Calendar of Events
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.
Exhibition and Public Programming
Vera B. Williams, an award-winning author and illustrator of children’s books, started making pictures almost as soon as she could walk. She studied at Black Mountain College in a time where summer institutes were held with classes taught by John Cage and Merce Cunningham. Williams studied under the Bauhaus luminary Josef Albers and went on to make art for the rest of her life. At the time of her death, The New York Times wrote: “Her illustrations, known for bold colors and a style reminiscent of folk art, were praised by reviewers for their great tenderness and crackling vitality.” Despite numerous awards and recognition for her children’s books, much of her wider life and work remains unexplored. This retrospective will showcase the complete range of Williams’ life and work. It will highlight her time at Black Mountain College, her political activism, and her establishment, with Paul Williams, of an influential yet little-known artist community, in addition to her work as an author and illustrator.
Author and illustrator of 17 children’s books, including Caldecott medal winner, A Chair for My Mother, Vera B. Williams always had a passion for the arts. Williams grew up in the Bronx, NY, and in 1936, when she was nine years old, one of her paintings, called Yentas, opens a new window, was included in an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. While Williams is widely known for her children’s books today, this exhibition’s expansive scope highlights unexplored aspects of her artistic practice and eight decades of life. From groundbreaking, powerful covers for Liberation Magazine, to Peace calendar collaborations with writer activist Grace Paley, to scenic sketches for Julian Beck and Judith Malina’s Living Theater, to hundreds of late life “Aging and Illness” cartoons sketches and doodles, Vera never sat still.
Williams arrived at Black Mountain College in 1945. While there, she embraced all aspects of living, working, and learning in the intensely creative college community. She was at BMC during a particularly fertile period, which allowed her to study with faculty members Buckminster Fuller and Josef Albers, and to participate in the famed summer sessions with John Cage, Merce Cunningham, M.C. Richards, and Robert Rauschenberg. In 1948, she graduated with Josef Albers as her advisor and sculptor Richard Lippold as her outside examiner. Forever one of the College’s shining stars, Vera graduated from BMC with just six semesters of coursework, at only twenty-one years old. She continued to visit BMC for years afterward, staying deeply involved with the artistic community that BMC incubated.
Anticipating the eventual closure of BMC, Williams, alongside her husband Paul Williams and a group of influential former BMC figures, founded The Gate Hill Cooperative Artists community located 30 miles north of NYC on the outskirts of Stony Point, NY. The Gate Hill Cooperative, also known as The Land, became an outcropping of Black Mountain College’s experimental ethos. Students and faculty including John Cage, M.C. Richards, David Tudor, Karen Karnes, David Weinrib, Stan VanDerBeek, and Patsy Lynch Wood shaped Gate Hill as founding members of the community. Vera B. Williams raised her three children at Gate Hill while continuing to make work.
The early Gate Hill era represented an especially creative phase for the BMC group. For Williams, this period saw the creation of 76 covers for Liberation Magazine, a radical, groundbreaking publication. This exhibition will feature some of Williams’ most powerful Liberation covers including a design for the June 1963 edition, which contained the first full publication of MLK’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” Williams’ activism work continued throughout her life. As president of PEN’s Children Committee and member of The War Resisters league, she created a wide range of political and educational posters and journal covers. Williams protested the war in Vietnam and nuclear proliferation while supporting women’s causes and racial equality. In 1981, Williams was arrested and spent a month in a federal prison on charges stemming from her political activism.
In her late 40’s, Williams embarked in earnest on her career as a children’s book author and illustrator, a career which garnered the NY Public Library’s recognition of A Chair for My Mother as one of the greatest 100 children’s books of all time. Infinitely curious and always a wanderer at heart, Williams’ personal life was as expansive as her art. In addition to her prolific picture making, Williams started and helped run a Summerhill-based alternative school, canoed the Yukon, and lived alone on a houseboat in Vancouver Harbor. She helped to organize and attended dozens of political demonstrations throughout her adult life.
Her books won many awards including the Caldecott Medal Honor Book for A Chair for My Mother in 1983, the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award– Fiction category– for Scooter in 1994, the Jane Addams Honor for Amber Was Brave, Essie Was Smart in 2002, and the NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s Literature in 2009. Her books reflected her values, emphasizing love, compassion, kindness, joy, strength, individuality, and courage.
Images:
Cover of Vera B. Williams’ A Chair for My Mother, published in 1982.
Vera B. Williams, Cover for Liberation Magazine, November 1958.
West Asheville Library Book Discussion group will discuss Travels With Charley by John Steinbeck. This is an online Zoom event. Please join us! Email [email protected] for the Zoom information.
Register so we can reach out and contact you as we prepare for our first meeting! Books will be distributed at the first meeting. This book club is for adults 18+.
Meetings will be on Tuesday evenings from 5:30-7pm (meeting location will be emailed once attendance is finalized)
Below are all the meeting dates:
December 5th
December 12th
December 19th
Skipping December 26th
January 2nd
January 9th
January 16th
Skipping January 22nd
January 30th
Our VOICE will be hosting a book club beginning this winter! Fill out the form to sign up as we have a limited amount of space!. Our first book selection will be Creating Consent Culture by Erica Scott and Marcia Baczynski. Books will be distributed at the first meeting and bus passes will be provided. This club will be offered in English, but we are looking to provide more opportunities in the future!
Books will be distributed at the first meeting. This book club is for adults 18+.
Meetings will be on Tuesday evenings from 5:30-7pm (meeting location will be emailed once attendance is finalized)
Below are all the meeting dates:
December 5th
December 12th
December 19th
Skipping December 26th
January 2nd
January 9th
January 16th
Skipping January 22nd
January 30th
This free Book Club Fair event has the option to attend either in-person at the Pack Memorial Library (no registration needed) or online.
Registration is required for virtual attendance.
Please click here to register. The link required to attend will be emailed to registrants prior to the event.
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Lucinda Williams’ music has gotten her through her darkest days. It’s been that way since growing up amid family chaos in the Deep South, as she recounts in her candid new memoir, Don’t Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You. Over the past two years, it’s been the force driving her recovery from a debilitating stroke she suffered on November 17, 2020, at age 67. Her masterful, multi-Grammy-winning songwriting has never deserted her. To wit, her stunning, sixteenth studio album, Stories from a Rock n Roll Heart, brims over with some of the best work of her career. And though Williams can no longer play her beloved guitar – a constant companion since age 12 – her distinctive vocals sound better than ever.
Through all the hardships Williams faced in 2020 – a destructive tornado damaging her new home in Nashville, being sidelined by the pandemic, and then the catastrophic stroke – her music kept her going and continues to bring her more laurels. The past year has seen Williams honored by BMI for her songwriting, her induction into the Austin City Limits Hall of Fame, and a Grammy Week tribute at the Troubadour, with her songs performed by a diversity of Americana artists. She duetted with Willie Nelson on Billy Joe Shaver’s “Live Forever,” which won a Grammy in February for Best Country Performance. On her birthday in January she performed at a sold-out show in Belfast, Ireland. “I was so glad I was there when I turned 70,” she relates. “The audience sang ‘Happy Birthday,’ Travis brought a birthday cake out onstage, and we took it on the bus and all had a piece of cake. Afterwards, I was so inspired I started writing a song about Northern Ireland.”
As she promises on the powerful last track of Stories from a Rock n Roll Heart–one of the best albums of her career–Lucinda Williams is “never gonna fade away.”
Adult Classes
Wednesdays
2:45-3:45 pm & 6:15-7:15 pm
Afternoon adult classes are for fiddle, beginning guitar, and beginning mandolin. Evening adult classes are for bluegrass jam, and beginning clawhammer banjo.
“If you don’t let things develop, it’s like keeping something in a bag and not letting it out to fly”
— Earl Scruggs
It’s never too late to learn to play and/or enjoy being part of the synergy that is created by adult PacJAMMERs!
Adult classes are $15/session, for a total of $210 for the 14-week session.
A special prix fixe dinner for two is now available for preorder online until Feb. 12 or while supplies last. Pickup is 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Feb. 14. Orders will be picked up chilled with complete reheating instructions included. The meal features lobster bisque with creme fraiche and brown butter croutons, port wine-braised beef short ribs, truffle risotto, dark chocolate lava cake with blueberry-lavender whipped cream.
Sigal Music Museum’s current special exhibition, Worlds Apart: Musical Instruments from Secular to Sacred, highlights items from the JoAnn and Frank Edwinn Collection, which hails from all over the world. Showing November 2023 – May 2024, Worlds Apart uses a diverse range of historical instruments, objects, and visuals to bring together musical narratives from seemingly disparate parts of the globe.
Worlds Apart: Musical Instruments from Secular to Sacred aims to increase public access to historical instruments from around the world and improve visitors’ understanding of musical traditions at the global level. Expanding beyond the typical parameters of the Western musical canon, Worlds Apart seeks to expose audiences to musical instruments and customs that are often overlooked or exotified. The instruments and other exhibit materials will offer visitors new perspectives on global music and a chance to consider how music is used for prayer and leisure in cultures around the world. By celebrating these stories, the museum intends to further its mission to collect and preserve historical musical instruments, objects, and information, which engage and enrich people of all ages through exhibits, performances, and experiential programs.
Displaying various objects from the JoAnn and Frank Edwinn Collection, Worlds Apart: Musical Instruments from Secular to Sacred focuses on international musical instruments and cultures, celebrating rites and traditions with ancient histories and contemporary legacies. Frank Edwinn, a successful basso in the mid-20th century, studied and toured internationally, eventually settling in North Carolina, where he taught music at the University of North Carolina Asheville. Throughout his life, he purchased various objects from around the world, aiming to expose students, and himself, to the wide and wonderful world of musical instruments. This impressive collection occupies a unique position for educating audiences unfamiliar with the vast scope of global music.
And, UNCA’s Ramsey Library Special Collections is now processing the Edwinn’s papers and a few recordings that will be accessible next semester!
Exhibition and Public Programming
Vera B. Williams, an award-winning author and illustrator of children’s books, started making pictures almost as soon as she could walk. She studied at Black Mountain College in a time where summer institutes were held with classes taught by John Cage and Merce Cunningham. Williams studied under the Bauhaus luminary Josef Albers and went on to make art for the rest of her life. At the time of her death, The New York Times wrote: “Her illustrations, known for bold colors and a style reminiscent of folk art, were praised by reviewers for their great tenderness and crackling vitality.” Despite numerous awards and recognition for her children’s books, much of her wider life and work remains unexplored. This retrospective will showcase the complete range of Williams’ life and work. It will highlight her time at Black Mountain College, her political activism, and her establishment, with Paul Williams, of an influential yet little-known artist community, in addition to her work as an author and illustrator.
Author and illustrator of 17 children’s books, including Caldecott medal winner, A Chair for My Mother, Vera B. Williams always had a passion for the arts. Williams grew up in the Bronx, NY, and in 1936, when she was nine years old, one of her paintings, called Yentas, opens a new window, was included in an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. While Williams is widely known for her children’s books today, this exhibition’s expansive scope highlights unexplored aspects of her artistic practice and eight decades of life. From groundbreaking, powerful covers for Liberation Magazine, to Peace calendar collaborations with writer activist Grace Paley, to scenic sketches for Julian Beck and Judith Malina’s Living Theater, to hundreds of late life “Aging and Illness” cartoons sketches and doodles, Vera never sat still.
Williams arrived at Black Mountain College in 1945. While there, she embraced all aspects of living, working, and learning in the intensely creative college community. She was at BMC during a particularly fertile period, which allowed her to study with faculty members Buckminster Fuller and Josef Albers, and to participate in the famed summer sessions with John Cage, Merce Cunningham, M.C. Richards, and Robert Rauschenberg. In 1948, she graduated with Josef Albers as her advisor and sculptor Richard Lippold as her outside examiner. Forever one of the College’s shining stars, Vera graduated from BMC with just six semesters of coursework, at only twenty-one years old. She continued to visit BMC for years afterward, staying deeply involved with the artistic community that BMC incubated.
Anticipating the eventual closure of BMC, Williams, alongside her husband Paul Williams and a group of influential former BMC figures, founded The Gate Hill Cooperative Artists community located 30 miles north of NYC on the outskirts of Stony Point, NY. The Gate Hill Cooperative, also known as The Land, became an outcropping of Black Mountain College’s experimental ethos. Students and faculty including John Cage, M.C. Richards, David Tudor, Karen Karnes, David Weinrib, Stan VanDerBeek, and Patsy Lynch Wood shaped Gate Hill as founding members of the community. Vera B. Williams raised her three children at Gate Hill while continuing to make work.
The early Gate Hill era represented an especially creative phase for the BMC group. For Williams, this period saw the creation of 76 covers for Liberation Magazine, a radical, groundbreaking publication. This exhibition will feature some of Williams’ most powerful Liberation covers including a design for the June 1963 edition, which contained the first full publication of MLK’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” Williams’ activism work continued throughout her life. As president of PEN’s Children Committee and member of The War Resisters league, she created a wide range of political and educational posters and journal covers. Williams protested the war in Vietnam and nuclear proliferation while supporting women’s causes and racial equality. In 1981, Williams was arrested and spent a month in a federal prison on charges stemming from her political activism.
In her late 40’s, Williams embarked in earnest on her career as a children’s book author and illustrator, a career which garnered the NY Public Library’s recognition of A Chair for My Mother as one of the greatest 100 children’s books of all time. Infinitely curious and always a wanderer at heart, Williams’ personal life was as expansive as her art. In addition to her prolific picture making, Williams started and helped run a Summerhill-based alternative school, canoed the Yukon, and lived alone on a houseboat in Vancouver Harbor. She helped to organize and attended dozens of political demonstrations throughout her adult life.
Her books won many awards including the Caldecott Medal Honor Book for A Chair for My Mother in 1983, the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award– Fiction category– for Scooter in 1994, the Jane Addams Honor for Amber Was Brave, Essie Was Smart in 2002, and the NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s Literature in 2009. Her books reflected her values, emphasizing love, compassion, kindness, joy, strength, individuality, and courage.
Images:
Cover of Vera B. Williams’ A Chair for My Mother, published in 1982.
Vera B. Williams, Cover for Liberation Magazine, November 1958.
Sing with our Choir at a progressive church
Come join us! Contact Mark Acker for more information ([email protected]).
Rehearsals on Wednesday’s, 3:30-4:45
Beginning & Intermediate youth music classes on traditional and ol’ time instruments including but not limited to, fiddle, mandolin, banjo and guitar. Students will attend 40 minutes of music enrichment, including multiple flat-footing sessions led by Alice Kexel, story-telling, visits from guest musicians, as well as learn about the heritage of the music and the region. They will have 40 minutes of group music classes, and 40 minutes of singing or JAM rehearsal.
Advanced students will have 40 minutes of group instrument lessons, followed by 30 minutes of advanced singing including harmony and shape-note singing, and finish with 50 minutes of coached, small-ensemble rehearsal.
Classes are $15/session, for a total of $210 for the first student, and a 20% discount of $168 for each additional sibling. Parents may choose to split payments when registering. Inquire with Julie Moore at [email protected] or 864-420-6407 about scholarships.
Youth Classes
Wednesdays, 4-6 pm
Grab some dinner and a pint while enjoying our long-running Old-Time jam! Featuring many talented musicians from the local WNC area, our traditional Appalachian mountain music jam runs from 5-9pm every Wednesday night at Jack of the Wood!
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Join us at the distillery for a fun and creative night of painting. An instructor with Crafted Clarity Sip & Paint will walk you through the steps to create your very own masterpiece.
Each ticket holder will receive a prepared (16×20”) canvas with a pre-sketched drawing and all painting materials at the start of the class.
We ask that each guest makes at least one drink purchase during the event to help support the venue.
Weekly mountain music JAM with
players in a round, where the session is focused on regional fiddle tunes and songs, You are welcome to come and listen or to
learn and join in. This event supports the Henderson County Junior Appalachian Musician (JAM) Kids Program, Free but
donations are accepted.
This is a hybrid event with limited in-store seating and the option to attend online.
The event is free but registration is required for both in-person and virtual attendance.
Please click here to register for the VIRTUAL event. The link required to attend will be emailed to registrants prior to the event.
Please click here to register for the IN-PERSON event. Note the important event details on the RSVP form.
This event includes a book signing. If you would like a signed book but can’t attend in person, you may order a signed copy online below. If you would like to have your book personalized, please order online or call the store at least two hours before the start of the event. When ordering online, use the comments field to provide a name for personalization, e.g. “To Paul.” NOTE: We do our best to get books personalized when requested but personalization is not guaranteed.
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!
For readers of Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier and Enemy Women by Paulette Jiles, an evocative, morally complex novel set in rural 19th century North Carolina, as one woman fights to keep her family united, her farm running, and her convictions whole during the most devastating and divisive period in American history.
Talk of impending war is a steady drumbeat throughout North Carolina, though Joetta McBride pays it little heed. She and her husband, Ennis, have built a modest but happy life for themselves, raising two sons, fifteen-year-old Henry, and eleven-year-old Robert, on their small subsistence farm. They do not support the Confederacy’s position on slavery, but Joetta considers her family to be neutral, believing this is simply not their fight.
Her opinion is not favored by many in their community, including Joetta’s own father-in-law, Rudean. A staunch Confederate supporter, he fills his grandsons’ heads with stories about the glory of battle and the Southern cause until one night Henry runs off to join the war. At Joetta’s frantic insistence, Ennis leaves to find their son and bring him home.
But soon weeks pass with no word from father or son and Joetta is battered by the strain of running a farm with so little help. As the country becomes further entangled in the ramifications of war, Joetta finds herself increasingly at odds with those around her – until one act of kindness brings her family to the edge of even greater disaster.
Though shunned and struggling to survive, Joetta remains committed to her principles, and to her belief that her family will survive. But the greatest tests are still to come – for a fractured nation, for Joetta, and for those she loves . . .
Donna Everhart is a USA Today bestselling author known for vividly evoking the complexities of the heart and a gritty fascination of the American South in her acclaimed novels. She is the recipient of the prestigious SELA Outstanding Southeastern Author Award from the Southeastern Library Association and her novels have received a SIBA Okra Pick, an Indie Next Pick, and two Publishers Marketplace Buzz Books selections. Born and raised in Raleigh, she has stayed close to her hometown for much of her life and now lives just an hour away in Dunn, North Carolina. Please visit Donna Everhart online at DonnaEverhart.com.
Join chef Sergio Castro for an elegant French dinner paired with specially curated French wines. The evening begins with a charcuterie spread and Champagne followed by four courses ranging from lobster bisque to pots de crème.
To reserve your spot please call 828.500.1450 or email [email protected]
Every Wednesday
Trivia Night
A special prix fixe dinner for two is now available for preorder online until Feb. 12 or while supplies last. Pickup is 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Feb. 14. Orders will be picked up chilled with complete reheating instructions included. The meal features lobster bisque with creme fraiche and brown butter croutons, port wine-braised beef short ribs, truffle risotto, dark chocolate lava cake with blueberry-lavender whipped cream.
Could you use some inspiring good music for the soul right now?
As a special gift for LEAF Members, White Horse Black Mountain would like to invite you as a guest for an evening of music on Thursday, February 1, with powerful songstress and LEAF Teaching Artist Whitney Monge. Dinner is by La Guinguette (you know Ceclia’s crepes from LEAF Festival — this is her Black Mountain Restaurant).
The first 30 LEAF Members to email the White Horse Black Mountain Team at [email protected], with their name and the number in their party, will be confirmed.
Presale Tickets on sale:
Thursday, Feb. 1 from 10AM-10PM
Presale Code: PANTHER
– California’s greatest export Steel Panther is announcing additional dates to their On The Prowl
Tour 2024. The band will bring the Steel Panther party train to The Hall at Spartanburg Memorial Auditorium in
Spartanburg, SC on Saturday, May 11. Tickets for the show will go on sale this Friday, February 2
nd at 10AM local
time. Additional Information on all ticket and VIP packages including meet and greets, exclusive merch items, early
entry and more for all tour dates can be found here: https://steelpantherrocks.com/pages/tour.
Steel Panther released their sixth studio album On The Prowl worldwide on February 24, 2023. On The Prowl was
produced by Steel Panther and brought the band their most-recent #1 Billboard comedy album. The album is
currently available for order in multiple configurations including CD, Cassette, and 2 different color variant vinyl
records here: https://lnk.to/Panther_OTP. From the opening synth intro of “Never Too Late (To Get Some Pu**y
Tonight)” to the thunderous outro of “Sleeping On The Rollaway,” Steel Panther is back with the infectious riffs,
pounding drums, unforgettable vocals alongside the witty humor that has earned them a global audience. Songs
like “On Your Instagram,” “Magical Vagina” and “One Pump Chump” are sure to fit in on the biggest live stages next
to the band’s most-memorable songs. The band has released the music videos from On The Prowl to date: the
opener “Never Too Late (To Get Some Pu**y Tonight),” the chart-topping German radio hit “1987,” the Shark Tank
inspired “Friends With Benefits and most-recently their ode to social media with “On Your Instagram.”
The track listing for On The Prowl is:
1) Never Too Late (To Get Some Pu**y Tonight)
2) Friends With Benefits
3) On Your Instagram
4) Put My Money Where Your Mouth Is
5) 1987
6) Teleporter
7) Is My D**k Enough (feat. Dweezil Zappa)
8) Magical Vagina
9) All That And More
10) One Pump Chump
11) Pornstar
12) Ain’t Dead Yet
13) Sleeping On The Rollaway
Sigal Music Museum’s current special exhibition, Worlds Apart: Musical Instruments from Secular to Sacred, highlights items from the JoAnn and Frank Edwinn Collection, which hails from all over the world. Showing November 2023 – May 2024, Worlds Apart uses a diverse range of historical instruments, objects, and visuals to bring together musical narratives from seemingly disparate parts of the globe.
Worlds Apart: Musical Instruments from Secular to Sacred aims to increase public access to historical instruments from around the world and improve visitors’ understanding of musical traditions at the global level. Expanding beyond the typical parameters of the Western musical canon, Worlds Apart seeks to expose audiences to musical instruments and customs that are often overlooked or exotified. The instruments and other exhibit materials will offer visitors new perspectives on global music and a chance to consider how music is used for prayer and leisure in cultures around the world. By celebrating these stories, the museum intends to further its mission to collect and preserve historical musical instruments, objects, and information, which engage and enrich people of all ages through exhibits, performances, and experiential programs.
Displaying various objects from the JoAnn and Frank Edwinn Collection, Worlds Apart: Musical Instruments from Secular to Sacred focuses on international musical instruments and cultures, celebrating rites and traditions with ancient histories and contemporary legacies. Frank Edwinn, a successful basso in the mid-20th century, studied and toured internationally, eventually settling in North Carolina, where he taught music at the University of North Carolina Asheville. Throughout his life, he purchased various objects from around the world, aiming to expose students, and himself, to the wide and wonderful world of musical instruments. This impressive collection occupies a unique position for educating audiences unfamiliar with the vast scope of global music.
And, UNCA’s Ramsey Library Special Collections is now processing the Edwinn’s papers and a few recordings that will be accessible next semester!
Exhibition and Public Programming
Vera B. Williams, an award-winning author and illustrator of children’s books, started making pictures almost as soon as she could walk. She studied at Black Mountain College in a time where summer institutes were held with classes taught by John Cage and Merce Cunningham. Williams studied under the Bauhaus luminary Josef Albers and went on to make art for the rest of her life. At the time of her death, The New York Times wrote: “Her illustrations, known for bold colors and a style reminiscent of folk art, were praised by reviewers for their great tenderness and crackling vitality.” Despite numerous awards and recognition for her children’s books, much of her wider life and work remains unexplored. This retrospective will showcase the complete range of Williams’ life and work. It will highlight her time at Black Mountain College, her political activism, and her establishment, with Paul Williams, of an influential yet little-known artist community, in addition to her work as an author and illustrator.
Author and illustrator of 17 children’s books, including Caldecott medal winner, A Chair for My Mother, Vera B. Williams always had a passion for the arts. Williams grew up in the Bronx, NY, and in 1936, when she was nine years old, one of her paintings, called Yentas, opens a new window, was included in an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. While Williams is widely known for her children’s books today, this exhibition’s expansive scope highlights unexplored aspects of her artistic practice and eight decades of life. From groundbreaking, powerful covers for Liberation Magazine, to Peace calendar collaborations with writer activist Grace Paley, to scenic sketches for Julian Beck and Judith Malina’s Living Theater, to hundreds of late life “Aging and Illness” cartoons sketches and doodles, Vera never sat still.
Williams arrived at Black Mountain College in 1945. While there, she embraced all aspects of living, working, and learning in the intensely creative college community. She was at BMC during a particularly fertile period, which allowed her to study with faculty members Buckminster Fuller and Josef Albers, and to participate in the famed summer sessions with John Cage, Merce Cunningham, M.C. Richards, and Robert Rauschenberg. In 1948, she graduated with Josef Albers as her advisor and sculptor Richard Lippold as her outside examiner. Forever one of the College’s shining stars, Vera graduated from BMC with just six semesters of coursework, at only twenty-one years old. She continued to visit BMC for years afterward, staying deeply involved with the artistic community that BMC incubated.
Anticipating the eventual closure of BMC, Williams, alongside her husband Paul Williams and a group of influential former BMC figures, founded The Gate Hill Cooperative Artists community located 30 miles north of NYC on the outskirts of Stony Point, NY. The Gate Hill Cooperative, also known as The Land, became an outcropping of Black Mountain College’s experimental ethos. Students and faculty including John Cage, M.C. Richards, David Tudor, Karen Karnes, David Weinrib, Stan VanDerBeek, and Patsy Lynch Wood shaped Gate Hill as founding members of the community. Vera B. Williams raised her three children at Gate Hill while continuing to make work.
The early Gate Hill era represented an especially creative phase for the BMC group. For Williams, this period saw the creation of 76 covers for Liberation Magazine, a radical, groundbreaking publication. This exhibition will feature some of Williams’ most powerful Liberation covers including a design for the June 1963 edition, which contained the first full publication of MLK’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” Williams’ activism work continued throughout her life. As president of PEN’s Children Committee and member of The War Resisters league, she created a wide range of political and educational posters and journal covers. Williams protested the war in Vietnam and nuclear proliferation while supporting women’s causes and racial equality. In 1981, Williams was arrested and spent a month in a federal prison on charges stemming from her political activism.
In her late 40’s, Williams embarked in earnest on her career as a children’s book author and illustrator, a career which garnered the NY Public Library’s recognition of A Chair for My Mother as one of the greatest 100 children’s books of all time. Infinitely curious and always a wanderer at heart, Williams’ personal life was as expansive as her art. In addition to her prolific picture making, Williams started and helped run a Summerhill-based alternative school, canoed the Yukon, and lived alone on a houseboat in Vancouver Harbor. She helped to organize and attended dozens of political demonstrations throughout her adult life.
Her books won many awards including the Caldecott Medal Honor Book for A Chair for My Mother in 1983, the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award– Fiction category– for Scooter in 1994, the Jane Addams Honor for Amber Was Brave, Essie Was Smart in 2002, and the NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s Literature in 2009. Her books reflected her values, emphasizing love, compassion, kindness, joy, strength, individuality, and courage.
Images:
Cover of Vera B. Williams’ A Chair for My Mother, published in 1982.
Vera B. Williams, Cover for Liberation Magazine, November 1958.
Taste of Asheville is presented by Cheney Brothers, with Sponsor/VIP Hour brought to you by Performance Foodservice.
Join us for an unforgettable evening of culinary delights at the Taste of Asheville 2024 event, proudly presented by Cheney Brothers, with VIP Hour brought to you by Performance Foodservice. Thursday, February 1, 2024 at the Mission Health / A-B Tech Conference Center.
Prepare your taste buds for a gastronomic adventure as renowned chefs and local culinary talents come together to showcase their finest creations. From savory to sweet, this event promises to tantalize your senses and leave you craving for more.
Whether you’re a food enthusiast, a curious connoisseur, or simply looking for a delightful evening out, the Taste of Asheville 2024 is the place to be. Discover new flavors, meet talented chefs, and immerse yourself in the culinary wonders of our city.
Don’t miss your chance to be a part of this extraordinary event. Mark your calendars, gather your friends, and get ready to embark on a culinary journey like no other. Tickets are limited and will sellout.
**List of particpants is subject to change.
BLUEGRASS JAM
Hosted by Drew Matulich
Don’t miss your chance to check out some of the best pickers from all over WNC at our amazing Bluegrass Jam curated by the talented Drew Matulich — every Thursday starting at 7:00 pm! A real show-stopping performance only at Jack of the Wood! Open jam starts at 9:30 pm.
Join us for Jazz Jam Thursday every Thursday from 7-10. There is a suggested donation of $10 and local craft beer and wine for sale. Come as you are or bring an instrument! Open jam starts at 8 after a House Band set guaranteed to fill your soul with groove and joy.
Public parking is available at Marjorie Street, across from Packs Tavern.
Originally scheduled for November 19th 2023 at 7:30 p.m., this concert will now occur on February 1st, 2024 at 7:30 p.m.
Husband and wife duo, Woody Platt and Shannon Whitworth of Brevard, North Carolina, each have a unique history of musical accomplishments. A silver lining of the global pandemic has been more time at home, which has allowed them to play, write, record and perform together. They have curated a set of music comprised mostly of Whitworth’s original songs.
Shannon Whitworth’s swoon-inducing musical style found its first showcase in her Asheville-produced solo debut, 2007’s No Expectations. Followed by 2009’s critically-acclaimed Water Bound, an album that drew comparisons to Emmylou Harris’ Wrecking Ball. Whitworth is a songwriter, vocalist, and multi-instrumentalist. She has garnered praise in outlets ranging from People magazine to Garden & Gun. Her honest reinterpretation of ‘Americana,’ a la Mark Knopfler meets Norah Jones and the ghost of Julie London, has garnered Whitworth prime appearances from Philadelphia Folk Festival to Yosemite’s Strawberry Music Festival to Nashville’s own Ryman Auditorium. Shannon is also an acclaimed artist and spends much of her time in her art studio these days. She was quoted in Walter Magazine saying, “My art is how I see the world,” says artist and singer-songwriter Shannon Whitworth. “And my music is how I hear it.”
Woody Platt, a Brevard native, was a founding member of the Grammy award winning band Steep Canyon Rangers. The band started as a group of friends getting together to play music that they love while studying at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and blossomed into the highly successful and world-renowned musicians that they are today. The band toured the world on their own, and alongside the well-known actor/comedian/musician Steve Martin. During Woody’s tenure with Steep Canyon Rangers, the band won multiple awards from the International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA), a Grammy award with 3 total Grammy Nominations and were inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame. Since retiring from the Steep Canyon Rangers in the summer of 2022 – Woody has been working on solo recording projects including a debut single “One Last Goodbye” which features an all-star Bluegrass lineup and was written by Chris Stapleton. “One Last Goodbye” spent several months in the number one position on the Bluegrass charts.
A special prix fixe dinner for two is now available for preorder online until Feb. 12 or while supplies last. Pickup is 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Feb. 14. Orders will be picked up chilled with complete reheating instructions included. The meal features lobster bisque with creme fraiche and brown butter croutons, port wine-braised beef short ribs, truffle risotto, dark chocolate lava cake with blueberry-lavender whipped cream.
Join the Steep Canyon Rangers for their annual Bluegrass event Winter Camp at the Oskar Blues Brewery.