Bargain Hendo Thrift Store will be permanently closing its doors on December 13th.
• WNCSource operates the small thrift store which is located on the corner of King Street
and 2nd Avenue in Hendersonville.
• Bargain Hendo first opened in December of 2020 and was meant to support the programs
and services WNCSource provides in 4 western North Carolina Counties. Unfortunately,
low sales and competition from other local thrift stores has made the store less than
profitable.
• But don’t worry, starting Thursday, November 2nd, Bargain Hendo will be open
Wednesdays through Fridays 10AM to 4PM and Saturdays from 10AM to 2PM with some
incredible bargains and sales to clear the shelves.
• Bargain Hendo’s last day is December 13th

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!

Images: Left: Minna Wright Citron, Squid Under Pier, 1948, color etching, soft-ground, and engraving on paper, edition 42/50, 15 x 17 7/8 inches, 2010 Collections Circle purchase, Asheville Art Museum. © Estate of Minna Citron/Licensed by VAGA at ARS, New York. Right: Dorothy Dehner, Woman #2, 1954, watercolor and ink on paper, 22 3/4 x 18”, courtesy of Dolan Maxwell.

The Asheville Art Museum is pleased to announce the upcoming exhibition American Art in the Atomic Age: 1940–1960, which explores the groundbreaking contributions of artists who worked at the experimental printmaking studio Atelier 17 in the wake of World War II. Co-curated by Marilyn Laufer and Tom Butler, American Art in the Atomic Age which draws from the holdings of Dolan/Maxwell, the Asheville Art Museum Collection, and private collections will be on view from November 10, 2023–April 29, 2024.

Atelier 17 operated in New York for fifteen years, between 1940 and 1955. The studio’s founder, Stanley William Hayter (1901–1988) established the workshop in Paris but relocated to New York just as the Nazi occupation of Paris began in 1940. Hayter’s new studio attracted European emigrants like André Masson, Yves Tanguy, and Joan Miró, as well as American artists like Dorothy Dehner, Judith Rothschild, and Karl Schrag, allowing for an exchange of artistic ideas and processes between European and American artists.

The Asheville Art Museum will present over 100 works that exemplify the cross-cultural exchange and profound social and political impact of Atelier 17 on American art. Prints made at Atelier 17—including those by Stanley William Hayter, Louise Nevelson, and Perle Fine—will be in conversation with works by European Surrealists who were working at the studio in the 1940s and 1950s. The exhibition will also feature a selection of domestic mid-century objects that exemplify how the ideas and aesthetics of post-war abstraction became a part of everyday life.

Throughout the history of painting from the mid-19th century forward, artists have used an endless variety of approaches to record their world. Beyond the Lens: Photorealist Perspectives on Looking, Seeing, and Painting continues this thread, offering an opportunity to explore a singular and still forceful aspect of American art. Photorealism shares many of the approaches of historical and modernist realism, with a twist. The use of the camera as a basic tool for organizing visual information in advance of painterly expression is now quite common, but Photorealists embraced the camera as the focal point in their creative process. Beyond the Lens presents key works from the collection of Louis K. and Susan Pear Meisel, bringing together paintings and works on paper dating from the 1970s to the present to focus on this profoundly influential art movement. The exhibition includes work by highly acclaimed formative artists of the movement such as Charles Bell, Robert Bechtle, Tom Blackwell, Richard Estes, Audrey Flack, and Ralph Goings as well as paintings by the successive generations of Photorealist artists Anthony Brunelli, Davis Cone, Bertrand Meniel, Rod Penner, and Raphaella Spence. Featured artworks in the exhibition include diverse subject matters, but the primary focus is on the common and every day: urban scenes, “portraits” of cars, trucks, and motorcycles, still life compositions using toys, food, candy wrappers, and salt and pepper shakers. All provide opportunities for virtuoso studies in how light, reflection, and the camera as intermediary shapes our perception of the material world. This multigenerational survey demonstrates how the 35-mm camera, and later technological advances in digital image-making, informed and impacted the painterly gesture. Taken together, the paintings and works on paper in Beyond the Lens show how simply spellbinding these virtuosic works of art can be. “Beyond the Lens offers a fascinating look into the Photorealism movement and delves into the profound connection between the artists’ observation and creative process,” says Pamela L. Myers, Executive Director of Asheville Art Museum. “We are delighted to present this curated collection of artworks encapsulating the creative vision and technical precision that defines this artistic genre.” Photorealism found its roots in the late 1960s in California and New York, coexisting with an explosion of new ideas in art-making that included Conceptual, Pop, Minimalism, Land and Performance Art. At first, representational realism coexisted with the thematic and conceptual explosion but was eventually relegated to the margins regarding critical and curatorial attention. Often misunderstood and sometimes negatively criticized or lampooned as a betrayal of modernism’s commitment to abstraction, the artists involved in Photorealism remained committed explorers of the trail they had blazed. In the decades of the late twentieth century and early twenty-first century, realistic and symbolic painting experienced a renaissance, as contemporary artists are increasingly drawn to narrative and storytelling. Concurrently, using a camera as a preparatory tool equally legitimate and valuable as pencils and pens has made the rubric of Photorealism increasingly relevant. This exhibition is organized by the Asheville Art Museum and guest curated by Terrie Sultan. This exhibition is sponsored in part by Jim and Julia Calkins Peterson.

Opening Reception for the Artist Nov. 3, 6-8PM.

Tracey Morgan Gallery is pleased to present A Mirror, Not a Window, an exhibition of new and recent work by artist Hannah Cole. This is Cole’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. A reception for the artist will be held Friday, November 3 from 6-8PM.

This collection of paintings and sculptures continues Cole’s interest in creating, completely by hand, reproductions of small details and objects culled from her everyday life, turning the viewer’s attention to often overlooked aspects of our surrounding environment and reframing the very definition of representational art. With nods to pop art, trompe l’oeil, and modern American painters, Cole poses big questions about the nature of the artist’s hand, and the drive to (re)create.

A grouping of wall sculptures of nearly exact replicas of books which are hand-painted on wood blocks are included in the exhibition. These books are all non-fiction, mostly art related, though now un-readable. Instead of looking to books for answers, these objects force the viewer to provide the substance. The most self-referential of the group is Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation in which the French philosopher talks in dense prose about our culture of signs and signals eventually becoming copies without any originals. In Cole’s tongue-in-cheek nod, her faithful replica of Baudriallard’s philosophical work becomes an art object whose meaning has shifted completely from the original. Cole’s painted wood block cannot be read and has no actual utility at all, except as an object to contemplate.

A recurring element in Cole’s paintings is a hand-rendered tape measure running along the edge of her canvases. By including this common, easily recognizable object, Cole calls to question the “truth” of representation. Can we trust these measurements simply because they have identifiable markings? Other paintings on Styrofoam show painted wood grain edges, subverting the viewer’s expectation of where the painting itself is, and what it’s made of. We expect a painting to be on the outward-facing surface, but what if the faithful representation is painted on the sides?

In this contemporary age of Artificial Intelligence flooding us with copies, reproductions, fakes, and deliberate decep-tions, anxieties regarding authenticity and authorship run high. Cole’s work invites contemplation of these deeply philosophical issues with a playful tone, presenting serious questions by way of common objects.

Hannah Cole studied at Yale University and Boston University. Her work has been exhibited at The Turchin Center for Visual Arts, NC; the Drawing Center, NY; the University of Maine Museum of Art; the Sherman Gallery at Boston University, MA; Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Greenville, NC; and the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, among other national and international institutions. She currently lives and works in Asheville, NC.

Romare Bearden (Charlotte, NC 1911–1988 New York, NY), African American writer and artist, is renowned for his collages. He constantly experimented with various techniques to achieve his artistic goals throughout his career. This exhibition highlights works on paper and explores his most frequently used mediums, including screen-printing, lithography, hand-colored etching, collagraph, monotype, relief print, photomontage, and collage.

Bearden’s work reflects his improvisational approach to his practice. He considered his process akin to that of jazz and blues composers. Starting with an open mind, he would let an idea evolve spontaneously.

“Romare Bearden: Ways of Working highlights Bearden’s unique artistic practice and masterful storytelling through art,” says Pamela L. Myers, Executive Director of the Asheville Art Museum. “We are thrilled to collaborate with Jerald Melberg Gallery to present these extraordinary works on paper in conversation with Bearden’s collage Sunset Express, 1984 in the Museum Collection (on view in the Museum’s SECU Collection Hall). This exhibition will also provide a glimpse into the cultural histories and personal interests that influenced his art-making practice, and we hope it encourages introspection and dialogue with our visitors.”

Jerald Melberg states, “Romare Bearden’s groundbreaking artistic practice continues to captivate audiences worldwide. With an unparalleled legacy of creativity and innovation, Bearden’s contributions to art remain deeply influential years beyond his life.” We have enjoyed organizing this exhibition with the Asheville Art Museum to showcase his artistic genius and inspire visitors from the Western North Carolina region and beyond.”

This exhibition is made possible in part by the Judy Appleton Fund. Many thanks to the Jerald Melberg Gallery for the loan of these important artworks and to Mary and Jerald Melberg for their long-standing support of the arts, artists, and the Asheville Art Museum.

Tracey Morgan Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of paintings by artist Stella Alesi in our project space. This is Alesi’s first exhibition with the gallery and is presented in conjunction with Hannah Cole: A Mirror, Not a Window in our main gallery space. A reception for both artists will be held Friday, November 3 from 6-8PM.

The works on view are from the SQUISHY series, a group of geometric, abstract oil on oil paper paintings. With the use of simple shapes and a limited color palette, these works explore the visceral experience of living at this current moment. Alesi’s colorful, “squishy” shapes bend to the demands placed on them by their seemingly heavy, unforgiving counterparts. With this work, Alesi confronts contemporary issues such as climate change and political turmoil, as well as personal trials, using basic shapes, both hard and malleable to express a state of being. The shapes are gestural, fluid, and animated – sometimes resembling body parts even in their minimalism. The effect is a playful interpretation of heavy topics – a visual play on the deep and multi-layer well of human emotions.

Stella Alesi works across several styles and mediums, including drawing, painting, photography, collage, and large wall works. Their practice is characterized by a willingness to try new approaches in the ongoing investigation into new materials and visual languages, always exploring new ways to represent the visceral nature of the human experience. Born on Long Island, New York in 1963, Alesi was raised in New Jersey. They studied at Parsons School of Design, New York City; University Hampshire, Durham; and University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Their work has been purchased by many private and commercial collections. Career highlights include a recent solo exhibit (spring of 2023) at the Northern-Southern gallery, Austin, TX and a large-scale permanent installation in the lobby of The Foundry, Austin TX. Alesi currently lives and works in both Austin, TX and Asheville, NC.

Students will receive a solid foundation in beginner Ukulele skills for vocalists. Chords, Rhythm patterns, and basic theory will be introduced through songs with an uplifting message. Students will also learn to play the song that the Songwriting Class will be writing and get to record it in the One Mic Studio.

Queer Music Exploration – Students will explore guitar, bass, drums, singing and piano with a focus on learning music by artists from the LGBTQ+ community. Students will have the chance to interact with their peers and share their experiences through music.

Sham

Sham is the songs of Shane Justice McCord in collaboration with Mikey Powers and other friends, a constantly reshaping organism. Sham’s newest album ‘Machine Simple’ was recorded over a 6 month period in Asheville, NC, composed of songs composed over the 2 years prior. Started on tape and bounced to computer and expanded in digital format, the songs rooted in voice and acoustic instrumentation, featuring lots of finger picking guitars, clarinet and bass clarinet, various percussion, trumpets, upright bass and dense lyrical presence. Machine Simple encapsulates the fluid and dynamic nature of Sham, sometimes it sounds like a sentimental song, sometimes a rhythmic bed, sometimes abrasive trumpet or layered clarinet harmonies, sometimes a recording of birds. Lovely different friends contributed to Machine Simple including Madeleine Sis, Austyn Wohlers (Tomato Flower), J Brown, John Kiran Fernandes (Cloud Recordings, Elephant 6), Dave Portner (Avey Tare), L. Bacchus, Clay White & more. Cohesive bundle of sonic exploration and composition, attempt to shape human experience into song and sound.

shamtunes.bandcamp.com

Murderboats

Josh Dean is a songwriter. He experiments with long-form repetitive music. His day job is building and repairing pipe organs. He feels honored to be using this skill set to expand his ongoing experimentation with modifying keyboard instruments to include pipe organs and organ design. He has recently completed the recording of a few new pieces playing an organ he’s built while living in Baltimore MD.

This is an 18+ event

Steve Simon & The Kings of Jazz are Brevard’s newest and most exciting and entertaining jazz band with a sound that combines the funkiness of George Benson, the soulfulness of Ray Charles and the smoothness of Diana Krall all wrapped together in big Count Basie style arrangements of American and Latin jazz classics. If you are looking for an amazing live jazz experience then check out the hottest jazz band in the coolest city in North Carolina performing every Thursday at The DFR Lounge from 7pm to 9pm

Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis, Jr., the dynamic duo known as “The First Couple of Pop & Soul,” have left their mark on the music industry. The pair first found fame as lead singers and co-founders of the original 5^th Dimension, the legendary group behind classics such as include “You Don’t Have To Be A Star (To Be In My Show,” “Up, Up And Away,” (Grammy Hall of Fame, 2004) and “Aquarius / Let The Sunshine In,” (Grammy Hall of Fame, 2003). After leaving the quintet, McCoo and Davis broke barriers as the first Black married couple to star in their own TV series.

The seven-time Grammy Award-winning duo performed at the 1968 Harlem Cultural Festival, sharing the stage with Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, are winners of the Tokyo Musical Festival, and recipients of four Playboy Jazz Festival wins. In 2021, they released their first studio album in 30 years. “Blackbird: Lennon-McCartney Icons” weaves themes of social justice into soulful renditions of classic Beatles hits. The album was met with critical acclaim for breathing new life into Blackbird.

Beyond their musical achievements, the couple was featured in Questlove’s directorial debut “Summer of Soul,” made countless television appearances, authored a book, and headlined Las Vegas. All throughout, they have used their platform powerfully for activism, fighting for civil rights.

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!

Tyger Tyger Gallery is pleased to present Reckoning: Adornment as Narrative, a group exhibition curated by Asheville-based artist and curator Erika Diamond.

Reckoning: Adornment as Narrative is an exhibition of diverse practices, anchored at three points: methods of reckoning; the function of adornment; and the fusing of personal and cultural narrative. It features acts of glitz, embellishment, and homage by Shae Bishop, David Harper Clemons, Kashif Dennis, Annie Evelyn, Margaret Jacobs, Julia Kwon, Katrina Majkut, Heather Mackenzie, and Luis Sahagun. Through material language, each artist tells the story of their identity. Inherent to these stories are contradictions—between labor and value, feminine and masculine, natural and fabricated.

Bargain Hendo Thrift Store will be permanently closing its doors on December 13th.
• WNCSource operates the small thrift store which is located on the corner of King Street
and 2nd Avenue in Hendersonville.
• Bargain Hendo first opened in December of 2020 and was meant to support the programs
and services WNCSource provides in 4 western North Carolina Counties. Unfortunately,
low sales and competition from other local thrift stores has made the store less than
profitable.
• But don’t worry, starting Thursday, November 2nd, Bargain Hendo will be open
Wednesdays through Fridays 10AM to 4PM and Saturdays from 10AM to 2PM with some
incredible bargains and sales to clear the shelves.
• Bargain Hendo’s last day is December 13th

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!

Images: Left: Minna Wright Citron, Squid Under Pier, 1948, color etching, soft-ground, and engraving on paper, edition 42/50, 15 x 17 7/8 inches, 2010 Collections Circle purchase, Asheville Art Museum. © Estate of Minna Citron/Licensed by VAGA at ARS, New York. Right: Dorothy Dehner, Woman #2, 1954, watercolor and ink on paper, 22 3/4 x 18”, courtesy of Dolan Maxwell.

The Asheville Art Museum is pleased to announce the upcoming exhibition American Art in the Atomic Age: 1940–1960, which explores the groundbreaking contributions of artists who worked at the experimental printmaking studio Atelier 17 in the wake of World War II. Co-curated by Marilyn Laufer and Tom Butler, American Art in the Atomic Age which draws from the holdings of Dolan/Maxwell, the Asheville Art Museum Collection, and private collections will be on view from November 10, 2023–April 29, 2024.

Atelier 17 operated in New York for fifteen years, between 1940 and 1955. The studio’s founder, Stanley William Hayter (1901–1988) established the workshop in Paris but relocated to New York just as the Nazi occupation of Paris began in 1940. Hayter’s new studio attracted European emigrants like André Masson, Yves Tanguy, and Joan Miró, as well as American artists like Dorothy Dehner, Judith Rothschild, and Karl Schrag, allowing for an exchange of artistic ideas and processes between European and American artists.

The Asheville Art Museum will present over 100 works that exemplify the cross-cultural exchange and profound social and political impact of Atelier 17 on American art. Prints made at Atelier 17—including those by Stanley William Hayter, Louise Nevelson, and Perle Fine—will be in conversation with works by European Surrealists who were working at the studio in the 1940s and 1950s. The exhibition will also feature a selection of domestic mid-century objects that exemplify how the ideas and aesthetics of post-war abstraction became a part of everyday life.

Throughout the history of painting from the mid-19th century forward, artists have used an endless variety of approaches to record their world. Beyond the Lens: Photorealist Perspectives on Looking, Seeing, and Painting continues this thread, offering an opportunity to explore a singular and still forceful aspect of American art. Photorealism shares many of the approaches of historical and modernist realism, with a twist. The use of the camera as a basic tool for organizing visual information in advance of painterly expression is now quite common, but Photorealists embraced the camera as the focal point in their creative process. Beyond the Lens presents key works from the collection of Louis K. and Susan Pear Meisel, bringing together paintings and works on paper dating from the 1970s to the present to focus on this profoundly influential art movement. The exhibition includes work by highly acclaimed formative artists of the movement such as Charles Bell, Robert Bechtle, Tom Blackwell, Richard Estes, Audrey Flack, and Ralph Goings as well as paintings by the successive generations of Photorealist artists Anthony Brunelli, Davis Cone, Bertrand Meniel, Rod Penner, and Raphaella Spence. Featured artworks in the exhibition include diverse subject matters, but the primary focus is on the common and every day: urban scenes, “portraits” of cars, trucks, and motorcycles, still life compositions using toys, food, candy wrappers, and salt and pepper shakers. All provide opportunities for virtuoso studies in how light, reflection, and the camera as intermediary shapes our perception of the material world. This multigenerational survey demonstrates how the 35-mm camera, and later technological advances in digital image-making, informed and impacted the painterly gesture. Taken together, the paintings and works on paper in Beyond the Lens show how simply spellbinding these virtuosic works of art can be. “Beyond the Lens offers a fascinating look into the Photorealism movement and delves into the profound connection between the artists’ observation and creative process,” says Pamela L. Myers, Executive Director of Asheville Art Museum. “We are delighted to present this curated collection of artworks encapsulating the creative vision and technical precision that defines this artistic genre.” Photorealism found its roots in the late 1960s in California and New York, coexisting with an explosion of new ideas in art-making that included Conceptual, Pop, Minimalism, Land and Performance Art. At first, representational realism coexisted with the thematic and conceptual explosion but was eventually relegated to the margins regarding critical and curatorial attention. Often misunderstood and sometimes negatively criticized or lampooned as a betrayal of modernism’s commitment to abstraction, the artists involved in Photorealism remained committed explorers of the trail they had blazed. In the decades of the late twentieth century and early twenty-first century, realistic and symbolic painting experienced a renaissance, as contemporary artists are increasingly drawn to narrative and storytelling. Concurrently, using a camera as a preparatory tool equally legitimate and valuable as pencils and pens has made the rubric of Photorealism increasingly relevant. This exhibition is organized by the Asheville Art Museum and guest curated by Terrie Sultan. This exhibition is sponsored in part by Jim and Julia Calkins Peterson.

Opening Reception for the Artist Nov. 3, 6-8PM.

Tracey Morgan Gallery is pleased to present A Mirror, Not a Window, an exhibition of new and recent work by artist Hannah Cole. This is Cole’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. A reception for the artist will be held Friday, November 3 from 6-8PM.

This collection of paintings and sculptures continues Cole’s interest in creating, completely by hand, reproductions of small details and objects culled from her everyday life, turning the viewer’s attention to often overlooked aspects of our surrounding environment and reframing the very definition of representational art. With nods to pop art, trompe l’oeil, and modern American painters, Cole poses big questions about the nature of the artist’s hand, and the drive to (re)create.

A grouping of wall sculptures of nearly exact replicas of books which are hand-painted on wood blocks are included in the exhibition. These books are all non-fiction, mostly art related, though now un-readable. Instead of looking to books for answers, these objects force the viewer to provide the substance. The most self-referential of the group is Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation in which the French philosopher talks in dense prose about our culture of signs and signals eventually becoming copies without any originals. In Cole’s tongue-in-cheek nod, her faithful replica of Baudriallard’s philosophical work becomes an art object whose meaning has shifted completely from the original. Cole’s painted wood block cannot be read and has no actual utility at all, except as an object to contemplate.

A recurring element in Cole’s paintings is a hand-rendered tape measure running along the edge of her canvases. By including this common, easily recognizable object, Cole calls to question the “truth” of representation. Can we trust these measurements simply because they have identifiable markings? Other paintings on Styrofoam show painted wood grain edges, subverting the viewer’s expectation of where the painting itself is, and what it’s made of. We expect a painting to be on the outward-facing surface, but what if the faithful representation is painted on the sides?

In this contemporary age of Artificial Intelligence flooding us with copies, reproductions, fakes, and deliberate decep-tions, anxieties regarding authenticity and authorship run high. Cole’s work invites contemplation of these deeply philosophical issues with a playful tone, presenting serious questions by way of common objects.

Hannah Cole studied at Yale University and Boston University. Her work has been exhibited at The Turchin Center for Visual Arts, NC; the Drawing Center, NY; the University of Maine Museum of Art; the Sherman Gallery at Boston University, MA; Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Greenville, NC; and the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, among other national and international institutions. She currently lives and works in Asheville, NC.

Romare Bearden (Charlotte, NC 1911–1988 New York, NY), African American writer and artist, is renowned for his collages. He constantly experimented with various techniques to achieve his artistic goals throughout his career. This exhibition highlights works on paper and explores his most frequently used mediums, including screen-printing, lithography, hand-colored etching, collagraph, monotype, relief print, photomontage, and collage.

Bearden’s work reflects his improvisational approach to his practice. He considered his process akin to that of jazz and blues composers. Starting with an open mind, he would let an idea evolve spontaneously.

“Romare Bearden: Ways of Working highlights Bearden’s unique artistic practice and masterful storytelling through art,” says Pamela L. Myers, Executive Director of the Asheville Art Museum. “We are thrilled to collaborate with Jerald Melberg Gallery to present these extraordinary works on paper in conversation with Bearden’s collage Sunset Express, 1984 in the Museum Collection (on view in the Museum’s SECU Collection Hall). This exhibition will also provide a glimpse into the cultural histories and personal interests that influenced his art-making practice, and we hope it encourages introspection and dialogue with our visitors.”

Jerald Melberg states, “Romare Bearden’s groundbreaking artistic practice continues to captivate audiences worldwide. With an unparalleled legacy of creativity and innovation, Bearden’s contributions to art remain deeply influential years beyond his life.” We have enjoyed organizing this exhibition with the Asheville Art Museum to showcase his artistic genius and inspire visitors from the Western North Carolina region and beyond.”

This exhibition is made possible in part by the Judy Appleton Fund. Many thanks to the Jerald Melberg Gallery for the loan of these important artworks and to Mary and Jerald Melberg for their long-standing support of the arts, artists, and the Asheville Art Museum.

Tracey Morgan Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of paintings by artist Stella Alesi in our project space. This is Alesi’s first exhibition with the gallery and is presented in conjunction with Hannah Cole: A Mirror, Not a Window in our main gallery space. A reception for both artists will be held Friday, November 3 from 6-8PM.

The works on view are from the SQUISHY series, a group of geometric, abstract oil on oil paper paintings. With the use of simple shapes and a limited color palette, these works explore the visceral experience of living at this current moment. Alesi’s colorful, “squishy” shapes bend to the demands placed on them by their seemingly heavy, unforgiving counterparts. With this work, Alesi confronts contemporary issues such as climate change and political turmoil, as well as personal trials, using basic shapes, both hard and malleable to express a state of being. The shapes are gestural, fluid, and animated – sometimes resembling body parts even in their minimalism. The effect is a playful interpretation of heavy topics – a visual play on the deep and multi-layer well of human emotions.

Stella Alesi works across several styles and mediums, including drawing, painting, photography, collage, and large wall works. Their practice is characterized by a willingness to try new approaches in the ongoing investigation into new materials and visual languages, always exploring new ways to represent the visceral nature of the human experience. Born on Long Island, New York in 1963, Alesi was raised in New Jersey. They studied at Parsons School of Design, New York City; University Hampshire, Durham; and University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Their work has been purchased by many private and commercial collections. Career highlights include a recent solo exhibit (spring of 2023) at the Northern-Southern gallery, Austin, TX and a large-scale permanent installation in the lobby of The Foundry, Austin TX. Alesi currently lives and works in both Austin, TX and Asheville, NC.