Calendar of Events

Our Annual North Buncombe Democrats meeting galvanizes and energizes our voters to get involved and get organized. To restart the collaborative spirit of our community in 2024, Lindsey Prather, running to be re-elected to the NC House of Representatives, will focus us forward to winning our 2024 elections. Many other candidates and leaders will be attending and look forward to meeting you.

Following our opening program, attendees circle up with their precinct for the Annual Precinct meeting. Be prepared to discuss action plans with your precinct, elect delegates to the County Democratic Convention, and donate to meet your precinct’s modest annual dues. Voting on issue resolutions proposed by precinct members will occur after the precinct meeting for those wanting to participate in this democratic process.

Whether you’ve attended in past years or are brand new to the North Buncombe area, we look forward to meeting you and having you become part of our thriving and active community.

Who should attend: Democrats and left-leaning unaffiliated voters residing in North Buncombe precincts (40.2, 41.1, 50.1, 51.2, 58.1, 59.1, 67.1, 71.1) are welcome!

OUR ANNUAL SHOW  IS BACK IN FEBRUARY 2023

DONT MISS THE 53rd  UPSTATE SOUTH CAROLINA COIN SHOW               

Beginning in January 2024, ASAP (Appalachian
Sustainable Agriculture Project) will partner with Blue Ridge Women in Agriculture and MountainWise
to expand Double SNAP for Fruits and Vegetables programs to more farmers markets, farmstands,
and groceries in Western North Carolina. This group has established the WNC Double SNAP Network
in order to bring together existing programs and expand to new sites, making SNAP incentives more
accessible throughout the region.
SNAP programs that center local food and farms can significantly improve individual and community
health. They make fresh fruits and vegetables more accessible, keep food dollars in the local
economy, and connect participants with positive food and social environments in their communities.
“ASAP, Mountainwise, and Blue Ridge Women in Agriculture currently operate successful SNAP
incentive programs at 26 sites, which connect participants with fresh food and farms in their
communities,” said Mike McCreary, ASAP’s Farmers Market Program Manager. “By combining efforts
and resources, we’ll not only be able to deepen the impact of our existing programs, but also create
adaptive programs that meet the needs of communities that don’t currently have access.”

The first phase of the project focuses on strengthening existing programs across sites operating
January through March, including:

● Asheville City Winter Market, 52 N. Market St., Saturdays, 10 a.m.–1 p.m.
● Winter King Street Market, 252 Poplar Grove Rd., Saturdays, 10 a.m.–1 p.m.
● Columbus Winter Market, 35 Locust St., 1st and 3rd Saturdays, 10 a.m.–1 p.m.
● High Country Food Hub, 252 Poplar Grove Rd., Boone, online ordering with Wednesday pick-up,
12–6:30 p.m.
● Jackson County Winter Farmers Market, 110 Railroad Ave., Sylva, 10 a.m.–1 p.m.
● Jarrett Brothers IGA, 191 Main St., Rosman, daily, 7 a.m.–9 p.m.
● North Asheville Tailgate Market, 275 Edgewood Rd., Saturdays, 10 a.m.–1 p.m.
● River Arts District Farmers Market, 350 Riverside Dr., Asheville, 3–5:30 p.m.
● Rutherford County Winter Farmers Market, 146 North Main St., Rutherfordton, 1st and 3rd
Saturdays, 10 a.m.–1 p.m.
● Saluda Winter Market, 64 Greenville St., 2nd and 4th Saturdays, 10 a.m.–1 p.m.
● Transylvania Farmers Market, 200 E. Main St., Brevard, Saturdays, 10 a.m.–12 p.m.
● Weaverville Tailgate Market, 60 Lakeshore Dr., Saturdays, 3–6 p.m

Beginning in January 2024, ASAP (Appalachian
Sustainable Agriculture Project) will partner with Blue Ridge Women in Agriculture and MountainWise
to expand Double SNAP for Fruits and Vegetables programs to more farmers markets, farmstands,
and groceries in Western North Carolina. This group has established the WNC Double SNAP Network
in order to bring together existing programs and expand to new sites, making SNAP incentives more
accessible throughout the region.
SNAP programs that center local food and farms can significantly improve individual and community
health. They make fresh fruits and vegetables more accessible, keep food dollars in the local
economy, and connect participants with positive food and social environments in their communities.
“ASAP, Mountainwise, and Blue Ridge Women in Agriculture currently operate successful SNAP
incentive programs at 26 sites, which connect participants with fresh food and farms in their
communities,” said Mike McCreary, ASAP’s Farmers Market Program Manager. “By combining efforts
and resources, we’ll not only be able to deepen the impact of our existing programs, but also create
adaptive programs that meet the needs of communities that don’t currently have access.”

The first phase of the project focuses on strengthening existing programs across sites operating
January through March, including:

● Asheville City Winter Market, 52 N. Market St., Saturdays, 10 a.m.–1 p.m.
● Winter King Street Market, 252 Poplar Grove Rd., Saturdays, 10 a.m.–1 p.m.
● Columbus Winter Market, 35 Locust St., 1st and 3rd Saturdays, 10 a.m.–1 p.m.
● High Country Food Hub, 252 Poplar Grove Rd., Boone, online ordering with Wednesday pick-up,
12–6:30 p.m.
● Jackson County Winter Farmers Market, 110 Railroad Ave., Sylva, 10 a.m.–1 p.m.
● Jarrett Brothers IGA, 191 Main St., Rosman, daily, 7 a.m.–9 p.m.
● North Asheville Tailgate Market, 275 Edgewood Rd., Saturdays, 10 a.m.–1 p.m.
● River Arts District Farmers Market, 350 Riverside Dr., Asheville, 3–5:30 p.m.
● Rutherford County Winter Farmers Market, 146 North Main St., Rutherfordton, 1st and 3rd
Saturdays, 10 a.m.–1 p.m.
● Saluda Winter Market, 64 Greenville St., 2nd and 4th Saturdays, 10 a.m.–1 p.m.
● Transylvania Farmers Market, 200 E. Main St., Brevard, Saturdays, 10 a.m.–12 p.m.
● Weaverville Tailgate Market, 60 Lakeshore Dr., Saturdays, 3–6 p.m.

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!

Saturdays from 10:30 AM – 12 PM

The Museum recognizes Western North Carolina youth for their original artworks Award winners will be featured in a student exhibition in the Museum’s Van Winkle Law Firm Gallery and Multipurpose Space from January 24–March 25, 2024. All regional award recipients will be honored at a closing reception on March 21. The Asheville Art Museum and the Asheville Area Section of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) are the Western North Carolina (WNC) regional Affiliate Partners of the National Scholastic Art Awards. This ongoing community partnership has supported the creative talents of our region’s youth for 44 years. The WNC regional program is open to students in grades 7–12, ages 13-18, across 24 counties. “I’m thrilled to witness the incredible talent showcased in the 2024 Western North Carolina Scholastic Art Awards exhibition,” said Susan Hendley, School & Teacher Programs Manager at the Asheville Art Museum.  “This is a celebration of original works by students across the WNC region and highlights the profound impact of arts education.” The regional program is judged in two groups: Group I, grades 7–9 and Group II, grades 10–12. Out of more than 500 total art entries, over 200 works have been recognized by the judges; Gold and Silver Key awards are featured in this exhibition, with select Honorable Mentions displayed digitally. The 2024 regional judges include Victoria Bradbury, Associate Professor and Chair of New Media at UNC Asheville, Andrew Davis, Studio Technician and instructor at Winthrop University, and Jenny Pickens, a native Asheville artist and educator. Those works receiving Gold Keys have been submitted to compete in the 101st Annual National Scholastic Art Awards Program in New York City. Of the Gold Key Award recipients, five students have also been nominated for American Visions, indicating their work is the Best in Show of the regional awards. One of these American Visions Nominees will receive an American Visions Medal at the 2024 National Scholastic Art Awards. Visit the Museum’s website for more information about the student exhibition. Thanks to our sponsors, Jon and Ann Kemske, Russell and Ladene Newton, and Frugal Framer. Download Student Artworks

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.

The Asheville Gallery of Art is excited to present its February exhibit, “Reflections,” which features the virtuoso works of three new gallery artists: Carol Fetty, Annie Gustley, Sandra Brugh Moore. This exhibit of visual poetry runs February 1 to 28.

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.

PSABC is proud to once again participate in the National Arts & Crafts Conference with our Historic Home Tour.  This conference draws Arts & Crafts enthusiasts from all over the country for a weekend of seminars, group discussions, demonstrations, selling shows and our Home Tour. This year the Home Tour will include historic homes in the Montford Neighborhood. Docents will be available in each home to answer questions. Participants should be able to walk several city blocks and negotiate stairs & public walkways. The tour will happen rain or shine, please bring a raincoat or umbrella as needed.

PSABC is proud to once again participate in the National Arts & Crafts Conference with our Historic Home Tour.  This conference draws Arts & Crafts enthusiasts from all over the country for a weekend of seminars, group discussions, demonstrations, selling shows and our home tour.

This year, the Preservation Society of Asheville and Buncombe County is pleased to offer four or more unique historic homes for the Historic Home Tour. The homes on the tour are located in the historic Montford Neighborhood. Planning for the Montford Neighborhood we know today began in 1889 as Asheville’s first electric streetcar suburb by the Asheville Loan, Construction and Improvement Company. Development proceeded slowly until business tycoon George W. Pack took over the enterprise. The sprawling and irregularly shaped residential neighborhood grew to include a collection of houses representing a variety of architectural styles from the early twentieth century, which are included on this tour

Join the Buncombe County Special Collections and our partners from the Thomas Wolfe Memorial and Vance Birthplace State Historic Sites for a mini-symposium examining issues of race in Thomas Wolfe’s Asheville and how those themes continue to impact our community in the present.

Saturday, February 17, 2024, 2:30 pm, Lord Auditorium Dr. Darin Waters (Deputy Secretary of Archives and History for North Carolina) and Dr. Kevin Young (Appalachian State University) will present short lectures on Thomas Wolfe’s examination of race in his works Welcome to Our City and Child By Tiger followed by a facilitated Q&A.

Light refreshments will be provided courtesy of the Mountain History and Culture Group.

A 2 hour hands-on experience with a Barista learning about espresso on a pro espresso machine. Anyone who has a home espresso machine and wants to learn their way around the machine, make better espresso, steam latte better, or is looking to get a machine would enjoy taking this workshop and learn a lot! We use only locally roasted beans in all our offerings. 4 people per class. $125 a person.

Wilde’s most successful and enduring play is a wonderful and witty comedy of deception, disguise and misadventure. Two bachelors, Jack and Algernon, create alter egos in an effort to avoid tedious social obligations and win the hearts of Gwendolen and Cecily, the two women they adore.

A lot has been said and published that is confusing about Art during the Arts & Crafts movement. To cut through the gibberish, join Mike McCue for a behind-the-scenes program and view rare and unique artworks from the Museum’s Collection. McCue’s approach to the “A” in Arts & Crafts will help you understand what actually was happening during that fascinating era in America.