Calendar of Events

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.

Natural Collector is organized by the Asheville Art Museum. IMAGE: Christian Burchard, Untitled (nesting bowls), 1998, madrone burl, various from 6 × 6 × 6 to ⅜ × ⅜ × ⅜ inches. Gift of Fleur S. Bresler, 2021.76.01.

Natural Collector | Gifts of Fleur S. Bresler features around 15 artworks from the collection of Fleur S. Bresler, which include important examples of modern and contemporary American craft including wood and fiber art, as well as glass and ceramics. These works that were generously donated by contemporary craft collector Bresler to the Asheville Art Museum over the years reflect her strong interest in wood-based art and themes of nature. According to Associate Curator Whitney Richardson, “This exhibition highlights artworks that consider the natural element from which they were created or replicate known flora and fauna in unexpected materials. The selection of objects displayed illustrates how Bresler’s eye for collecting craft not only draws attention to nature and artists’ interest in it, but also accentuates her role as a natural collector with an intuitive ability to identify themes and ideas that speak to one another.” This exhibition presents work from the Collection representing the first generation of American wood turners like Rude Osolnik and Ed Moulthrop, as well as those that came after and learned from them, such as Philip Moulthrop, John Jordan, and local Western North Carolina (WNC) artist Stoney Lamar. Other WNC-based artists in Natural Collector include Anne Lemanski, whose paper sculpture of a snake captures the viewer’s imagination, and Michael Sherrill’s multimedia work that tricks the eye with its similarity to true-to-life berries. Also represented are beadwork and sculpture by Joyce J. Scott and Jack and Linda Fifield.

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.

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.

{Re}HAPPENING 9 photo by Michael Oppenheim

{Re}HAPPENING 11

Since 2010, Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center (BMCM+AC) has hosted the {Re}HAPPENING inspired by John Cage’s 1952 Theatre Piece No. 1, an unscripted performance at Black Mountain College considered by many to be the first Happening. The annual {Re}HAPPENING brings together dozens of contemporary artists whose work responds to and extends the legacy of Black Mountain College visionaries such as John Cage, David Tudor, Merce Cunningham, M.C. Richards, Ruth Asawa, and Robert Rauschenberg.

The 2023 {Re}HAPPENING celebrates the event’s 11th anniversary, featuring a host of artists presenting work throughout the Lake Eden campus. Visitors will encounter an immersive collection of projects in the tradition of BMC—installation, sound, movement, visual art, and interactive media.

SELECTED PROJECTS

A Device to be Heard, A Device to Forgive All Those Who Have Wronged You, A Device for Outward Enjoyment, ©Hillerbrand+Magsamen

Husband-wife team Hillerbrand+Magsamen will present 147 Devices for Integrated Principles, a playful interdisciplinary performance. In Devices, they animate everyday objects in a desperate and perhaps futile way to connect to each other and the audience. Written by Kirk Lynn with an original score by composer Peter Stopschinski, it has been exhibited across the country, as well as virtually, and was released as a limited edition book project in 2020.

Lovers Leap Stills, Jonathan Furnell

Jonathan Furnell, Rachel Pittman, & Holden Treadway’s work Lovers Leap is a multidisciplinary installation, performance and screening that explores Appalachian representation and mediation. Inspired by Martha Graham’s Appalachian Spring, this project blends original music, found footage film, and dance in an interactive space that encourages audience reflection and participation.

Photos of HomeSick taken by Emmanuel Figaro

Leslie Rosenberg, Liz Trader Williams, and Ethan Schultz will install their large-scale multimedia sculpture project, HomeSick. HomeSick is composed of 12 floating, geometric house structures. During the evening, these whimsical houses light up with dynamic video projections playing in unison with audio samples, including testimonials of Asheville residents speaking on behalf of their housing experiences. HomeSick was exhibited as part of the city of Asheville’s “Art in the Heart” public art initiative.

The Atlanta Improvisers Orchestra is a supergroup of members of Atlanta’s cutting edge experimental music scene, united by composer Ofir Klemperer to explore the possibilities of large group musical improvisation. The group spontaneously creates exquisite orchestral soundscapes and compositions using the concept of conduction, or conducted improvisation, that harnesses and encourages the unpredictable ideas, individual imaginations, and diverse approaches to music that each musician brings.

Drew Barker & Maurice Watson will present A Distant Marker, a movement piece instigated and inspired by the history of the Western North Carolina Railroad. About 13 miles east of the Black Mountain College site there is a distant marker memorializing the hundreds of mostly Black, incarcerated men and women who built the nearby railroad under cruel and crude conditions. The cost of building the railroad for many of those workers was their lives. Activating history through movement, Barker & Watson partner with The RAIL Project to create this piece.

Drop of Sun Studios and Lamplight AVL will be curating the John Cage room at {Re}HAPPENING 11. Since the studio’s launch in 2015, Drop of Sun has become a hub for musical creativity, working with local and nationally recognized artists including Indigo De Souza, Animal Collective, Trevor Hall, Angel Olsen, and many more.

Artist projects include:

• What I say to this house by Astrid Kaemmerling & Becca J.R. Lachman

• 100,000 Suns in a Drop of Dew by Eddie Lohmeyer

• CACTUS CARE by Gwen Charles

• Lover’s Leap by Jonathan Furnell, Rachel Pittman, & Holden Treadway

• All I Ever Wanted Was A House I Could Scream In by Michael Holmes & Landon George

• Multi-Vocal Painting by Mollie Hosmer-Dillard

• Crickets and Cockroaches by Appalachian State University Students

• A Performance by Atlanta Improvisers Orchestra

• Live in a Room Without Time by Brett Naucke

• Dance to Anything: Lake Eden by Chris Reeves & collaborators

• The Shapes of Movement by Crystal Gregory, Gwen Charles, & the Moving Architects

• Adjunct by DEBORAH, a group composed of Eleanor Hullihan, Jimmy Jolliff, Emma Judkins & Adam Schatz with costumes by Asli Bulbul

• A Distant Marker by Drew Barker & Maurice Watson

• 147 Devices for Integrated Principles by Hillerbrand+Magsamen

• What’s Left by Julie Rothschild & Laura Hoffman

• Doom Scroller by Kayla Hammonds

• Fountain of You by Swannatopia’s Experimental Art Club

• Málning by Madeline Yahr

• My World within the Bubble by Asheville Contemporary Dance Theatre

• Wildflowers Walks (+ Trees Too), a guided walk with Julie J Thomson

• The Last Letter Writer by Trong Gia Nguyen & David Raymond

• HomeSick by Leslie Rosenberg, Liz Williams, & Ethan Schultz

• John Cage Room – Curated by Drop of Sun Studios and Lamplight AVL

See the full lineup at www.blackmountaincollege.org/rehappening-2023-artists

About the {Re}HAPPENING

The {Re}HAPPENING is a one-day event at the historic campus of Black Mountain College, 15 minutes from Asheville. It is part art event, part fundraiser, and part community instigator, providing a platform for contemporary artists to share their responses to the vital legacy of Black Mountain College by activating the buildings and grounds of the BMC campus with installations, new media, music, and performance projects.

General admission brings in hundreds of visitors annually. In addition to providing a forum for regional artists and an accessible, immersive, educational experience for attendees, every year the event is a community collaboration between local businesses and arts organizations.

General Information

April 8th from 3-10pm

Tickets

$30 – Advance Adult Admission (ends 4/7)

$37 – Regular Adult Admission

$15 – Youth (10 to 17 yo) / Student (w/ID)

FREE – Shuttle

$15 – Parking Pass (please see below)

Carpooling and shuttling are highly encouraged. Free parking will be available at the Lower Lot of the Asheville Chamber of Commerce (36 Montford Ave), allowing visitors to kick back and enjoy the ride with Gray Line Trolleys to Lake Eden. The FREE Dymaxion Shuttle, sponsored by Gray Line Trolley, will run between the Asheville Chamber of Commerce lower lot (36 Montford Avenue) and Camp Rockmont. Please allow for a few minutes’ wait.

Shuttle Schedule*

Pick up at Chamber of Commerce, Downtown Asheville:

3, 4, 5, 6, 7:30, 8:30

Pick up at Camp Rockmont for return to Asheville:

3:30, 4:30, 5:30, 6:30, 8, 9, 10

*please note that the shuttle driver will take a break at the Chamber of Commerce from 7:00pm to 7:30pm

Uber and Lyft are not guaranteed in Black Mountain but are a great option to connect with the Trolley in Downtown AVL.

Purchase tickets online at www.blackmountaincollege.org or at Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center (120 College Street in Downtown Asheville).

Robert Gregory Gross was a productive artist. His family has curated just a sampling of his work, ranging from pastoral landscapes to impressionist scenes, that will fill three rooms at the Flood Gallery Fine Art Center in Black Mountain. This will be first time for his work to exhibit in this region.

As light as air, as translucent as water, as earthy as cows grazing in a meadow, plein air master Robert Gregory Gross’s work is meticulously accurate and mysteriously subtle in portraying the often unseen aspects of our world. Watercolors, oils, etchings, ink and pencil sketches: Robert celebrates nature in the spirit of St. Francis of Assisi. If you look closely you may find angelic images in the whispery interplay between light and shadow.

The exhibit opens on Saturday, April 8, with a reception from 6-9 pm, featuring live music performed by Black Mountain’s very own, Upbeats Ukulele Orchestra. The band plays a wide range of melodies, which include the Beatles, Motown Hits, as well as favorites by The Eagles, Van Morrison, and many more. The Upbeats consist of local residents from Black Mountain, Montreat, and Swannanoa.

The exhibit will display through June 3, 2023. For more information, visit floodgallery.org, the Facebook page for updates, or call 828-273-3332.

About the Artist:
Robert Gregory Gross was born an artist. From early childhood, his extraordinary gift, vision, and passion for art informed his life. He studied art history and methodology from antiquity to the modern day: the Old Masters – Rembrandt and Rubens, Michelangelo and Da Vinci, analyzing their practices and techniques; dug deep into the traditions of American and English art – from James Whistler and Thomas Eakins to John Constable and William Turner; the Japanese arts of woodblock, printmaking, and calligraphy; and nature – from human anatomy to the profound observation of fauna and flora, climate and weather.

Robert graduated from the School of Industrial Arts and the prestigious School of Visual Arts in Manhattan. He exhibited in galleries in New York through the 60s-70s and then in Florida at numerous galleries and museums through 2019.

With a heart full of love and generosity of spirit, he shared his skills and knowledge with students for more than forty years of making art in the studio and in plein air sessions. Moreover, he inspired and nurtured them, providing a platform to showcase their work in public exhibitions year after year, and earning acclaim and recognition for his dedication and purpose.

His credo: “When I paint, I feel the breath of God.”

Like all events at the Flood Gallery Fine Art Center, this exhibition is free and open to the public. Light refreshments and food will be served. The exhibit will display through June 3, 2023. For more information, visit floodgallery.org. Flood Gallery Fine Art Center is a non-profit 501(c)3 organization, and educates, encourages, challenges and inspires the community through music, film, literary, and contemporary art.

Included with admission

Embark on a scenic journey across George Vanderbilt’s Italy with a large-scale outdoor display that combines brilliant botanical designs with authentic messages written by Vanderbilt himself.

Beautifully handcrafted of natural elements, each sculptural postcard depicts a location or landmark Vanderbilt visited more than a century ago. This captivating complement to Biltmore’s Italian Renaissance Alive exhibition reveals Vanderbilt’s passions for travel, culture, architecture, and art as well as his personal experience of such renowned Italian cities as Milan, Florence, Venice, Pisa, and Vatican City.

Adding to the charm and visual appeal of Ciao! From Italy—sure to be a hit among kids of all ages—is the G-scale model train that travels in and out of each postcard in this enlightening display!

Andrea Rich’s intricately designed, carved, and printed woodcuts draw viewers in for an up-close look.

Some of the artist’s earliest memories are of drawing animals. Childhood encounters with pets, livestock, and wildlife, including birds, deer, and toads, created a lasting connection to the natural world. Through encounters with creatures both tame and wild, Rich developed a fascination and a compassion for animals integral to her art.

“My prints are a visual record of the intriguing creatures that have enriched my life. The woodcut process challenges me to focus on the essence of my subjects. At the same time, I am drawn to the smell of the wood, its texture and grain, and the pleasure I experience while carving. I begin working on a block of wood and realize later that hours have passed without notice.”

Rich uses a centuries-old medium that requires one carved wood panel for each color – varying from one to sixteen – necessary to develop the composition. These panels are painstakingly aligned one atop another sequentially and pulled through a printing press to create the final woodcut.

The subjects of Rich’s woodcuts range from the wilderness of the Australian outback and the lush tropical Amazon forests to the roaring rivers of Yellowstone Park. Rich has traveled worldwide to study wildlife habitats and these varied firsthand experiences are reflected in her work.

Among Rich’s many achievements are international recognition for her woodcut prints, including a 2009 Award of Excellence from the Society of Animal Artists and a 2009 Medal of Excellence from the Artists for Conservation Foundation. She was named Master Artist by the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum in 2006. In 2010 her work was featured in a solo exhibition at the Mass Audubon Visual Arts Center, Canton, Massachusetts. Rich is a member of the California Society of Printmakers, Artists for Nature Foundation, the Society of Animal Artists, and Society of Wildlife Artists.

In 2000 Rich designated the Woodson Art Museum as the repository for her artistic oeuvre. An Abundance of Riches is drawn from these holdings, which include an example of each of her woodcuts created since the mid-1980s.

Explore Biltmore House with an Audio Guide that introduces you to the Vanderbilt family and their magnificent home’s history, architecture, and collections of fine art and furnishings.

PLUS: Immersive, multi-sensory Italian Renaissance Alive exhibition created by Grande Experiences

PLUS: FREE next-day access to Biltmore’s Gardens and Grounds

This visit includes access to:

• Italian Renaissance Alive at Amherst at Deerpark®
• 8,000 Acres of Gardens and Grounds for two consecutive days
• Antler Hill Village & Winery
• Complimentary Wine Tastings at the Winery
• Tastings require a Day-of-Visit Reservation, which can be made by:
  • Scanning the QR Code found in your Estate Guide
  • Visiting any Guest Services location
• Complimentary parking

Art Exhibition: Italian Renaissance Alive

This fascinating experience takes you on a spellbinding tour of Italy, fully immersing you in the beauty and brilliance of iconic masterworks from the greatest artistic period in history

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.

Natural Collector is organized by the Asheville Art Museum. IMAGE: Christian Burchard, Untitled (nesting bowls), 1998, madrone burl, various from 6 × 6 × 6 to ⅜ × ⅜ × ⅜ inches. Gift of Fleur S. Bresler, 2021.76.01.

Natural Collector | Gifts of Fleur S. Bresler features around 15 artworks from the collection of Fleur S. Bresler, which include important examples of modern and contemporary American craft including wood and fiber art, as well as glass and ceramics. These works that were generously donated by contemporary craft collector Bresler to the Asheville Art Museum over the years reflect her strong interest in wood-based art and themes of nature. According to Associate Curator Whitney Richardson, “This exhibition highlights artworks that consider the natural element from which they were created or replicate known flora and fauna in unexpected materials. The selection of objects displayed illustrates how Bresler’s eye for collecting craft not only draws attention to nature and artists’ interest in it, but also accentuates her role as a natural collector with an intuitive ability to identify themes and ideas that speak to one another.” This exhibition presents work from the Collection representing the first generation of American wood turners like Rude Osolnik and Ed Moulthrop, as well as those that came after and learned from them, such as Philip Moulthrop, John Jordan, and local Western North Carolina (WNC) artist Stoney Lamar. Other WNC-based artists in Natural Collector include Anne Lemanski, whose paper sculpture of a snake captures the viewer’s imagination, and Michael Sherrill’s multimedia work that tricks the eye with its similarity to true-to-life berries. Also represented are beadwork and sculpture by Joyce J. Scott and Jack and Linda Fifield.

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.

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.

Steve Lapointe’s nine years of classical piano as a youth grounded him in music theory. Jazz studies while in Ithaca, NY, opened his ears to extemporaneous improvisation and the music of Keith Jarrett, Chick Corea, Bill Evans, Michel Petrucciani and the American songbook. Steve served as musical director of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Vero Beach, Florida, and occasionally performed at the UU Asheville congregation.

Included with admission

Embark on a scenic journey across George Vanderbilt’s Italy with a large-scale outdoor display that combines brilliant botanical designs with authentic messages written by Vanderbilt himself.

Beautifully handcrafted of natural elements, each sculptural postcard depicts a location or landmark Vanderbilt visited more than a century ago. This captivating complement to Biltmore’s Italian Renaissance Alive exhibition reveals Vanderbilt’s passions for travel, culture, architecture, and art as well as his personal experience of such renowned Italian cities as Milan, Florence, Venice, Pisa, and Vatican City.

Adding to the charm and visual appeal of Ciao! From Italy—sure to be a hit among kids of all ages—is the G-scale model train that travels in and out of each postcard in this enlightening display!

Andrea Rich’s intricately designed, carved, and printed woodcuts draw viewers in for an up-close look.

Some of the artist’s earliest memories are of drawing animals. Childhood encounters with pets, livestock, and wildlife, including birds, deer, and toads, created a lasting connection to the natural world. Through encounters with creatures both tame and wild, Rich developed a fascination and a compassion for animals integral to her art.

“My prints are a visual record of the intriguing creatures that have enriched my life. The woodcut process challenges me to focus on the essence of my subjects. At the same time, I am drawn to the smell of the wood, its texture and grain, and the pleasure I experience while carving. I begin working on a block of wood and realize later that hours have passed without notice.”

Rich uses a centuries-old medium that requires one carved wood panel for each color – varying from one to sixteen – necessary to develop the composition. These panels are painstakingly aligned one atop another sequentially and pulled through a printing press to create the final woodcut.

The subjects of Rich’s woodcuts range from the wilderness of the Australian outback and the lush tropical Amazon forests to the roaring rivers of Yellowstone Park. Rich has traveled worldwide to study wildlife habitats and these varied firsthand experiences are reflected in her work.

Among Rich’s many achievements are international recognition for her woodcut prints, including a 2009 Award of Excellence from the Society of Animal Artists and a 2009 Medal of Excellence from the Artists for Conservation Foundation. She was named Master Artist by the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum in 2006. In 2010 her work was featured in a solo exhibition at the Mass Audubon Visual Arts Center, Canton, Massachusetts. Rich is a member of the California Society of Printmakers, Artists for Nature Foundation, the Society of Animal Artists, and Society of Wildlife Artists.

In 2000 Rich designated the Woodson Art Museum as the repository for her artistic oeuvre. An Abundance of Riches is drawn from these holdings, which include an example of each of her woodcuts created since the mid-1980s.