Calendar of Events

Learn Asheville’s history, discover hidden gems, and laugh at LaZoom’s quirky sense of adventure.

• Guided comedy tour bus of historical Asheville
• 90-Minutes – tours run daily
• 15-minute break at Green Man Brewing
• $39 per person (ages 13+ only)

Presenters: Barb Harrison and Anne Senechal, Extension Master Gardener^SM Volunteer

Have you ever thought about growing root vegetables? They take up little space and you can harvest them over a long period of time. We will be covering the growing nuances of leeks, onions, carrots and parsnips.

The class will start indoors with a brief introduction on how to best grow these vegetables and then we will go outside and plant them in the root vegetable bed in The Learning Garden; a complete experience.

This will be an in-person program at the Extension office at the address above. Portions of this program may be held outside; please dress appropriately for the weather. The classroom size is limited so register to reserve your seat!

Presenters: Bard Harrison and Anne Senechal, Extension Master GardenerSM Volunteers

Have you ever thought about growing root vegetables? They take up little space and you can harvest them over a long period of time. We will be covering the growing nuances of leeks, onions, carrots and parsnips.

The class will start indoors with a brief introduction on how to best grow these vegetables and then we will go outside and plant them in the root vegetable bed in The Learning Garden. A complete experience.

Please dress appropriately for being outdoors.

Registration: The talk is free, but seating is limited and registration is required. Please click on the link below to register. If you encounter problems registering or if you have questions, call 828-255-5522.

What are the most important factors to consider when looking at purchasing an existing business? Likewise, if you want to sell your business, do you know the right price, the right prospect, or even how to go about finding a buyer? This seminar looks at this transaction from both sides, giving the buyer and seller the most important things to consider when interested in buying or selling a business.

Speaker(s): TenBiz

Co-Sponsor(s): Henderson County Chamber of Commerce and Brevard/Transylvania Chamber of Commerce

Webinar info will be emailed after registration.

Join Christine Smith at her debut demonstration for the Guild! She will be demoing various carving techniques she uses to add texture and decoration to her hand-turned boxes. Christine will be in the lobby of the Folk Art Center on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Visitors are encouraged to watch and ask questions while the demonstrators work and talk about their creative process! Call ahead for the latest updates: 828-298-7928.

Join us at Eliada Home’s campus for a small group guided walking Farm Tour. Tours last approximately 1 hour. Participants will learn about outdoor and greenhouse growing practices, aquaponics, hydroponics, market gardening, corn maze production, and about our equine therapy program.

Reservations required. There is no cost, but donations to the non-profit agency are greatly appreciated.

We recommend bringing the following: comfortable shoes for walking on pavement and grass, hat, sunglasses, and water. This tour is not handicap accessible and will require participants to climb stairs and walk on uneven ground.

An enrolled member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, Luzene Hill advocates for Indigenous sovereignty—linguistically, culturally, and individually. Revelate builds upon Hill’s investigation of pre-contact cultures. This has led Hill to incorporate the idea of Ollin, the Nahuatl word for the natural rhythms of the universe, in Aztec cosmology in her work. Before Europeans arrived in North America, Indigenous societies were predominantly matrilineal. Women were considered sacred, involved in the decision-making process, and thrived within communities holding a worldview based on equilibrium.

Ollin emphasizes that we are in constant state of motion and discovery. Adopted as an educational framework, particularly in social justice and ethnic studies, Ollin guides individuals through a process of reflection, action, reconciliation, and transformation. This exhibition combines Hill’s use of mylar safety blankets alongside recent drawings. Capes constructed of mylar burst with energy and rustle with subtle sound, the shining material a signifier of care, awareness, displacement, and presence. Though Hill works primarily in sculpture, drawing has increasingly become an essential part of her practice as she seeks to communicate themes of feminine and Indigenous power across her entire body of work. The energy within her drawings extends to the bursts of light reflecting from her capes or the accumulation of materials in other installation works.

Luzene Hill was born in Atlanta, GA, in 1946. She received her bachelor of fine art and master of fine art from Western Carolina University. She lives and works on the Qualla Boundary, Cherokee, NC.

Paul Wong, Carbon, silver and gold, 2016, pigmented linen and cotton pulp, publisher: Dieu Donné, New York, edition 3/25, 18 × 11 inches. Gift of Dieu Donné, New York, 2022.27.06. © Paul Wong.

On View March 8 through July 24, 2023
The Van Winkle Law Firm Gallery • Level 1

Paper is an essential part of the art-making process for many artists, serving as the base for drawing, painting, printmaking, and other forms of art. As a substrate, paper can vary in weight, absorbency, color, size, and other aspects. Since industrialization, paper has primarily been produced through mechanical means that allow for consistency and affordability.

What happens, then, when an artist chooses to return to the foundations of paper, wherein it is made by hand using pulps, fibers, and dyes that reflect the human element through variations, inconsistencies, flaws, and surprises? Certain artists have sought out these qualities and embraced them, making paper not just a support on which to work, but fully a medium in and of itself.

Pulp Potential: Works in Handmade Paper is organized by the Asheville Art Museum and curated by Hilary Schroeder, former assistant curator, with assistance from Alexis Meldrum, curatorial assistant. Special thanks to Dieu Donné, New York, NY.

Included with admission

Back by popular demand, The Vanderbilts at Home and Abroad exhibition offers guests:

• An opportunity to view rarely-seen treasures from the Biltmore collection
• A first-hand look at the Vanderbilts’ lifestyle
• Deeper insights into George, Edith, and Cornelia’s personalities, both at home and on their extensive travels

Access to exhibitions at The Biltmore Legacy is included with Biltmore daytime admission.

In the past 50 years in the United States and beyond, artists have sought to break down social and political hierarchies that include issues of identity, gender, power, race, authority, and authenticity. Unsurprisingly, these decades generated a reconsideration of the idea of pattern and decoration as a third option to figuration and abstraction in art. From 1972 to 1985, artists in the Pattern and Decoration movement worked to expand the visual vocabulary of contemporary art to include ethnically and culturally diverse options that eradicated the barriers between fine art and craft and questioned the dominant minimalist aesthetic. These artists did so by incorporating opulence and bold intricacies garnered from such wide-ranging inspirations as United States quilt-making and Islamic architecture. Too Much Is Just Right: The Legacy of Pattern and Decoration features more than 70 artworks in an array of media from both the original time frame of the Pattern and Decoration movement, as well as contemporary artworks created between 1985 and the present. The artworks in this exhibition demonstrate the vibrant and varied approaches to pattern and decoration in art. Artworks from the 21st century elucidate contemporary perspectives on the employment of pattern to inform visual vocabularies and investigations of diverse themes in the present day. Artworks drawn from the Asheville Art Museum’s Collection join select major loans and feature Pattern and Decoration artists Valerie Jaudon, Joyce Kozloff, Robert Kushner, and Miriam Schapiro, as well as Anni Albers, Elizabeth Alexander, Sanford Biggers, Tawny Chatmon, Margaret Curtis, Mary Engel, Cathy Fussell, Samantha Hennekke, John Himmelfarb, Anne Lemanski, Rashaad Newsome, Peter Olson, Don Reitz, Sarah Sense, Billie Ruth Sudduth, Mickalene Thomas, Shoku Teruyama, Anna Valdez, Kehinde Wiley, and more. This exhibition is organized by the Asheville Art Museum and guest curated by Marilyn Laufer & Tom Butler.

In this series, we will write about encounters with the natural world through workshops in poetry, fiction, and autobiography. Drawing from the experiences you bring to class, and using a naturalist’s eye for observation and detail, you will capture encounters with vast mountain ranges and lush forests, garden insects and backyard bears, moon phases and songbird migrations. We will read example texts and practice writing prompts to deepen our relationship with nonhuman nature. We will also discuss how “eco” writing supports climate activism, environmental justice, conservation, and related issues.”

Spring creative writing workshops with Fairview author and teacher, Dr. Beth Keefauver, will be offered the last Thursdays of March, April and May.  The classes may be taken individually or as a series. The April class will focus on Eco Fiction.

Registration is required for these classes.  For more information call 828-250-6484.

This class is sponsored in part by the Friends of Fairview Library.

From the songbook of Johnny Cash comes this unique musical about love and faith, struggle and success, rowdiness and redemption, and the healing power of home and family. More than two dozen classic hits including “I Walk The Line,” “A Boy Named Sue,” “Folsom Prison Blues,” and, of course, “Ring of Fire.” Performed by a multi-talented cast, Ring of Fire paints a musical portrait of ‘The Man in Black’ that promises to be a foot-stompin’, crowd-pleasin’ salute to a unique musical legend!

From the songbook of Johnny Cash comes this unique musical about love and faith, struggle and success, rowdiness and redemption, and the healing power of home and family. More than two dozen classic hits including “I Walk the Line,” “A Boy Named Sue,” “Folsom Prison Blues,” and, of course, “Ring of Fire.” Performed by a multi-talented cast.

Director Ben Hope adds “Having spent many years working on various productions of Ring of Fire (this production will be my personal 10th!), The most extraordinary thing I keep finding about Mr. Cash is how unanimously loved he is, even now, 20 years since his death. No other project seems to attract such a varied and enthusiastic crowd as the music of Johnny Cash. I think it’s because he wrote for the ordinary. His words and music are authentic and simple, and he speaks plainly about things we all connect with. He was fallible, with personal demons and shortcomings. He makes us feel like our own imperfections are normal and mundane, and he teaches us that there’s beauty and hope, even in despair. I love Johnny Cash, and I know Flat Rock audiences are going to love Ring of Fire’.”

Don’t miss this inspiring story, all the great music, and an evening of iconic Johnny Cash!

Ring of Fire is presented by WHKP and Carolina Ace Hardware. Flat Rock Playhouse’s 2023 Season is supported by Charlotte & Bob Otto, Optimum, WHKP, and WTZQ as well as the North Carolina Arts Council, a division of the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources. www.NCArts.org

For a complete lineup with show descriptions and to purchase tickets, visit www.flatrockplayhouse.org.

We are seeking volunteers to assist us in our small after school program for children in West Asheville in low-income housing.  We provide a safe and nourishing environment, healthy snacks, and creative activities.  Our program currently meets during the school year on most Tuesday and Thursday afternoons from 3:00-5:00pm. You may volunteer for one or two days a week. 

Volunteer Responsibilities:

• Assist with serving snacks
• Interact with children during activity time
• Supervise games and outdoor free time
• For people with background in education, there is also an opportunity to assist with curriculum development and program planning and administration

Requirements:

• Background check
• Orientation booklets will be provided
• Masks are required if unvaccinated

What is sound? How does a person hear and listen to music? Why is it one of the most powerful expressions of humanity? All that exists creates sound. The tiniest elements of everything on this planet move, vibrate, and therefore create resonance or sound. This powerful force has the ability to heal and create or confuse and destroy. Once we understand what sound truly is, we have the ability to influence our consciousness, as well as our environment. Imagine a space where people of all ages can explore sound, view and play with instruments from around the world, and experience through music the commonalties of cultures. Music influences our social, emotional, cognitive, physical, spiritual, and creative selves. People will be able to understand the science behind how they listen and enjoy discovering about brainwave states and how sound effects the mechanics and of the body. That’s exactly what you can do in the LEAF Instrument Petting Zoo!

Every Thursday Live Music with Aaron Lafalce at 131 Main Restaurant, 6:00 p.m.

Join host Keith Flynn to celebrate the publication of the 2022 Asheville Poetry Review and the winners of the William Matthews Poetry Prize.

1^st place — Maura High
2^nd place — Christina Hutchins
3^rd place — Anna Lena Phillips Bell

This event is virtual.  Attendance is free, but registration is required.  Please click here to register. The link required to attend will be emailed to registrants prior to the event.

If you decide to attend and to purchase books, we ask that you purchase from Malaprop’s. When you do this you make it possible for us to continue hosting author events and you keep more dollars in our community. You may also support our work by purchasing a gift card or making a donation of any amount below. Thank you!

Maura High was born in Wales and now lives in Carrboro, North Carolina, where she works as a freelance copy editor. Her poems have appeared in various print and online literary magazines, such as New England Review, North Carolina Literary Review, Panoply, Passager, Rhino, Southern Review, Tar River Poetry, and The Phare. She is author of The Garden of Persuasions (Jacar Press) and collaborated with the artist Lyric Kinard on Stone, Water, Time. Another collaboration, a chapbook titled The Abandoned Field, with the printmaker Jean LeCluyse, is under way. Many of her poems draw on what she learned while working with The Nature Conservancy, especially with their prescribed burn crews in the Sandhills and coastal plain of the state. Her website is at http://maurahigh.com.

Christina Hutchins’ second book, Tender the Maker, won the May Swenson Award of Utah State University Press. Her first collection was The Stranger Dissolves (Sixteen Rivers Press), a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award and the Audre Lorde/Publishers’ Triangle Award. A chapbook, Radiantly We Inhabit the Air, won the Robin Becker Prize for queer poetry. Poems have appeared in The Antioch Review, Denver Quarterly, The New Republic, Prairie Schooner, Salmagundi, The Southern Review, Women’s Review of Books and elsewhere. Awards include The Missouri Review Editors’ Prize, National Poetry Review’s Annie Finch Prize, a fellowship to St. Petersburg, Russia, and a recent summer living in Robert Frost’s home in Franconia, NH, as the Dartmouth Poet in Residence. She currently teaches privately and has previously worked as a Congregational minister and a biochemist.

Anna Lena Phillips Bell is the author of Ornament, winner of the Vassar Miller Poetry Prize, and the chapbook Smaller Songs, from St Brigid Press. New writing appears or is forthcoming in the Southern Review, Electric Literature, and Evergreen Review. Bell’s work has received support from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Marble House Project. The winner of the 2021 Winter Anthology Contest, she teaches in the creative writing department at UNC Wilmington and is the editor of Ecotone. More at annalenaphillipsbell.net.

Keith Flynn (www.keithflynn.net) is the award-winning author of eight books, including six collections of poetry: most recently Colony Collapse Disorder (Wings Press, 2013) and The Skin of Meaning (Red Hen Press, 2020), and two collections of essays, entitled The Rhythm Method, Razzmatazz and Memory: How To Make Your Poetry Swing (Writer’s Digest Books, 2007), and Prosperity Gospel: Portraits of the Great Recession (RedHawk Publications, 2021). From 1984-1999, he was lyricist and lead singer for the nationally acclaimed rock band, The Crystal Zoo, which produced three albums: Swimming Through Lake Eerie (1992), Pouch (1996), and the spoken-word and music compilation, Nervous Splendor (2003). His latest album is Keith Flynn & The Holy Men, LIVE at Diana Wortham Theatre (2011). He is the Executive Director and producer of the TV and radio show, “LIVE at White Rock Hall,” (www.liveatwhiterockhall.com) and Animal Sounds Productions, both which create collaborations between writers and musicians in video and audio formats. His award-winning poetry and essays have appeared in many journals and anthologies around the world, including The American Literary Review, The Colorado Review, Poetry Wales, Five Points, Poetry East, The Southern Poetry Anthology, ThePoetics of American Song Lyrics, Writer’s Chronicle. The Cimarron Review, Rattle, Shenandoah, Word and Witness: 100 Years of NC Poetry, Crazyhorse, and many others. He has been awarded the Sandburg Prize for poetry, a 2013 NC Literary Fellowship, the ASCAP Emerging Songwriter Prize, the Paumanok Poetry Award and was twice named the Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet for NC. Flynn is founder and managing editor of The Asheville Poetry Review, which began publishing in 1994.

Trivia, Singo, tailgate games, and more! Our games are sure to challenge you, but c’mon… it’s not rocket science!

Formed in 2016, Smilo and the Ghost have been delivering hard-driving, old-time influenced folk-rock to crowds around the Northeast. Their debut album, Ghost Writers, was voted one of the “Top Three Albums of 2018” by the Erie Reader. Since then, Smilo and the Ghost have opened for national acts like Grammy Award Winning country duo Dan + Shay and alt-rock legends 10,000 Maniacs.

Formed in 2016, Smilo and the Ghost have been delivering hard-driving, old-time influenced folk-rock to crowds around the Northeast. Their debut album, Ghost Writers, was voted one of the “Top Three Albums of 2018” by the Erie Reader. Since then, Smilo and the Ghost have opened for national acts like Grammy Award Winning country duo Dan + Shay and alt-rock legends 10,000 Maniacs.

The first  ASHEVILLE FLAMENCO FESTIVAL brings us the International Choreographer/teacher/ Dancer DANIELA TUGUES @danielatugues. She will be teaching an intensive flamenco program with various techniques and tools for the growth and formation of this art, which will take place throughout the month de Abril in different studios in town under the production of FLAMENCO APPALACHIA @flamencoappalachia.

Students from beginners to advanced and professionals will be welcome to participate and receive all the information on choreography technique, sing compás guitar and more.

As a result we will have the honor of presenting our work on April 27 at the magnificent WORTHAM CENTER FOR PERFORMING ARTS with the special participation of professional dancers and musicians such as :

Jose Cortes @josemuleto (singing) Mario Icaza (on guitar), Denis Aberle (on guitar), Daniela Tugues (dancer/ director), Paola Tinoco @flamencoappalachia (dancer) Wendy Araujo @wendymar (to dance), our magnificent local African percussionist Adama K Dembele, and many more surprises.

About DANIELA TUGUES

“Dancing her Tientos, Mrs. Tugues was the queen of flamenco.  She’s slender, mesmerizing as a classic car, as she leaned back on her majestic torso.  Her hands had a twisted beauty, her face a look of sweet pain.  Through the fluttering and footwork of her walks, she told us of her life, of her hopes and disappointments.

Hops Around Comedy is a rotating show presented by Modelface Comedy that takes place in all your favorite Asheville breweries. This week we are at Ginger’s Revenge in the South Slope with Liz Greenwood!!!!

Liz’s bio

Liz Greenwood is a stand-up comic known for her smart writing about dumb topics and her dry delivery. She performs regularly in Chicago and beyond and has been part of SF Sketchfest, HBO Women in Comedy Fest, and Cleveland Comedy Festival, where she was named Best of the Fest. Liz hosts the weekly podcast Food For Pod and has both won and lost on Jeopardy.

Dylan’s bio

Dylan Scott has been performing standup for the past 11 years across the US and Canada. He is the founder of Commit to the Bit Comedy and the creator of the storytelling show F*ckTales. His credits include: Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Midwest Queer Comedy Fest, Cleveland Comedy Festival, and HGTV’s House Hunters. In December 2018, Dylan released his debut standup album “All the Sad Stories”, which reached number 1 on the iTunes comedy chart.

ages 18+

Our jazz trio with Thommy Knoles on keys, Felix Pastorius on bass, and Paul Gladstone on drums will perform an opening set from about 7-8:15 pm.

An open jam session follows. Drop-ins are welcome and encouraged for a suggested donation of $10.

Jazz Jam will feature a diverse array of music from jazz’s rich history, ranging from 1940s bebop up to 1970s jazz fusion, as well as material from prominent present-day composers. Bring your instruments and jam with us, or just come and enjoy!