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.
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The Asheville Art Museum presents Fantastical Forms: Ceramics as Sculpture on view at the Museum November 4, 2020 through April 5, 2021. The 25 works in this exhibition—curated by associate curator Whitney Richardson—highlight the Museum’s Collection of sculptural ceramics from the last two decades of the 20th century to the present. Each work illustrates the artist’s ability to push beyond the utilitarian and transition ceramics into the world of sculpture.
North and South Carolina artists featured include Elma McBride Johnson, Neil Noland, Norm Schulman, Virginia Scotchie, Cynthia Bringle, Jane Palmer, Michael Sherrill, and Akira Satake. Works by American artists Don Reitz, Robert Chapman Turner, Karen Karnes, Toshiko Takaezu, Bill Griffith, and Xavier Toubes are also featured in the exhibition.
Thank you Suzanne Camarata of The Gallery at Flat Rock whose Porch Portraits sessions raised $2835 for the Playhouse! Suzanne began this series when the pandemic made traditional photo sessions a challenge and inspired photographers used social distancing to create a new way to capture memories. “Porch Portraits by Suzanne brings the fun of a casual, light-hearted photoshoot right to your home – literally to your front porch or in your front yard. ” Suzanne is continuing her sessions this year, so make sure to visit the link below to get (or gift) a session today.
The Gallery at Flat Rock Offers Virtual and In-Person Exhibit
On January 21, The Gallery at Flat Rock opened their latest exhibit, Transcendence: An Artistic Celebration of the U.N. International Year of Peace and Trust. The in-person and virtual exhibit features, “over two dozen Gallery at Flat Rocks artists, who will each provide one artwork for the show that they believe evokes themes of peace and mutual trust among members of humanity.”
Winter Hours:
Wed – Sat 11am – 4pm
Sun 11am – 3pm
Open by appointment
or by chance


Join us for three hours “off the eaten path” as we find and gather over a dozen wild edibles. We’ll whip up a little tasting right on the trail. Take home the rest of your finds and/or get ready for some find dining when one of our award-winning restaurant partners prepares your “catch of the day,” with lunch, brunch or dinner, for free. Wild mushroom pizza, daylily tamales, sassafras root beer, wisteria ice cream… it all depends on what we find!
Pricing
- Adult (Ages 12+): $75
- Child (Ages 5-11): $35
- Child (Ages 4 & Under): Free

The trio makes a return to West Asheville for some grooves and tasty brews. Music from 4-7pm on the covered back deck. Taproom bar and inside seating open.
Masks required when not seated, heaters outside, and plenty of jams for your Saturday enjoyment.

Supper Break is a bluegrass band serving tasty licks night & day!
Members represent many styles and areas of the country – but now call Asheville home. Come raise a pint to these hot pickin’ musicians! Sláinte!
+“Bringing in the Light” opens December 31st at the Asheville Gallery of Art, ringing in the new year with optimism and vigor. The show will feature artwork from four new gallery members: Olga Dorenko, Rebecca Gottesman, Donny Luke, and Susan Voorhees. Olga Dorenko is a familiar name in the Asheville art scene, having run her own fine art gallery since 2008 as well as maintaining a local studio space. Her vivid landscape paintings are meticulously executed and often dreamlike in their composition. Dorenko’s travels through her birthplace in the former Soviet Union inspired the love of nature evident in her work. Rebecca Gottesman is a new painter to Asheville, having traded her home of 30 years in the Vermont mountains for the calling of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Her oil paintings take inspiration from the beauty of the natural world, depicting sweeping landscapes and delicate florals with a bright, lively palette. Gottesman often treats the act of painting as a kind of meditation, conveying a sense of reverence for both the paint and the subject, which she hopes to pass on to every person who encounters her art. Donny Luke retired from his 40-year career as an architect and discovered a passion and proficiency for watercolor painting after an inspiring trip out West. His captivating landscapes invite the viewer to dwell in the precise joy of seeing a new place, an experience Luke pursues in his treks through North America in search of fresh material. Susan Voorhees is a prominent local painter, coming from a family of established creatives in the Asheville area. Voorhees works primarily in pastels and demonstrates a masterful, impressionistic approach to her subjects, from wildflower fields in the Blue Ridge Mountains to the bounty gathered from her local farmer’s market. The Asheville Gallery of Art invites viewers to experience these artists through their common use of light in their work, each mastering the play of light and shadow in fresh ways to stir hope for the year ahead. Visitors can view “Bringing in the Light” through the end of January, Thursdays—Sundays from 12-5pm, or by private appointment.
“Blooms” marks Asheville Gallery of Art’s second new member show of the new year and celebrates the early signs of spring through the beauty of nature, new life, and of course, florals! Viewers can expect to see a variety of work from this month’s featured artists: Kate Coleman, Cynthia Llanes, Jacqueline Oliver, and Claire Simpson-Jones. From figurative work to still lifes, every piece connects with the “Blooms” theme. . .and brings a preview of what’s to come.
Kate Coleman has been a professional artist for more than 18 years. She is best known in the gallery for her large, whimsical bird portraits, and her most recent work employs her signature style of acrylic paint and collaged vintage book pages to create a unique, textured image. For “Blooms,” Coleman turns from fauna to flora, creating layered paintings of plant life that have personal and biographical meaning.
Cynthia Llanes has created art from a young age, starting with designing clothes for her dolls and then working as a textile designer in the Los Angeles fashion district before moving to the Blue Ridge Mountains and pursuing an art career. Llanes is a mixed media artist, creating vivid depictions of nature’s beauty with color and texture. Her paintings for “Blooms” are inspired by some of her favorite poet’s descriptions of flowers and are exclusively painted using alcohol ink, which creates especially bright, saturated colors perfect for florals.
Jacqueline Oliver creates narrative paintings and ink drawings inspired by the natural world, depicting plants, animals, and people in her illustrative style. Her work often contains hidden details to reward the curious viewer. She works in a variety of mediums, from acrylic to papercutting, and her artwork for “Blooms” celebrates the new life that emerges in springtime.
Claire Simpson-Jones works primarily as a watercolorist, painting landscapes and women in nature to capture the important role of nature in our lives. Her paintings reflect her deeply rooted passion for the natural environment and are inspired by her extensive travels near and far. “Blooms” features Simpson-Jones watercolor figures in a new context, mingled with soft florals in a peaceful, serene environment.
The Asheville Gallery of Art invites viewers to experience “Blooms” and be invigorated by a sneak peek of spring. Visitors can view “Bringing in the Light” through the end of February, Thursdays—Sundays from 12-5pm, or by private appointment.

Support AIR!
AIR Friends is a brand-new giving campaign designed to support the Asheville Independent Restaurants Association (a 501C 3-6 trade association) in its mission to sustain, elevate and advocate for the city’s dynamic community of chefs and restaurants. Now more than ever, AIR’s work is vital to the health and longevity of Asheville’s one-of-a-kind culinary scene.
Won’t you join us at the table?
Hosts Kimala Luna from Dogwood Alliance and Elizabeth Lashay from SlayTheMic talk with artist Allison Maria Rodriguez about her artwork and how she creates immersive experiential spaces to challenge conventional ways of understanding the world. Her work delves into climate change, species extinction, humanity’s relationship to nature, and the pervasive sense of loss for that which can never be recovered.

Wake, Mel Chin’s giant animatronic sculpture, installed in New York City’s Times Square last summer, will be on view in Asheville through March 15, 2021, at 44 Collier Avenue. Chin, a WNC based conceptual artist, was named a MacArthur Fellow in September 2019.
Wake was commissioned as part of Mel Chin: All Over the Place, a multi-site survey of his works from across many decades that took place in several New York City locations. A collaborative group, led by UNC Asheville’s STEAM Studio and The Community Foundation of Western North Carolina, formed to plan and raise funds for the sculpture to be seen locally.
Wake – 60 feet long, 34 feet wide and 24 feet high, conceived and designed by the artist – was engineered, sculpted and fabricated by an interdisciplinary team of UNC Asheville students, faculty, staff and community artists led by Chin. The sculpture is interactive and features decks and places to sit and contemplate.
Wake evokes the hull of a shipwreck crossed with the skeletal remains of a marine mammal. The structure is linked with a carved, 21-foot-tall animatronic sculpture, accurately derived from a figurehead of the opera star Jenny Lind that was once mounted on the 19th century clipper ship, USS Nightingale. Jenny Lind moves subtly as she breathes and scans the sky.
Visitors can experience Wake daily from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. at 44 Collier Avenue. For more details and a schedule of programming, visit ashevillearts.com.
Across the Atlantic

Across the Atlantic
American Impressionism Through the French Lens
This extraordinary exhibition, drawn from the collection of the Reading Public Museum, explores the path to Impressionism through the 19th century in France. The show examines the sometimes complex relationship between French Impressionism of the 1870s and 1880s and the American interpretation of the style in the decades that followed. More than 65 paintings and works on paper help tell the story of the “new style” of painting which developed at the end of the 19th century—one that emphasized light and atmospheric conditions, rapid or loose brushstrokes, and a focus on brightly colored scenes from everyday life, including both urban and rural settings when artists preferred to paint outdoors and capture changing effects of light during different times of day and seasons of the year.
Across the Atlantic: American Impressionism through the French Lens is organized by the Reading Public Museum, Reading, Pennsylvania.
Generous support for this project provided by Art Bridges and The Maurer Family Foundation.

This exhibition features archival objects from the Theodore Dreier Sr. Document Collection presented alongside artworks from the Museum’s Black Mountain College Collection to explore the connections between artworks and ephemera. This exhibition is organized by the Asheville Art Museum and curated by lydia see, fall 2020 curatorial fellow, with support from a Digitizing Hidden Collections grant through the Council on Library and Information Resources.
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The Asheville Art Museum presents Fantastical Forms: Ceramics as Sculpture on view at the Museum November 4, 2020 through April 5, 2021. The 25 works in this exhibition—curated by associate curator Whitney Richardson—highlight the Museum’s Collection of sculptural ceramics from the last two decades of the 20th century to the present. Each work illustrates the artist’s ability to push beyond the utilitarian and transition ceramics into the world of sculpture.
North and South Carolina artists featured include Elma McBride Johnson, Neil Noland, Norm Schulman, Virginia Scotchie, Cynthia Bringle, Jane Palmer, Michael Sherrill, and Akira Satake. Works by American artists Don Reitz, Robert Chapman Turner, Karen Karnes, Toshiko Takaezu, Bill Griffith, and Xavier Toubes are also featured in the exhibition.
The Gallery at Flat Rock Offers Virtual and In-Person Exhibit
On January 21, The Gallery at Flat Rock opened their latest exhibit, Transcendence: An Artistic Celebration of the U.N. International Year of Peace and Trust. The in-person and virtual exhibit features, “over two dozen Gallery at Flat Rocks artists, who will each provide one artwork for the show that they believe evokes themes of peace and mutual trust among members of humanity.”
Winter Hours:
Wed – Sat 11am – 4pm
Sun 11am – 3pm
Open by appointment
or by chance


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FIRST SET BY THE HOUSE BAND & SECOND SET IS A JAZZ JAM

In conjunction with Sunday Sessions Live (and virtual) music: Food Truck Sundays will bring a new or rotating “staff favorite” cuisine each week to the Beechams Curve offerings.
Gan Shan West, our main culinary provider 6 days a week, is closed on Sundays. Enjoy the convenience, delicious variety and the music – all in one Sunday Funday stop!

We are going to have a little OUTDOOR covid-safe fun. There will be curated cocktails and, yes, FOOD!! The owner, herself, will be cooking up a few brunch favorites. And the best part of all? We have devised a way to have a pandemic-friendly karaoke! We hope to see all your faces but please stay home if you don’t feel safe being around others.
Hosts Kimala Luna from Dogwood Alliance and Elizabeth Lashay from SlayTheMic talk with artist Allison Maria Rodriguez about her artwork and how she creates immersive experiential spaces to challenge conventional ways of understanding the world. Her work delves into climate change, species extinction, humanity’s relationship to nature, and the pervasive sense of loss for that which can never be recovered.

Wake, Mel Chin’s giant animatronic sculpture, installed in New York City’s Times Square last summer, will be on view in Asheville through March 15, 2021, at 44 Collier Avenue. Chin, a WNC based conceptual artist, was named a MacArthur Fellow in September 2019.
Wake was commissioned as part of Mel Chin: All Over the Place, a multi-site survey of his works from across many decades that took place in several New York City locations. A collaborative group, led by UNC Asheville’s STEAM Studio and The Community Foundation of Western North Carolina, formed to plan and raise funds for the sculpture to be seen locally.
Wake – 60 feet long, 34 feet wide and 24 feet high, conceived and designed by the artist – was engineered, sculpted and fabricated by an interdisciplinary team of UNC Asheville students, faculty, staff and community artists led by Chin. The sculpture is interactive and features decks and places to sit and contemplate.
Wake evokes the hull of a shipwreck crossed with the skeletal remains of a marine mammal. The structure is linked with a carved, 21-foot-tall animatronic sculpture, accurately derived from a figurehead of the opera star Jenny Lind that was once mounted on the 19th century clipper ship, USS Nightingale. Jenny Lind moves subtly as she breathes and scans the sky.
Visitors can experience Wake daily from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. at 44 Collier Avenue. For more details and a schedule of programming, visit ashevillearts.com.
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Across the Atlantic

Across the Atlantic
American Impressionism Through the French Lens
This extraordinary exhibition, drawn from the collection of the Reading Public Museum, explores the path to Impressionism through the 19th century in France. The show examines the sometimes complex relationship between French Impressionism of the 1870s and 1880s and the American interpretation of the style in the decades that followed. More than 65 paintings and works on paper help tell the story of the “new style” of painting which developed at the end of the 19th century—one that emphasized light and atmospheric conditions, rapid or loose brushstrokes, and a focus on brightly colored scenes from everyday life, including both urban and rural settings when artists preferred to paint outdoors and capture changing effects of light during different times of day and seasons of the year.
Across the Atlantic: American Impressionism through the French Lens is organized by the Reading Public Museum, Reading, Pennsylvania.
Generous support for this project provided by Art Bridges and The Maurer Family Foundation.

This exhibition features archival objects from the Theodore Dreier Sr. Document Collection presented alongside artworks from the Museum’s Black Mountain College Collection to explore the connections between artworks and ephemera. This exhibition is organized by the Asheville Art Museum and curated by lydia see, fall 2020 curatorial fellow, with support from a Digitizing Hidden Collections grant through the Council on Library and Information Resources.
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The Asheville Art Museum presents Fantastical Forms: Ceramics as Sculpture on view at the Museum November 4, 2020 through April 5, 2021. The 25 works in this exhibition—curated by associate curator Whitney Richardson—highlight the Museum’s Collection of sculptural ceramics from the last two decades of the 20th century to the present. Each work illustrates the artist’s ability to push beyond the utilitarian and transition ceramics into the world of sculpture.
North and South Carolina artists featured include Elma McBride Johnson, Neil Noland, Norm Schulman, Virginia Scotchie, Cynthia Bringle, Jane Palmer, Michael Sherrill, and Akira Satake. Works by American artists Don Reitz, Robert Chapman Turner, Karen Karnes, Toshiko Takaezu, Bill Griffith, and Xavier Toubes are also featured in the exhibition.

Taught by Chris Martin
Come join the amazing Chris Martin on a fun filled improv journey through all of our favorite improv games and some new surprises. Don’t miss the chance for some hilarious and silly rounds of Waiter, Waiter!, Talk Show, Styles, and so much more! The class includes fun warm-ups, “Yes And” exercises, and a showcase during the last class.
7 Week Session: January 11-February 22, 2021
Mondays at 5:00-5:45 PM Eastern
Student Ages: 12-15 (or with prior approval from teacher or Amanda Klinikowski)
Hosts Kimala Luna from Dogwood Alliance and Elizabeth Lashay from SlayTheMic talk with artist Allison Maria Rodriguez about her artwork and how she creates immersive experiential spaces to challenge conventional ways of understanding the world. Her work delves into climate change, species extinction, humanity’s relationship to nature, and the pervasive sense of loss for that which can never be recovered.






