Upcoming events and things to do in Asheville, NC. Below is a list of events for festivals, concerts, art exhibitions, group meetups and more.

Interested in adding an event to our calendar? Please click the green “Post Your Event” button below.

Monday, December 7, 2020
Sand Hill Artists Collective Virtual Holiday Gallery Tours!
Dec 7 @ 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm
Online with The Sand Hill Artists Collective

Ten Asheville area art galleries. A new gallery experience online daily from 5-6 pm each weekday beginning December 2nd through December 15th.

Village Blacksmiths Forging Event
Dec 7 @ 6:00 pm – 10:00 pm
Triskelion Brewing Company

Please join Jason Brown and his daughter Monique Brown to forge a unique hand made item. Jason was a Forged in Fire finalist (Season 5: Episode 40 Irish Ring Pommel Sword). You will receive one pint of beer included with each ticket purchase.

 

Tuesday, December 8, 2020
Call to Artists South Slope Art Project
Dec 8 all-day
Online
Tribute Companies is requesting Artist Qualifications for a permanent art mural(s) for their mixed-use development, The Ironwood, located on Asheland/Coxe Avenue in Downtown Asheville.
This artwork should do the following:
●  Create excitement and interest for the area.
●  Honor the diversity of Asheville’s Southside community.
●  Celebrate the vital role of African American history and culture in Asheville.
●  Connect visually to the site through interpretation of historical and cultural aspects​.
●  Be durable, low maintenance, and appropriate to the location. Integral to creating this artwork(s), is the artists’ willingness to learn about the community and have a dialogue with interested community members to help inspire and guide content creation. A range of materials/applications will be considered, including painted murals and digitally printed murals. If digital, the work must be vector based, printable, and scalable to the site specifications.
Matching Donations Challenge Asheville Art Museum
Dec 8 all-day
Online

The Museum was closed for nearly six full months as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, causing severe losses in revenue. Though we are now open, uncertainty still looms, and it will take a dedicated effort to recover to a position of strength and stability. Thanks to a generous grant from a longtime foundation supporter, the Museum has established the Asheville Art Museum COVID-19 Relief Fund and matching challenge to encourage additional operational support during this difficult year. We invite you to participate in the challenge and help secure the Museum’s future as we work to serve our community through engagement with the arts.

Through December 31, 2020, all Annual Fund donations and upgraded memberships will be matched dollar-for-dollar up to $75,000. Give any amount to the Annual Fund, and boost your impact at this critical time with the one-to-one match. You may also join the Masterpiece Society or renew at another upgraded membership level. Any gift in addition to your current renewal will be matched by this fund and will count toward your membership

Show and Tell Holiday Pop Up Shop
Dec 8 all-day
Online

WELCOME TO OUR ONLINE POP UP SHOP

South Arts Southern Prize + State Fellowships
Dec 8 all-day
Online

Apply by Jan. 11 | Visual artists, applications are now open for the 2021 Southern Prize & State Fellowships. $80,000 in cash awards and residencies at The Hambidge Center for Creative Arts & Sciences will be awarded to celebrate the highest quality artistic work being created in the South.

The Big Crafty Online
Dec 8 all-day
Online

Our weekend.

For the first time in more than a decade, we won’t be sharing hugs with you all, and we’re really missing it.
But we’ll still be admiring the year’s creative harvest and we hope you will, too!
Our artists have responded to the extraordinary circumstances of this year with creative zeal, and we hope you’ll enjoy checking in with them via our list of artists.
We will also be sharing some of our favorite work and gift ideas via Instagram and Facebook this weekend and throughout the holidays.
Treat yourself. Treat your fam. Know that your support is needed and appreciated.
Also…know that next year we will be hugging you extra tight.
Til then, stay well, keep your fires burning, and take extra good care of one another ❉❊❤❊❉

Winter Wonderland at Grove Arcade
Dec 8 @ 8:00 am – 8:00 pm
Grove Arcade

Grove Arcade is thrilled to announce the return of its annual Winter Wonderland holiday celebration.

The Arcade has transformed into a wreath-bedecked showcase for Asheville’s finest local craftspeople and retailers. Smells of pine and holly will greet visitors as they tour—at a proper social distance!—Asheville’s stunning art deco gem to discover one-of-a-kind, handcrafted local gifts, enjoy holiday-themed beverages and dining specials, and winter-y feels within the warm Grove Arcade halls. Specially curated Christmas standards and the most extravagant holiday decorations in town will transport visitors to a truly unforgettable winter paradise.

We will be hosting a local MANNA Food Bank Drive! Drop-off barrels will be placed around several areas of the Arcade to be collected and distributed by MANNA to help during these uncertain times.

For the enjoyment and safety of everyone, Grove Arcade will be taking appropriate COVID-19 precautions during Winter Wonderland. All visitors and employees will be required to follow the CDC’s health recommendations, including social distancing and mask wearing.

Enjoy a safe and jolly visit to Grove Arcade’s Winter Wonderland! And from all of us at Grove Arcade, Happy Holidays!

Black Lives Matter mural t-shirts
Dec 8 @ 9:00 am – 5:00 pm
Asheville Art Museum
This project was in partnership with the Asheville Art Museum and supported by the Asheville Area Arts Council, which joined with the Asheville Symphony in the shared belief that art captures moments in history and is a way for people to create awareness, change, and ultimately, healing.

Black Lives Matter mural t-shirts are now for sale at the Asheville Arts Museum store. The proceeds go towards mural maintenance.

Black Lives Matter T-Shirt

Mel Chin’s Wake Sculpture
Dec 8 @ 9:00 am – 9:00 pm
Downtown Asheville

Wake, Mel Chin’s giant animatronic sculpture, installed in New York City’s Times Square last summer, will be on view in Asheville through March 15, 2021, at 44 Collier Avenue. Chin, a WNC based conceptual artist, was named a MacArthur Fellow in September 2019.

Wake was commissioned as part of Mel Chin: All Over the Place, a multi-site survey of his works from across many decades that took place in several New York City locations. A collaborative group, led by UNC Asheville’s STEAM Studio and The Community Foundation of Western North Carolina, formed to plan and raise funds for the sculpture to be seen locally.

Wake – 60 feet long, 34 feet wide and 24 feet high, conceived and designed by the artist – was engineered, sculpted and fabricated by an interdisciplinary team of UNC Asheville students, faculty, staff and community artists led by Chin. The sculpture is interactive and features decks and places to sit and contemplate.

Wake evokes the hull of a shipwreck crossed with the skeletal remains of a marine mammal. The structure is linked with a carved, 21-foot-tall animatronic sculpture, accurately derived from a figurehead of the opera star Jenny Lind that was once mounted on the 19th century clipper ship, USS Nightingale. Jenny Lind moves subtly as she breathes and scans the sky.

Visitors can experience Wake daily from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. at 44 Collier Avenue. For more details and a schedule of programming, visit ashevillearts.com.

Charting New Waters with Instructor Anja Bartels
Dec 8 @ 10:00 am – 12:30 pm
Odyssey ClayWorks

Tuesdays, 10am – 12:30pm
October 13th – December 8th
No Class November 3rd
Are you curious about expressing yourself through pottery but don’t know where to start? Let Anja take you on a surface design journey in this 8-week hands-on course. We will take a close look at forms and shapes that give us the best canvases to decorate before we dive deep into storytelling through illustrative Sgraffito and Mishima, adding texture with slip to create phantasmagorical creatures, and using lusters and decals to make your creations shine.

Level: Seasoned Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced
Tuition: $310 + $55 Lab Fee

Asheville Art Museum: New Exhibition Question Bridge: Black Males
Dec 8 @ 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
Asheville Art Museum

Beginning October 7, the three-hour documentary-styled art installation Question Bridge: Black Males will be on view at the Asheville Art Museum. This innovative transmedia project facilitates a dialogue between Black men from diverse and contending backgrounds, and creates a platform for them to represent and redefine Black male identity in America. The work will be on view during regular public hours from October 7, 2020 through March 15, 2021.

Question Bridge: Black Males is a project that explores critically challenging issues within the African American male community by instigating a transmedia conversation among Black men across geographic, economic, generational, educational, and social strata of American society. Question Bridge provides a safe setting for necessary, honest expression and healing dialogue on themes that divide, unite, and puzzle Black males today in the United States.

Asheville Gallery of Art December Show 2020
Dec 8 @ 12:00 pm – 5:00 pm
Asheville Gallery of Art

Asheville Gallery of Art’s December show, “#ArtSquared,” is amulti-artist show featuring a variety of original square paintings by gallery members. The show runs December 3-29 during gallery hours, 12-5 p.m. Thursday thru Sunday. You can also make arrangements for a private tour by emailing a request to [email protected].

Clara and Mr. Tiffany: A Novel by Susan Vreeland
Dec 8 @ 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm
Online

Against the unforgettable backdrop of New York near the turn of the 20th century, from the Gilded Age world of formal balls and opera to the immigrant poverty of the Lower East Side, best-selling author Susan Vreeland again breathes life into a work of art in this extraordinary novel, which brings a woman once lost in the shadows into vivid color. It’s 1893, and at the Chicago World’s Fair, Louis Comfort Tiffany makes his debut with a luminous exhibition of innovative stained-glass windows, which he hopes will honor his family business and earn him a place on the international artistic stage. But behind the scenes in his New York studio is the freethinking Clara Driscoll, head of his women’s division. Publicly unrecognized by Tiffany, Clara conceives of and designs nearly all of the iconic leaded-glass lamps for which he is long remembered. Clara struggles with her desire for artistic recognition and the seemingly insurmountable challenges that she faces as a professional woman, which ultimately force her to protest against the company she has worked so hard to cultivate. She also yearns for love and companionship, and is devoted in different ways to five men, including Tiffany, who enforces to a strict policy: he does not hire married women, and any who do marry while under his employ must resign immediately. Eventually, like many women, Clara must decide what makes her happiest—the professional world of her hands or the personal world of her heart.

Moderated by Barbara Pressman, touring docent; presented in conjunction with Intersections in American Art.

Sand Hill Artists Collective Virtual Holiday Gallery Tours!
Dec 8 @ 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm
Online with The Sand Hill Artists Collective

Ten Asheville area art galleries. A new gallery experience online daily from 5-6 pm each weekday beginning December 2nd through December 15th.

Let’s Get Salty!with Instructor Gillan Doty
Dec 8 @ 6:30 pm – 9:00 pm
Odyssey ClayWorks

Tuesdays, 6:30 – 9pm
October 13th – December 8th
No Class November 3rd
Get ready to fire your pottery in our newly built Salt and Soda Kiln! This class will focus on making pots for everyday use to fill your cabinets, dish rack, and dinner table. Hone your skills and artistic pursuits by learning to make more complex cups, plates, bowls, and pitchers. You’ll be astounded by the dynamic surfaces you can achieve by using a variety of slips and Cone 10 glazes. Students will participate in the unforgettable experience of firing our Salt and Soda kiln.

Level: Intermediate
Tuition: $310 plus $55 Lab Fee

The Greene Space: Live from New York
Dec 8 @ 7:00 pm
Online

The Greene Space: Live from New York
In episode eleven of this series, host Adam Hamway shares what a few local musicians, comedians, dancers and animators can do from their apartments on Tuesday, December 8 at 7:00pm ET. Don’t miss performances by New York artists! This program streams on the Greene Space websiteYouTube, and Facebook, and is available for archived viewing.

Wednesday, December 9, 2020
Winter Wonderland at Grove Arcade
Dec 9 @ 8:00 am – 8:00 pm
Grove Arcade

Grove Arcade is thrilled to announce the return of its annual Winter Wonderland holiday celebration.

The Arcade has transformed into a wreath-bedecked showcase for Asheville’s finest local craftspeople and retailers. Smells of pine and holly will greet visitors as they tour—at a proper social distance!—Asheville’s stunning art deco gem to discover one-of-a-kind, handcrafted local gifts, enjoy holiday-themed beverages and dining specials, and winter-y feels within the warm Grove Arcade halls. Specially curated Christmas standards and the most extravagant holiday decorations in town will transport visitors to a truly unforgettable winter paradise.

We will be hosting a local MANNA Food Bank Drive! Drop-off barrels will be placed around several areas of the Arcade to be collected and distributed by MANNA to help during these uncertain times.

For the enjoyment and safety of everyone, Grove Arcade will be taking appropriate COVID-19 precautions during Winter Wonderland. All visitors and employees will be required to follow the CDC’s health recommendations, including social distancing and mask wearing.

Enjoy a safe and jolly visit to Grove Arcade’s Winter Wonderland! And from all of us at Grove Arcade, Happy Holidays!

Black Lives Matter mural t-shirts
Dec 9 @ 9:00 am – 5:00 pm
Asheville Art Museum
This project was in partnership with the Asheville Art Museum and supported by the Asheville Area Arts Council, which joined with the Asheville Symphony in the shared belief that art captures moments in history and is a way for people to create awareness, change, and ultimately, healing.

Black Lives Matter mural t-shirts are now for sale at the Asheville Arts Museum store. The proceeds go towards mural maintenance.

Black Lives Matter T-Shirt

Mel Chin’s Wake Sculpture
Dec 9 @ 9:00 am – 9:00 pm
Downtown Asheville

Wake, Mel Chin’s giant animatronic sculpture, installed in New York City’s Times Square last summer, will be on view in Asheville through March 15, 2021, at 44 Collier Avenue. Chin, a WNC based conceptual artist, was named a MacArthur Fellow in September 2019.

Wake was commissioned as part of Mel Chin: All Over the Place, a multi-site survey of his works from across many decades that took place in several New York City locations. A collaborative group, led by UNC Asheville’s STEAM Studio and The Community Foundation of Western North Carolina, formed to plan and raise funds for the sculpture to be seen locally.

Wake – 60 feet long, 34 feet wide and 24 feet high, conceived and designed by the artist – was engineered, sculpted and fabricated by an interdisciplinary team of UNC Asheville students, faculty, staff and community artists led by Chin. The sculpture is interactive and features decks and places to sit and contemplate.

Wake evokes the hull of a shipwreck crossed with the skeletal remains of a marine mammal. The structure is linked with a carved, 21-foot-tall animatronic sculpture, accurately derived from a figurehead of the opera star Jenny Lind that was once mounted on the 19th century clipper ship, USS Nightingale. Jenny Lind moves subtly as she breathes and scans the sky.

Visitors can experience Wake daily from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. at 44 Collier Avenue. For more details and a schedule of programming, visit ashevillearts.com.

Beginner Sculpture: Personifying Clay Creations with Instructor Mike Zukoski
Dec 9 @ 10:00 am – 12:30 pm
Odyssey ClayWorks

Wednesdays, 10am – 12:30pm
October 14th – December 9th
No Class November 25th

This class will cover the basics of ceramic sculpture. We will use introductory hand-building techniques and sculpt using solid forms, coil, and slab methods. Each student will be encouraged to bring their own ideas and we will work to bring them to life in 3D. Everyone is welcome—from complete beginners to advanced potters who are interested in learning new techniques and methods.

Levels: All Levels
Tuition: $310 +$55 Lab Fee

Andy Warhol: Silver Clouds Exhibit
Dec 9 @ 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
Asheville Art Museum

Andy Warhol: Silver Clouds

Appleby Foundation Exhibition Hall

Andy Warhol’s Silver Clouds create an immersive experience born out of the iconic Pop artist’s interest in innovation and experimentation. Warhol collaborated with Bell Labs engineer Billy Klüver to transform the then-new material Scotchpak into an enlivened and interactive work of art. First shown in April 1966 at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York City, these air- and helium-filled balloons float like pillows through a space which, combined with their metallic surface, garnered the name Silver Clouds. The clouds notably became part of the design and choreography of Merce Cunningham’s RainForest, which premiered in 1968.

To ensure the safety of Museum visitors and staff, Silver Clouds will be presented as a touch-free experience. Visitors are encouraged to view the work from a distance as the balloons, moved by gentle air currents, drift about the space while imagining the presence of Cunningham’s dancers. A video recording of RainForest in its entirety may be viewed in Reverberations: Exploring Movement in the Collection.

Asheville Art Museum: New Exhibition Question Bridge: Black Males
Dec 9 @ 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
Asheville Art Museum

Beginning October 7, the three-hour documentary-styled art installation Question Bridge: Black Males will be on view at the Asheville Art Museum. This innovative transmedia project facilitates a dialogue between Black men from diverse and contending backgrounds, and creates a platform for them to represent and redefine Black male identity in America. The work will be on view during regular public hours from October 7, 2020 through March 15, 2021.

Question Bridge: Black Males is a project that explores critically challenging issues within the African American male community by instigating a transmedia conversation among Black men across geographic, economic, generational, educational, and social strata of American society. Question Bridge provides a safe setting for necessary, honest expression and healing dialogue on themes that divide, unite, and puzzle Black males today in the United States.

Dancing Atoms Barbara Morgan Photographs
Dec 9 @ 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
Asheville Art Museum

Dancing Atoms

Barbara Morgan Photographs

Martha Graham: Frontier

Appleby Foundation Exhibition Hall

Barbara Morgan, a founding member of the Aperture Foundation, earned a reputation as a Modernist. Much of her work involves dance, photomontage, and a desire to capture motion. She often would design her images so that the figure was shown against neutral or blank backgrounds that heightened the energy of the motion.  As proven in Morgan’s photographs, the exploration of movement is a theme that countless photographers have been drawn to in the past.  Capturing the beauty and effort of kinetic energy on film takes not only a keen photographic eye, but, more importantly, an understanding of the science that creates such action. Morgan was one such photographer.  Her legacy of observing life in relation to “dancing atoms” is forever preserved on film and on paper, providing a glimpse into her world of photography, painting, light, and modern dance.

This exhibition is organized by the Syracuse University Art Galleries.

Fantastical Forms: Ceramics as Sculpture Asheville Art Museum
Dec 9 @ 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
Asheville Art Museum
Left: Virginia Scotchie, Object Maker Series, 2020, glazed stoneware. Asheville Art Museum. © Virginia Scotchie. Right: Jane Palmer, Untitled, circa 1990, glazed stoneware, 41 × 14 ¼ × 21 ½ inches. Asheville Art Museum. © Estate of Jane Palmer.

The Asheville Art Museum presents Fantastical Forms: Ceramics as Sculpture on view at the Museum November 4, 2020 through April 5, 2021. The 25 works in this exhibition—curated by associate curator Whitney Richardson—highlight the Museum’s Collection of sculptural ceramics from the last two decades of the 20th century to the present. Each work illustrates the artist’s ability to push beyond the utilitarian and transition ceramics into the world of sculpture.

North and South Carolina artists featured include Elma McBride Johnson, Neil Noland, Norm Schulman, Virginia Scotchie, Cynthia Bringle, Jane Palmer, Michael Sherrill, and Akira Satake. Works by American artists Don Reitz, Robert Chapman Turner, Karen Karnes, Toshiko Takaezu, Bill Griffith, and Xavier Toubes are also featured in the exhibition.

Reverberations Exploring Movement in the Collection Art Exhibit
Dec 9 @ 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
Asheville Art Museum

Marianne Preger-Simon, Portrait of Merce Cunningham, 1953, ink on paper, 11 ⅜ × 10 inches. Black Mountain College Collection, gift of the Artist, 2009.17.12.41. © Marianne Preger-Simon

Reverberations

Exploring Movement in the Collection

Appleby Foundation Exhibition Hall

Movement in static mediums such as painting, drawing, and photography is difficult to express, yet many artists feel called to explore it. Movement serves as an impetus for creation—to either capture it or create it in entirely different mediums. The works here, selected from the Asheville Art Museum’s Collection, highlight additional approaches to rendering a lasting imprint of the ephemeral. Artists such as Walter Iooss and Blythe Bohnen are concerned with the motion of the human form, evoking a sense of elongated or contracted muscles, of limbs moving through space. Others, like Robyn Horn and Bernar Venet, approach the challenge through abstraction, foregoing representation yet communicating an atmosphere of dynamic change. Marianne Preger-Simon’s drawings of her fellow dancers at Black Mountain College in the summer of 1953 are not only portraits but also a dance of pencil on paper, created in the spirit of artist Josef Albers’s line studies as she simultaneously worked with choreographer Merce Cunningham. Each of these artists ultimately reflects on the time-based ephemeral nature of movement.

Asheville Gallery of Art December Show 2020
Dec 9 @ 12:00 pm – 5:00 pm
Asheville Gallery of Art

Asheville Gallery of Art’s December show, “#ArtSquared,” is amulti-artist show featuring a variety of original square paintings by gallery members. The show runs December 3-29 during gallery hours, 12-5 p.m. Thursday thru Sunday. You can also make arrangements for a private tour by emailing a request to [email protected].

Sand Hill Artists Collective Virtual Holiday Gallery Tours!
Dec 9 @ 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm
Online with The Sand Hill Artists Collective

Ten Asheville area art galleries. A new gallery experience online daily from 5-6 pm each weekday beginning December 2nd through December 15th.

From Line to Form with Instructor Allison Cochran
Dec 9 @ 6:30 pm – 9:00 pm
Odyssey ClayWorks

Wednesdays, 6:30 – 9pm
October 14th – December 9th
No Class November 25th

Join Allie for an exploration of design methods that can enhance your creative process. In this class we will use drawing as a means for pattern making, translating lines and shapes into 3-d ceramic forms. Drawing shapes provides a quick way to explore new ideas. Students will apply these methods to make sets, coils, slabs, tiles, or working reductively with clay.

Levels: All Levels
Tuition: $310 + $55 Lab Fee

Law of Attraction Discussion Group — Visualization exercises in LOA
Dec 9 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm
Online
Law of Attraction (LOA) is a powerful guideline that can be utilized within our lives, and impacts ourselves as well as the collective consciousness. Let’s discuss practical, everyday ways we use and apply these tools in 2020! This session’s discussion will be, “Visualization exercises in LOA.” No advance prep, reading or knowledge required. Come with an open mind and heart, free of judgement, and let’s learn together! This is an inclusive, informal, interactive discussion for people will all levels of LOA understanding.

Some other topics we will cover in future discussions include:
– How to utilize LOA to manifest best case scenarios
– Gratitude practices as a tool in manifestation
– Honoring your own feelings, emotions and well being (and others) as a form of self care while manifesting
– Staying grounded, avoiding toxic positivity and spiritual bypassing when manifesting
– Visualization exercises in LOA
– Manifesting on specific themes (love, money, good health, etc.)

Discussions will be held by Kathryn Brahaney, myself. I’ve utilized Law of Attraction in having a significantly better recovery than anticipated from two major car accidents, in receiving a job offer that allowed me to relocate to Asheville, NC (where I live now) and in finding my favorite apartment to date in a city I wasn’t sure would be in my budget. I started these discussions to share my experience using Law of Attraction and to provide opportunities to learn more that are accessible and affordable. Looking forward to sharing more with you all and chatting about how we can use LOA in navigating the rest of 2020 and beyond!