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, September 23, 2024
Monday Night Dance: Community contra dance
Sep 23 @ 8:15 pm – 10:30 pm
St. George's Center for Art and Spirit

Welcome to our weekly community contra dance in West Asheville!  The Monday Night Dance has been around for decades, and we are carrying the torch forward! We are a loving, kind, and safe dance community and highly encourage masking during the dance. No derogatory comments in relation to masking will be tolerated! We encourage non-maskers to mask while partnering with a dancer wearing a mask, or to at least ask if the person would like them to mask while they dance with them.

Practicalities

Time: Contra dancing 8:15–10:30pm, with a beginner lesson starting at 7:45 and a waltz session ending the evening.

Location: St. George’s Center for Art and Spirit, 1 School Rd., Asheville, NC 28806

Cost: $12–$45 sliding scale, CASH ONLY. Please pay as much as you can afford to cover the cost of the wonderful live music, the caller, sound person, rent, and other expenses! ATMs are available at banks on Patton Ave., as well as cash back options at local gas stations and grocery stores.

Requirements: Face masks and sign-in agreeing to the dance’s Safety Guidelines.

Please enter through the front red doors to the sanctuary. Extra parking available in the lots between Moore’s Foot and Ankle and St. George’s (please avoid parking in front of their practice.) This is a scent-free dance. Please bring your own water and water bottle. Beginners are encouraged to attend! Beginner-friendly dances start the contra dancing in lieu of a lesson.

Community Focus

The Monday Night Dance is more than just a dance; the community is deeply rooted. Folks are welcome to sell their wares, like jewelry, dance shoes, dance clothes, pottery, etc. They are also welcome to leave business cards and help wanted or work needed ads. Additionally, the Take Some Leave Some Closet is a new feature of the MND. You can take any clothes, food, produce, feminine products or first aid supplies that we have, and as you are able you can also leave some to replenish. Private times to receive from the closet can also be arranged during the week depending on to the dance organizer’s availability.

Safety

We emphasize safety here at the MND. Mask wearing is strongly encouraged, and courtesy to those choosing to mask is required. No discrimination to those wearing masks will be tolerated! In addition, this is a family and LGBTQ-friendly dance and a safe event for ALL races, ethnicities, genders, ages, shapes, and sizes. Accordingly, no discrimination, inappropriate sexually predatory behavior, racist or discriminatory comments, bullying, or verbal or physical abuse of ANY kind will be tolerated. See our Safety Guidelines for more info.

Volunteers and Donations

Ours is a dance built on volunteerism, and we need your help to survive! Please consider volunteering or becoming a patron by giving a monetary gift. Opening, door and closing help are some of the volunteer jobs available. Those completing their entire shift dance free! Email [email protected] for more info and to sign up. 

Finally, please follow, like and join us on Facebook!

Thanks so much and see you on the dance floor!

Tuesday, September 24, 2024
Arts Discounts Page
Sep 24 all-day
online w/ ArtsAVL
The Art League of Henderson County announces: “Red, White and Blue”
Sep 24 @ 9:00 am
Henderson County Library

Artists are invited to create artworks with the theme of “Red, White and Blue.“  Apply these patriotic colors at the center of your subjects, however there are no limits to your creativity, your artworks don’t need to be primarily patriotic theme, but viewers should be able to spot the use of recognizable amount of red, white and blue colors.

Max Adrian: RIPSTOP
Sep 24 @ 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
Center for Craft
The Center for Craft is thrilled to announce the opening of Max Adrian: RIPSTOP. Adrian (he/they), a textile artist who was awarded a Windgate-Lamar Fellowship by the Center in 2015 and a Career Advancement Fellowship in 2022, will bring the playful, experiential, and provocative solo exhibition of textiles and inflatable sculptures to the Bresler Family Gallery beginning July 26, 2024 through March 29, 2025.

Pieces made from nylon fabric ripstop, which keeps tears from spreading, invite viewers into created, fantastical worlds, only to highlight the complex—even impossible—architectures of their construction. Before the pandemic, Adrian primarily focused on personal experiences and interrogations of queerness, identity, and sexuality. Since then, the work has zoomed out in its scope, still centering identity but placed in larger infrastructure and surveillance systems that mediate, manipulate, and control desire.

Adrian counts queer fiber art, BDSM and kink culture, theatre, camp horror, puppetry, and drag among his many influences. Works in RIPSTOP, like the modernist bounce house sculpture A Fallible Complex (2021), evoke spaces for play, beckoning visitors in through their alluring aesthetic and then blocking their entrance or revealing structural instabilities, like missing floors. Others, like The Sensational Inflatable Furry Divines (2017-19), use sensual materials, like faux fur, spandex, and pleather, which connect to theatrical performance and counterculture. The materials “play on people’s initial associations and serve as a gateway into greater conversations about identity construction, performance, desire, and technology,” he shares.Pieces also nod to the history of quilting, including the AIDS Memorial Quilt, another influence on Adrian’s work. “Even when pieces aren’t explicitly making quilt references, I want the history of quilting and sewing-based craft to be part of the conversation of the work,” he says. “Craft is so much about the processes and histories behind materials. It’s about connecting with communities of people who practice those techniques. It’s about material and technique being a doorway into a greater relationship with an object.”

Themes of transformation—of structures, identities, and bodies—run throughout the show. “What I love about drag and puppetry is the sense of transformation and play, specifically with bodies,” Adrian says. “Within these art forms, a body can become mutable and capable of performing and becoming in unexpected states.” The sculptures also transform throughout viewers’ experiences, going through stages of inflation and deflation and existing in many different states.

RIPSTOP’s constant interplay between surface and depth, assumption and reality, are all a part of what Adrian describes as “looking behind the curtain,” which they trace back to the theatre. “When I’m thinking about systems, and the systems desire fits into, I’m thinking of stage construction, the backstage, the things that go on behind the show, and performance of our desires,” they explain.

As a craft artist, Adrian’s philosophy “comes down to having an intentional relationship with material, process, and technique,” he says. “Those aspects of art making are just as – if not more – important than an intellectualized concept being illustrated by an artwork.”

“Broadened definitions of craft that highlight communities of practice are foundational for the Center for Craft’s new strategic direction,” explains Executive Director Stephanie Moore. “Max Adrian’s work in RIPSTOP exemplifies the expansive and meaningful forms craft can take.” The Center for Craft is an institution Adrian credits for their professional growth. “The Center for Craft has felt like such a supporting institution for me specifically and for so many other craft artists I know,” they note. “To be able to bring this amount of work to Asheville is pretty cool.”

See Max Adrian: RIPSTOP at the Center for Craft Beginning July 26. A reception will be held on August 15. RIPSTOP is organized by Houston Center for Contemporary Craft and curated by Sarah Darro.

# # #
ABOUT CENTER FOR CRAFT Founded in 1996, the Center for Craft’s mission is to resource, catalyze, and amplify how and why craft matters. As a 501(c)3 national nonprofit that increases access to craft by empowering and resourcing artists, organizations, and communities through grants, fellowships and programs that bring people together. The Center is widely acknowledged as one of the most influential organizations working on behalf of craft in the United States. For more information, visit www.centerforcraft.org.
Wednesday, September 25, 2024
The Art League of Henderson County announces: “Red, White and Blue”
Sep 25 @ 9:00 am
Henderson County Library

Artists are invited to create artworks with the theme of “Red, White and Blue.“  Apply these patriotic colors at the center of your subjects, however there are no limits to your creativity, your artworks don’t need to be primarily patriotic theme, but viewers should be able to spot the use of recognizable amount of red, white and blue colors.

Max Adrian: RIPSTOP
Sep 25 @ 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
Center for Craft
The Center for Craft is thrilled to announce the opening of Max Adrian: RIPSTOP. Adrian (he/they), a textile artist who was awarded a Windgate-Lamar Fellowship by the Center in 2015 and a Career Advancement Fellowship in 2022, will bring the playful, experiential, and provocative solo exhibition of textiles and inflatable sculptures to the Bresler Family Gallery beginning July 26, 2024 through March 29, 2025.

Pieces made from nylon fabric ripstop, which keeps tears from spreading, invite viewers into created, fantastical worlds, only to highlight the complex—even impossible—architectures of their construction. Before the pandemic, Adrian primarily focused on personal experiences and interrogations of queerness, identity, and sexuality. Since then, the work has zoomed out in its scope, still centering identity but placed in larger infrastructure and surveillance systems that mediate, manipulate, and control desire.

Adrian counts queer fiber art, BDSM and kink culture, theatre, camp horror, puppetry, and drag among his many influences. Works in RIPSTOP, like the modernist bounce house sculpture A Fallible Complex (2021), evoke spaces for play, beckoning visitors in through their alluring aesthetic and then blocking their entrance or revealing structural instabilities, like missing floors. Others, like The Sensational Inflatable Furry Divines (2017-19), use sensual materials, like faux fur, spandex, and pleather, which connect to theatrical performance and counterculture. The materials “play on people’s initial associations and serve as a gateway into greater conversations about identity construction, performance, desire, and technology,” he shares.Pieces also nod to the history of quilting, including the AIDS Memorial Quilt, another influence on Adrian’s work. “Even when pieces aren’t explicitly making quilt references, I want the history of quilting and sewing-based craft to be part of the conversation of the work,” he says. “Craft is so much about the processes and histories behind materials. It’s about connecting with communities of people who practice those techniques. It’s about material and technique being a doorway into a greater relationship with an object.”

Themes of transformation—of structures, identities, and bodies—run throughout the show. “What I love about drag and puppetry is the sense of transformation and play, specifically with bodies,” Adrian says. “Within these art forms, a body can become mutable and capable of performing and becoming in unexpected states.” The sculptures also transform throughout viewers’ experiences, going through stages of inflation and deflation and existing in many different states.

RIPSTOP’s constant interplay between surface and depth, assumption and reality, are all a part of what Adrian describes as “looking behind the curtain,” which they trace back to the theatre. “When I’m thinking about systems, and the systems desire fits into, I’m thinking of stage construction, the backstage, the things that go on behind the show, and performance of our desires,” they explain.

As a craft artist, Adrian’s philosophy “comes down to having an intentional relationship with material, process, and technique,” he says. “Those aspects of art making are just as – if not more – important than an intellectualized concept being illustrated by an artwork.”

“Broadened definitions of craft that highlight communities of practice are foundational for the Center for Craft’s new strategic direction,” explains Executive Director Stephanie Moore. “Max Adrian’s work in RIPSTOP exemplifies the expansive and meaningful forms craft can take.” The Center for Craft is an institution Adrian credits for their professional growth. “The Center for Craft has felt like such a supporting institution for me specifically and for so many other craft artists I know,” they note. “To be able to bring this amount of work to Asheville is pretty cool.”

See Max Adrian: RIPSTOP at the Center for Craft Beginning July 26. A reception will be held on August 15. RIPSTOP is organized by Houston Center for Contemporary Craft and curated by Sarah Darro.

# # #
ABOUT CENTER FOR CRAFT Founded in 1996, the Center for Craft’s mission is to resource, catalyze, and amplify how and why craft matters. As a 501(c)3 national nonprofit that increases access to craft by empowering and resourcing artists, organizations, and communities through grants, fellowships and programs that bring people together. The Center is widely acknowledged as one of the most influential organizations working on behalf of craft in the United States. For more information, visit www.centerforcraft.org.
Honoring Nature: Early Southern Appalachian Landscape Painting
Sep 25 @ 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
Asheville Art Museum

In the early 1900s, travel by train and automobile became more accessible in the United States, leading to an increase in tourism and a revitalized interest in landscape painting. The relative ease of transportation, as well as the creation of National Parks, allowed people to experience the breathtaking landscapes of the United States in new ways. Artists traveled along popular routes, recording the terrain they encountered.

This exhibition explores the sublime natural landscapes of the Smokey Mountains of Western North Carolina and Tennessee. While there were several regional schools of painting around this time, this group is largely from the Midwest and many of the artists trained at the Art Institute of Chicago or in New York City. Through their travels, they captured waterfalls, sunsets, thunderstorms, autumn foliage, lush green summers, and snow-covered mountains—elements that were novel for viewers from cities and rural areas. Though some of these paintings include people, they are usually used for scale and painted with little to no detail, highlighting the magnificence of nature.

Rudolph F. Ingerle, Mirrored Mountain, not dated, oil on canvas, 28 × 32 inches. Courtesy of Allen & Barry Huffman, Asheville Art Museum.

Thursday, September 26, 2024
Arts Discounts Page
Sep 26 all-day
online w/ ArtsAVL
40th Annual Asheville Quilt Show – Celebrating Our Ruby Jubilee
Sep 26 @ 9:00 am – 4:00 pm
WNC Agricultural Center - Davis Event Center

Featuring over 300 beautiful quilts made by national, regional and local quilter makers, the Asheville Quilt Guild will showcase this unique Appalachian craft Thursday and Friday, September 26 and 27 from 9am-5pm and Saturday, September 28 from 9am-4pm. Fulfilling its mission to preserve and advance the tradition and art of quilting. The Quilt Show will give visitors the opportunity to get an up-close look at how quilters have creatively transformed fabrics and threads into works of art and admire the prize winning- works selected by professional quilt judges in an array of quilting styles and designs.

In addition, visitors can:
Attend free demonstrations of quilting techniques and new quilting products/machines
View Special Exhibits such as quilts by Mountain Art Quilters on the theme of “Reflections: Connecting to Nature” and special Ruby Anniversary Quilts made by Guild members
Peruse the Gift Shop and Gallery brimming with handcrafted quilted items to enhance their homes
Shop for the latest quilting and sewing products being sold by 27 regional vendors
Get a real bargain for gently used sewing/quilting supplies, fabrics and books/patterns at the What’s Old Is New booth
Take a $1 chance to win the exciting Opportunity Quilt made by the PhD (Projects Half Done) Bee
Enjoy the odds at the Product Raffle that gives away prizes donated by sponsors and vendors many times each day

To encourage the next generation of quilters the Guild offers a Kids Sewing Area where children from 4-12 years old create their own sewn projects to take home with them.

Held at the WNC Agricultural Center, Davis Event Center, 765 Boylston Hwy, Fletcher, NC 28732, the Quilt Show offers ample free parking and a cafeteria offering lunch and snacks. Groups of 10 or more people get a discount off the $10 admission price by contacting NancyLynn at [email protected] prior to the show.

Made possible by generous support from sponsors, including Moda Fabrics, Explore Asheville, and Aurifil Threads, the Quilt Show will award $12,000 in prize money to the winners. This elevates the show beyond what most quilt shows of 300+ quilts, 350 members and 3,000 visitors are able to offer. Further enhancing the show is the cadre of guild members who volunteer to help set up, operate and take down the show. Asheville Quilt Guild has helped develop and maintain Asheville’s reputation as a city known for its breadth and excellence in artistic and cultural achievements and welcomes visitors to explore this exciting Quilt Show.

The Art League of Henderson County announces: “Red, White and Blue”
Sep 26 @ 9:00 am
Henderson County Library

Artists are invited to create artworks with the theme of “Red, White and Blue.“  Apply these patriotic colors at the center of your subjects, however there are no limits to your creativity, your artworks don’t need to be primarily patriotic theme, but viewers should be able to spot the use of recognizable amount of red, white and blue colors.

Max Adrian: RIPSTOP
Sep 26 @ 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
Center for Craft
The Center for Craft is thrilled to announce the opening of Max Adrian: RIPSTOP. Adrian (he/they), a textile artist who was awarded a Windgate-Lamar Fellowship by the Center in 2015 and a Career Advancement Fellowship in 2022, will bring the playful, experiential, and provocative solo exhibition of textiles and inflatable sculptures to the Bresler Family Gallery beginning July 26, 2024 through March 29, 2025.

Pieces made from nylon fabric ripstop, which keeps tears from spreading, invite viewers into created, fantastical worlds, only to highlight the complex—even impossible—architectures of their construction. Before the pandemic, Adrian primarily focused on personal experiences and interrogations of queerness, identity, and sexuality. Since then, the work has zoomed out in its scope, still centering identity but placed in larger infrastructure and surveillance systems that mediate, manipulate, and control desire.

Adrian counts queer fiber art, BDSM and kink culture, theatre, camp horror, puppetry, and drag among his many influences. Works in RIPSTOP, like the modernist bounce house sculpture A Fallible Complex (2021), evoke spaces for play, beckoning visitors in through their alluring aesthetic and then blocking their entrance or revealing structural instabilities, like missing floors. Others, like The Sensational Inflatable Furry Divines (2017-19), use sensual materials, like faux fur, spandex, and pleather, which connect to theatrical performance and counterculture. The materials “play on people’s initial associations and serve as a gateway into greater conversations about identity construction, performance, desire, and technology,” he shares.Pieces also nod to the history of quilting, including the AIDS Memorial Quilt, another influence on Adrian’s work. “Even when pieces aren’t explicitly making quilt references, I want the history of quilting and sewing-based craft to be part of the conversation of the work,” he says. “Craft is so much about the processes and histories behind materials. It’s about connecting with communities of people who practice those techniques. It’s about material and technique being a doorway into a greater relationship with an object.”

Themes of transformation—of structures, identities, and bodies—run throughout the show. “What I love about drag and puppetry is the sense of transformation and play, specifically with bodies,” Adrian says. “Within these art forms, a body can become mutable and capable of performing and becoming in unexpected states.” The sculptures also transform throughout viewers’ experiences, going through stages of inflation and deflation and existing in many different states.

RIPSTOP’s constant interplay between surface and depth, assumption and reality, are all a part of what Adrian describes as “looking behind the curtain,” which they trace back to the theatre. “When I’m thinking about systems, and the systems desire fits into, I’m thinking of stage construction, the backstage, the things that go on behind the show, and performance of our desires,” they explain.

As a craft artist, Adrian’s philosophy “comes down to having an intentional relationship with material, process, and technique,” he says. “Those aspects of art making are just as – if not more – important than an intellectualized concept being illustrated by an artwork.”

“Broadened definitions of craft that highlight communities of practice are foundational for the Center for Craft’s new strategic direction,” explains Executive Director Stephanie Moore. “Max Adrian’s work in RIPSTOP exemplifies the expansive and meaningful forms craft can take.” The Center for Craft is an institution Adrian credits for their professional growth. “The Center for Craft has felt like such a supporting institution for me specifically and for so many other craft artists I know,” they note. “To be able to bring this amount of work to Asheville is pretty cool.”

See Max Adrian: RIPSTOP at the Center for Craft Beginning July 26. A reception will be held on August 15. RIPSTOP is organized by Houston Center for Contemporary Craft and curated by Sarah Darro.

# # #
ABOUT CENTER FOR CRAFT Founded in 1996, the Center for Craft’s mission is to resource, catalyze, and amplify how and why craft matters. As a 501(c)3 national nonprofit that increases access to craft by empowering and resourcing artists, organizations, and communities through grants, fellowships and programs that bring people together. The Center is widely acknowledged as one of the most influential organizations working on behalf of craft in the United States. For more information, visit www.centerforcraft.org.
Honoring Nature: Early Southern Appalachian Landscape Painting
Sep 26 @ 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
Asheville Art Museum

In the early 1900s, travel by train and automobile became more accessible in the United States, leading to an increase in tourism and a revitalized interest in landscape painting. The relative ease of transportation, as well as the creation of National Parks, allowed people to experience the breathtaking landscapes of the United States in new ways. Artists traveled along popular routes, recording the terrain they encountered.

This exhibition explores the sublime natural landscapes of the Smokey Mountains of Western North Carolina and Tennessee. While there were several regional schools of painting around this time, this group is largely from the Midwest and many of the artists trained at the Art Institute of Chicago or in New York City. Through their travels, they captured waterfalls, sunsets, thunderstorms, autumn foliage, lush green summers, and snow-covered mountains—elements that were novel for viewers from cities and rural areas. Though some of these paintings include people, they are usually used for scale and painted with little to no detail, highlighting the magnificence of nature.

Rudolph F. Ingerle, Mirrored Mountain, not dated, oil on canvas, 28 × 32 inches. Courtesy of Allen & Barry Huffman, Asheville Art Museum.

City Dance
Sep 26 @ 7:30 pm
Landmark Hal

Beginner’s workshop lesson at 7:30 P.M., then 8-11 P.M. Contra Dance with Country Waltzing at the break and the final dance. This is a partner dance but it’s not necessary to come with a partner. We have different live bands and callers.

Old Farmer’s Ball Thursday Dance
Sep 26 @ 8:00 pm – 11:00 pm
Bryson Gym Warren Wilson College

Our Thursday Dance

This dance is fragrance-free (no perfume, cologne, strong deodorant, etc.), out of respect for those with sensitivities.

Schedule

  • Every Thursday night (except as indicated on the calendar)
  • Beginner lesson at 7:30 pm (advanced dancers are welcome to help out during the lesson!)
  • Dance 8 pm – 11 pm

Cost

  • Non-members: $12
  • OFB Members: $10
  • Warren Wilson community: $1

If this is your first time dancing with us, your second dance is free!

Friday, September 27, 2024
Arts Discounts Page
Sep 27 all-day
online w/ ArtsAVL
40th Annual Asheville Quilt Show – Celebrating Our Ruby Jubilee
Sep 27 @ 9:00 am – 4:00 pm
WNC Agricultural Center - Davis Event Center

Featuring over 300 beautiful quilts made by national, regional and local quilter makers, the Asheville Quilt Guild will showcase this unique Appalachian craft Thursday and Friday, September 26 and 27 from 9am-5pm and Saturday, September 28 from 9am-4pm. Fulfilling its mission to preserve and advance the tradition and art of quilting. The Quilt Show will give visitors the opportunity to get an up-close look at how quilters have creatively transformed fabrics and threads into works of art and admire the prize winning- works selected by professional quilt judges in an array of quilting styles and designs.

In addition, visitors can:
Attend free demonstrations of quilting techniques and new quilting products/machines
View Special Exhibits such as quilts by Mountain Art Quilters on the theme of “Reflections: Connecting to Nature” and special Ruby Anniversary Quilts made by Guild members
Peruse the Gift Shop and Gallery brimming with handcrafted quilted items to enhance their homes
Shop for the latest quilting and sewing products being sold by 27 regional vendors
Get a real bargain for gently used sewing/quilting supplies, fabrics and books/patterns at the What’s Old Is New booth
Take a $1 chance to win the exciting Opportunity Quilt made by the PhD (Projects Half Done) Bee
Enjoy the odds at the Product Raffle that gives away prizes donated by sponsors and vendors many times each day

To encourage the next generation of quilters the Guild offers a Kids Sewing Area where children from 4-12 years old create their own sewn projects to take home with them.

Held at the WNC Agricultural Center, Davis Event Center, 765 Boylston Hwy, Fletcher, NC 28732, the Quilt Show offers ample free parking and a cafeteria offering lunch and snacks. Groups of 10 or more people get a discount off the $10 admission price by contacting NancyLynn at [email protected] prior to the show.

Made possible by generous support from sponsors, including Moda Fabrics, Explore Asheville, and Aurifil Threads, the Quilt Show will award $12,000 in prize money to the winners. This elevates the show beyond what most quilt shows of 300+ quilts, 350 members and 3,000 visitors are able to offer. Further enhancing the show is the cadre of guild members who volunteer to help set up, operate and take down the show. Asheville Quilt Guild has helped develop and maintain Asheville’s reputation as a city known for its breadth and excellence in artistic and cultural achievements and welcomes visitors to explore this exciting Quilt Show.

The Art League of Henderson County announces: “Red, White and Blue”
Sep 27 @ 9:00 am
Henderson County Library

Artists are invited to create artworks with the theme of “Red, White and Blue.“  Apply these patriotic colors at the center of your subjects, however there are no limits to your creativity, your artworks don’t need to be primarily patriotic theme, but viewers should be able to spot the use of recognizable amount of red, white and blue colors.

Max Adrian: RIPSTOP
Sep 27 @ 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
Center for Craft
The Center for Craft is thrilled to announce the opening of Max Adrian: RIPSTOP. Adrian (he/they), a textile artist who was awarded a Windgate-Lamar Fellowship by the Center in 2015 and a Career Advancement Fellowship in 2022, will bring the playful, experiential, and provocative solo exhibition of textiles and inflatable sculptures to the Bresler Family Gallery beginning July 26, 2024 through March 29, 2025.

Pieces made from nylon fabric ripstop, which keeps tears from spreading, invite viewers into created, fantastical worlds, only to highlight the complex—even impossible—architectures of their construction. Before the pandemic, Adrian primarily focused on personal experiences and interrogations of queerness, identity, and sexuality. Since then, the work has zoomed out in its scope, still centering identity but placed in larger infrastructure and surveillance systems that mediate, manipulate, and control desire.

Adrian counts queer fiber art, BDSM and kink culture, theatre, camp horror, puppetry, and drag among his many influences. Works in RIPSTOP, like the modernist bounce house sculpture A Fallible Complex (2021), evoke spaces for play, beckoning visitors in through their alluring aesthetic and then blocking their entrance or revealing structural instabilities, like missing floors. Others, like The Sensational Inflatable Furry Divines (2017-19), use sensual materials, like faux fur, spandex, and pleather, which connect to theatrical performance and counterculture. The materials “play on people’s initial associations and serve as a gateway into greater conversations about identity construction, performance, desire, and technology,” he shares.Pieces also nod to the history of quilting, including the AIDS Memorial Quilt, another influence on Adrian’s work. “Even when pieces aren’t explicitly making quilt references, I want the history of quilting and sewing-based craft to be part of the conversation of the work,” he says. “Craft is so much about the processes and histories behind materials. It’s about connecting with communities of people who practice those techniques. It’s about material and technique being a doorway into a greater relationship with an object.”

Themes of transformation—of structures, identities, and bodies—run throughout the show. “What I love about drag and puppetry is the sense of transformation and play, specifically with bodies,” Adrian says. “Within these art forms, a body can become mutable and capable of performing and becoming in unexpected states.” The sculptures also transform throughout viewers’ experiences, going through stages of inflation and deflation and existing in many different states.

RIPSTOP’s constant interplay between surface and depth, assumption and reality, are all a part of what Adrian describes as “looking behind the curtain,” which they trace back to the theatre. “When I’m thinking about systems, and the systems desire fits into, I’m thinking of stage construction, the backstage, the things that go on behind the show, and performance of our desires,” they explain.

As a craft artist, Adrian’s philosophy “comes down to having an intentional relationship with material, process, and technique,” he says. “Those aspects of art making are just as – if not more – important than an intellectualized concept being illustrated by an artwork.”

“Broadened definitions of craft that highlight communities of practice are foundational for the Center for Craft’s new strategic direction,” explains Executive Director Stephanie Moore. “Max Adrian’s work in RIPSTOP exemplifies the expansive and meaningful forms craft can take.” The Center for Craft is an institution Adrian credits for their professional growth. “The Center for Craft has felt like such a supporting institution for me specifically and for so many other craft artists I know,” they note. “To be able to bring this amount of work to Asheville is pretty cool.”

See Max Adrian: RIPSTOP at the Center for Craft Beginning July 26. A reception will be held on August 15. RIPSTOP is organized by Houston Center for Contemporary Craft and curated by Sarah Darro.

# # #
ABOUT CENTER FOR CRAFT Founded in 1996, the Center for Craft’s mission is to resource, catalyze, and amplify how and why craft matters. As a 501(c)3 national nonprofit that increases access to craft by empowering and resourcing artists, organizations, and communities through grants, fellowships and programs that bring people together. The Center is widely acknowledged as one of the most influential organizations working on behalf of craft in the United States. For more information, visit www.centerforcraft.org.
Honoring Nature: Early Southern Appalachian Landscape Painting
Sep 27 @ 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
Asheville Art Museum

In the early 1900s, travel by train and automobile became more accessible in the United States, leading to an increase in tourism and a revitalized interest in landscape painting. The relative ease of transportation, as well as the creation of National Parks, allowed people to experience the breathtaking landscapes of the United States in new ways. Artists traveled along popular routes, recording the terrain they encountered.

This exhibition explores the sublime natural landscapes of the Smokey Mountains of Western North Carolina and Tennessee. While there were several regional schools of painting around this time, this group is largely from the Midwest and many of the artists trained at the Art Institute of Chicago or in New York City. Through their travels, they captured waterfalls, sunsets, thunderstorms, autumn foliage, lush green summers, and snow-covered mountains—elements that were novel for viewers from cities and rural areas. Though some of these paintings include people, they are usually used for scale and painted with little to no detail, highlighting the magnificence of nature.

Rudolph F. Ingerle, Mirrored Mountain, not dated, oil on canvas, 28 × 32 inches. Courtesy of Allen & Barry Huffman, Asheville Art Museum.

Fuego Fridays
Sep 27 @ 6:00 pm – 10:00 pm
LEAF Global Arts

Get ready to groove to the rhythm of the Caribbean at LEAF Global’s monthly DJ Dance Party! Step into the vibrant atmosphere of LEAF Global, where every floor comes alive with infectious beats and irresistible energy. DJ Haviken Hayes’ dynamic mixes of Caribbean, dancehall, and global sounds will keep the dance floor buzzing all night long. And for those looking to perfect their moves, professional salsa instructor Monika Guerra will be offering free salsa lessons starting at 8 p.m.

Admission to the DJ Dance Party is $15 at the door, with drinks and snacks available to keep you fueled throughout the evening.

LEAF Global’s monthly DJ Dance Party
Sep 27 @ 6:00 pm – 10:00 pm
LEAF Global Arts

Get ready to groove to the rhythm of the Caribbean at LEAF Global’s monthly DJ Dance Party! Taking place on the final Friday of every month, this exciting event invites music lovers of all ages and backgrounds to come together for a night of pure entertainment and cultural celebration.

Step into the vibrant atmosphere of LEAF Global, where every floor comes alive with infectious beats and irresistible energy. DJ Haviken Hayes’ dynamic mixes of Caribbean, dancehall, and global sounds will keep the dance floor buzzing all night long.

For those looking to perfect their moves, professional salsa instructor Monika Guerra will be offering free salsa lessons starting at 8 p.m. Whether you’re a seasoned dancer or a complete beginner, Monika’s expert guidance will have you salsa-ing with confidence in no time.

Embrace the spirit of the Caribbean with a themed ambiance that transports you to tropical shores. All are welcome to join in the festivities, so grab your friends and come dressed in your best Caribbean-inspired attire for a night to remember.

Admission to the DJ Dance Party is $15 at the door, with drinks and snacks available to keep you fueled throughout the evening. Indulge in a selection of refreshing beverages including margaritas, mojitos, and more, provided by Flybird & Uno Mas.

Saturday, September 28, 2024
Arts Discounts Page
Sep 28 all-day
online w/ ArtsAVL
40th Annual Asheville Quilt Show – Celebrating Our Ruby Jubilee
Sep 28 @ 9:00 am – 4:00 pm
WNC Agricultural Center - Davis Event Center

Featuring over 300 beautiful quilts made by national, regional and local quilter makers, the Asheville Quilt Guild will showcase this unique Appalachian craft Thursday and Friday, September 26 and 27 from 9am-5pm and Saturday, September 28 from 9am-4pm. Fulfilling its mission to preserve and advance the tradition and art of quilting. The Quilt Show will give visitors the opportunity to get an up-close look at how quilters have creatively transformed fabrics and threads into works of art and admire the prize winning- works selected by professional quilt judges in an array of quilting styles and designs.

In addition, visitors can:
Attend free demonstrations of quilting techniques and new quilting products/machines
View Special Exhibits such as quilts by Mountain Art Quilters on the theme of “Reflections: Connecting to Nature” and special Ruby Anniversary Quilts made by Guild members
Peruse the Gift Shop and Gallery brimming with handcrafted quilted items to enhance their homes
Shop for the latest quilting and sewing products being sold by 27 regional vendors
Get a real bargain for gently used sewing/quilting supplies, fabrics and books/patterns at the What’s Old Is New booth
Take a $1 chance to win the exciting Opportunity Quilt made by the PhD (Projects Half Done) Bee
Enjoy the odds at the Product Raffle that gives away prizes donated by sponsors and vendors many times each day

To encourage the next generation of quilters the Guild offers a Kids Sewing Area where children from 4-12 years old create their own sewn projects to take home with them.

Held at the WNC Agricultural Center, Davis Event Center, 765 Boylston Hwy, Fletcher, NC 28732, the Quilt Show offers ample free parking and a cafeteria offering lunch and snacks. Groups of 10 or more people get a discount off the $10 admission price by contacting NancyLynn at [email protected] prior to the show.

Made possible by generous support from sponsors, including Moda Fabrics, Explore Asheville, and Aurifil Threads, the Quilt Show will award $12,000 in prize money to the winners. This elevates the show beyond what most quilt shows of 300+ quilts, 350 members and 3,000 visitors are able to offer. Further enhancing the show is the cadre of guild members who volunteer to help set up, operate and take down the show. Asheville Quilt Guild has helped develop and maintain Asheville’s reputation as a city known for its breadth and excellence in artistic and cultural achievements and welcomes visitors to explore this exciting Quilt Show.

Max Adrian: RIPSTOP
Sep 28 @ 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
Center for Craft
The Center for Craft is thrilled to announce the opening of Max Adrian: RIPSTOP. Adrian (he/they), a textile artist who was awarded a Windgate-Lamar Fellowship by the Center in 2015 and a Career Advancement Fellowship in 2022, will bring the playful, experiential, and provocative solo exhibition of textiles and inflatable sculptures to the Bresler Family Gallery beginning July 26, 2024 through March 29, 2025.

Pieces made from nylon fabric ripstop, which keeps tears from spreading, invite viewers into created, fantastical worlds, only to highlight the complex—even impossible—architectures of their construction. Before the pandemic, Adrian primarily focused on personal experiences and interrogations of queerness, identity, and sexuality. Since then, the work has zoomed out in its scope, still centering identity but placed in larger infrastructure and surveillance systems that mediate, manipulate, and control desire.

Adrian counts queer fiber art, BDSM and kink culture, theatre, camp horror, puppetry, and drag among his many influences. Works in RIPSTOP, like the modernist bounce house sculpture A Fallible Complex (2021), evoke spaces for play, beckoning visitors in through their alluring aesthetic and then blocking their entrance or revealing structural instabilities, like missing floors. Others, like The Sensational Inflatable Furry Divines (2017-19), use sensual materials, like faux fur, spandex, and pleather, which connect to theatrical performance and counterculture. The materials “play on people’s initial associations and serve as a gateway into greater conversations about identity construction, performance, desire, and technology,” he shares.Pieces also nod to the history of quilting, including the AIDS Memorial Quilt, another influence on Adrian’s work. “Even when pieces aren’t explicitly making quilt references, I want the history of quilting and sewing-based craft to be part of the conversation of the work,” he says. “Craft is so much about the processes and histories behind materials. It’s about connecting with communities of people who practice those techniques. It’s about material and technique being a doorway into a greater relationship with an object.”

Themes of transformation—of structures, identities, and bodies—run throughout the show. “What I love about drag and puppetry is the sense of transformation and play, specifically with bodies,” Adrian says. “Within these art forms, a body can become mutable and capable of performing and becoming in unexpected states.” The sculptures also transform throughout viewers’ experiences, going through stages of inflation and deflation and existing in many different states.

RIPSTOP’s constant interplay between surface and depth, assumption and reality, are all a part of what Adrian describes as “looking behind the curtain,” which they trace back to the theatre. “When I’m thinking about systems, and the systems desire fits into, I’m thinking of stage construction, the backstage, the things that go on behind the show, and performance of our desires,” they explain.

As a craft artist, Adrian’s philosophy “comes down to having an intentional relationship with material, process, and technique,” he says. “Those aspects of art making are just as – if not more – important than an intellectualized concept being illustrated by an artwork.”

“Broadened definitions of craft that highlight communities of practice are foundational for the Center for Craft’s new strategic direction,” explains Executive Director Stephanie Moore. “Max Adrian’s work in RIPSTOP exemplifies the expansive and meaningful forms craft can take.” The Center for Craft is an institution Adrian credits for their professional growth. “The Center for Craft has felt like such a supporting institution for me specifically and for so many other craft artists I know,” they note. “To be able to bring this amount of work to Asheville is pretty cool.”

See Max Adrian: RIPSTOP at the Center for Craft Beginning July 26. A reception will be held on August 15. RIPSTOP is organized by Houston Center for Contemporary Craft and curated by Sarah Darro.

# # #
ABOUT CENTER FOR CRAFT Founded in 1996, the Center for Craft’s mission is to resource, catalyze, and amplify how and why craft matters. As a 501(c)3 national nonprofit that increases access to craft by empowering and resourcing artists, organizations, and communities through grants, fellowships and programs that bring people together. The Center is widely acknowledged as one of the most influential organizations working on behalf of craft in the United States. For more information, visit www.centerforcraft.org.
Artists + Writers Coffee
Sep 28 @ 10:30 am – 12:00 pm
Tryon Fine Arts Center

Saturdays from 10:30 AM – 12 PM

TFAC Pavilion (park/enter at rear of building)
Free drop-in event
Happy Fall Y’all
Sep 28 @ 11:00 am – 5:00 pm
A-B Tech Conference Center

🍁 Embrace the autumn vibes at our 1st Happy Fall Y’all Art and Framers Market in beautiful Asheville, NC! 🎨✨ Enter our pumpkin carving contest for a chance to win ‘vendor bucks’ redeemable at any booth! 🎃🛍️ Enjoy live music, delicious food, adult beverages, and more. Join the fall fun with us! 🍂🎶

September, 28th (10AM-5PM)
A-B Tech Conference Center
340 Victoria Road Asheville, NC 28801

Honoring Nature: Early Southern Appalachian Landscape Painting
Sep 28 @ 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
Asheville Art Museum

In the early 1900s, travel by train and automobile became more accessible in the United States, leading to an increase in tourism and a revitalized interest in landscape painting. The relative ease of transportation, as well as the creation of National Parks, allowed people to experience the breathtaking landscapes of the United States in new ways. Artists traveled along popular routes, recording the terrain they encountered.

This exhibition explores the sublime natural landscapes of the Smokey Mountains of Western North Carolina and Tennessee. While there were several regional schools of painting around this time, this group is largely from the Midwest and many of the artists trained at the Art Institute of Chicago or in New York City. Through their travels, they captured waterfalls, sunsets, thunderstorms, autumn foliage, lush green summers, and snow-covered mountains—elements that were novel for viewers from cities and rural areas. Though some of these paintings include people, they are usually used for scale and painted with little to no detail, highlighting the magnificence of nature.

Rudolph F. Ingerle, Mirrored Mountain, not dated, oil on canvas, 28 × 32 inches. Courtesy of Allen & Barry Huffman, Asheville Art Museum.

Sunday, September 29, 2024
Art on Main Fine Art / Fine Craft Festival
Sep 29 all-day
Downtown Hendersonville NC

The Arts Council of Henderson County presents the 65th annual Art on Main fine art / fine craft festival on September 28 & 29, 2024, 10-5pm both days, on Downtown Hendersonville, NC’s Main Street.

Art on Main is a juried and judged fine art and fine craft show which brings high quality local and regional artist vendors to Hendersonville, NC, with works in clay, fiber, glass, jewelry, metal, wood, painting, photography, and more.

Enjoy meeting the artists, and shopping for fine art and exquisite craft in Hendersonville, NC, nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina. Watch live demonstrations of various artist’s creative processes while discovering Hendersonville’s charming and historic Main Street, with its own unique shops and restaurants.

Free and open to the public.

Honoring Nature: Early Southern Appalachian Landscape Painting
Sep 29 @ 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
Asheville Art Museum

In the early 1900s, travel by train and automobile became more accessible in the United States, leading to an increase in tourism and a revitalized interest in landscape painting. The relative ease of transportation, as well as the creation of National Parks, allowed people to experience the breathtaking landscapes of the United States in new ways. Artists traveled along popular routes, recording the terrain they encountered.

This exhibition explores the sublime natural landscapes of the Smokey Mountains of Western North Carolina and Tennessee. While there were several regional schools of painting around this time, this group is largely from the Midwest and many of the artists trained at the Art Institute of Chicago or in New York City. Through their travels, they captured waterfalls, sunsets, thunderstorms, autumn foliage, lush green summers, and snow-covered mountains—elements that were novel for viewers from cities and rural areas. Though some of these paintings include people, they are usually used for scale and painted with little to no detail, highlighting the magnificence of nature.

Rudolph F. Ingerle, Mirrored Mountain, not dated, oil on canvas, 28 × 32 inches. Courtesy of Allen & Barry Huffman, Asheville Art Museum.

Show & Tell Sunday Market
Sep 29 @ 12:00 pm – 5:00 pm
Rabbit Rabbit

Show & Tell returns to Rabbit Rabbit for a monthly Sunday Market celebrating and supporting local + indie craft, design, and vintage. Gather with friends and family in the open air at this one-of-a-kind outdoor venue in Downtown Asheville and shop 50+ vendors rotating monthly.

Featuring housewares, decor, art, jewelry, ceramics, apparel, vintage clothes, candles, plants, and more! Meet makers and collectors and shop directly or at the curated pop up shop.

Enjoy bites and bevs from AVL Tacos and Asheville Pizza & Brewing.

Sundays, September 29, October 20

12-5pm

Rabbit Rabbit

75 Coxe Ave, Asheville, NC 28801

Free and open to the public. The outdoor market runs rain or shine. No dogs allowed. Street parking is free all day Sunday along with paid parking options in nearby lots and garages.

For more info, visit showandtellpopupshop.com