“I wish I could make a proclamation for Asheville: If you move here, you have to buy local art,” says Sherry Masters of Art Connections.

“I wish I could make a proclamation for Asheville: If you move here, you have to buy local art,” says Sherry Masters of Art Connections.
The 10th annual American Craft Week takes place Friday, Oct. 4-Sunday, Oct. 13.
During this nationally celebrated event, held Friday, Oct. 5-Wednesday, Oct. 14, studios and galleries throughout the country open their doors to shine a spotlight on handmade craft in all its forms.
American Craft Week goes week beyond the virtual world, offering special exhibitions, gallery openings, demonstrations, workshops, sales, fairs and more.
Five of the 25 winners in the national competition are from Western North Carolina.
Think Asheville deserves a reputation for more than beer? How about its thriving craft arts scene? Voting is under way to establish the Top 10 Towns for Craft Lovers, via an online poll presented by American Craft Week. At the time this is being posted, tiny Seagrove, N.C. (population 228), is in the lead with […]
Join in the celebration: Plan a long weekend of studio-hopping, a self-guided exhibition tour or a visit to a craft fair (or three).
For this year’s American Craft Week, organizers are highlighting emerging artists in Rising Stars, an online exhibition featuring 30 craftspeople under the age of 30. The Asheville Area Arts Council further develop the concept with its Best of WNC: Emerging Craft Artist Showcase.
The 2015 iteration of American Craft Week is held Friday, Oct. 2 to Sunday, Oct. 11, so it’s really a week-plus. That’s a good thing, because with more than 30 Western North Carolina-based craft galleries and organizations involved, it’ll take all 10 days to visit each showroom and explore every exhibit.
American Craft Week actually spans 10 days — from Friday, Oct. 2, to Sunday, Oct. 11 — with participating organizations in every state. Many states, however, only have an event or two. North Carolina boasts 40 entries on the American Craft Week website, and so many of those (34) are based in Western N.C. that the region is just one of three with its own webpage.
Flow Gallery in Marshall, Local Cloth in conjunction with the Asheville ARea Arts Council and the fiber program of Haywood Community College all hold fiber-arts exhibitions during American Craft Week.
Discoveries at Garden Creek, an archeological site near Canton, suggest it served as a home for native craftspeople who produced artifacts for a religious and cultural movement that swept ancient North America nearly 2,000 years ago.
Metalwork is more like problem-solving than artistic expression, says Ian Henderson: “It will do exactly what you want it to: be shaped, melt at known temperatures, harden and soften predictably.” The artist has also explored clay, which he describes as fussy and gestural, but “I loved working with metal as soon as I started, because […]
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; […]