, Oct. 23, in Of Time And The River. The ticketed art exhibition is a benefit for RiverLink. This event takes place at Sol’s Reprieve (11 Richland St.), a multiuse meeting space and spiritual arts center located on the west side of […]
Asheville probably has more public sculpture than most cities of similar size — a direct result of the region’s rich arts-and-crafts heritage. For starters, there’s Passage, Albert Paley’s abstract steel sculpture at the Veach-Baley Federal Complex on Patton Avenue; Dirck Cruser’s Energy Loop, the first city-purchased sculpture, which sits across the street from City-County Plaza; […]
This is the final week of viewing for a small self-titled exhib by Penland-based ceramicist and sculptor Cristina Córdova. The show, on view through Saturday, Sept. 27, at Blue Spiral 1, marks the artist’s first exhibition in downtown Asheville in nearly eight years. Córdova’s work occupies only three small walls in the back of the […]
The Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center announced on Tuesday afternoon, Sept 2, that it has received a $646,685 grant from the Windgate Charitable Foundation. The award places the 20-year-old nonprofit museum among a growing list of Western North Carolina art-and-craft institutions that have received funding from the Siloam Springs, Ark.-based organization.
It’s been 12 years since the art world first heard about Boykin, Ala. — better known as Gee’s Bend. This small, unincorporated community tucked deep within a river bend is home to the Gee’s Bend Quilters Collective, a multigenerational group of African-American women made famous by the Houston Museum of Fine Arts’ 2002 show The […]
The Asheville Area Arts Council has momentarily put its “Point Of View” curatorial series, which would have been the organization’s inaugural opening, on hold. It will instead premier in the final week of September in the AAAC’s new space in the Grove Arcade. In it’s place is Camped Out On Greasy Grass: A Series of […]
Cartier-Bresson, Kertész, Cunningham, Friedlander, Hugnet, Mann — together, these names read like a checklist from a MoMA photography exhibition. They just so happen to be among the more than two dozen artists featured in MERGE, on view through September at Asheville’s Castell Photography.
Time is of the essence for two current solo exhibitions. Dox Trash, An American Journey: Georgia to Philadelphia, organized by the Dolan/Maxwell Gallery and Georgia College Museum of Art is at the Asheville Art Museum; Twenty Years Progress, new works by local artist Tom Pazderka, is at Pink Dog Creative. Each sets the stage for […]
The Asheville Area Arts Council is moving: Friday, Aug. 1, marks opening day for the 62-year-old nonprofit organization in suites 144 and 143-A of the Grove Arcade. The new location marks the organization’s return to downtown Asheville after a three-year stint in the River Arts District’s Pink Dog Creative building. The move also follows a […]
An 11th-hour effort to stave off a city order mandating that nearly two dozen artists vacate a cluster of River Arts District buildings came to an end on Wednesday afternoon, July 16, when city officials made final their decision and declined to issue a temporary certificate of occupancy. The mandate affects a city-sponsored art project and New […]
Southern Appalachia can thank any number of movies and TV shows for flagrantly misconstruing us as a bunch of lawless, illiterate hicks and hillbillies. Such characters have softened and intoxicated our sheriffs, put moonshine stills in all of our kitchens and rendered snakes as common as hymnals in our churches. And docudramas such as Moonshiners […]
Between 1502 and the mid-1860s, more than 15 million people were placed in chains and loaded onto boats that sailed from West African shores to Brazilian ports, Caribbean sugar plantations and American cities like Wilmington, N.C., Mobile, Ala. and Charleston, S.C. There, the 12 million or so who survived the monthslong Middle Passage, shackled and […]
The word “fame” is painted directly on the wall beside the Satellite Gallery’s entrance in 12-foot-tall letters. It’s written in the wispy Coca-Cola script, but in a gluttonous and vibrating pinkish orange rather than the patented cherry red color, and it introduces The Fame Game, a new collaborative exhibition by Asheville artists Yamabushi and Ishmael. The show […]
Stepping away from your artwork is by all means a healthy practice. Likewise, getting entirely outside of that artistic comfort zone can unleash an even greater wealth of perspective-changing insight. And occasionally that leads you back to a better-informed and more refined starting point. Blip, the newest collection of oil works by Asheville painter Jeremy […]
Instant Photography: 2003-2014 It’s hard to believe that Polaroid film could completely disappear. There always seems to be someone willing to step in and provide a financial crutch, or two for that matter. (I’ve personally lost count of how many resuscitations the company has had since debuting its instant self-developing film in 1947.) But whatever […]
Death and taxes — they’re life’s only two constants. Or so they’ve been called by the likes of Ben Franklin, Daniel Defoe and Dorothy Parker. But while you can avoid your taxes (at risk of a hefty prison sentence) the former is still, and always will be, wholly inescapable. It’s a cold fact that can either […]
