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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.
The Big Crafty — a hand-to-heart celebration of creative exuberance — returns on Saturday and Sunday, December 7 and 8, noon-6 p.m. daily at the ExploreAsheville.com Arena in downtown Asheville. $10 entry on Saturday, free to enter on Sunday.
Now, perhaps more than ever, The Big Crafty believes in supporting creative venturers. As Western North Carolina’s creative community recovers from Hurricane Helene, The Big Crafty offers a space for makers to sell their work and for fans of unique art and craft to support those makers … while also snapping up memorable and meaningful holiday gifts.
Shop for ceramics, prints, jewelry, woodwork and more, while also celebrating the vibrant and resurgent creative community of WNC.
Our mission is to bring joy to our community by cultivating folk and social dance and music traditions.
Our vision is of people coming together to experience the joy of dance and music.
Find the perfect gift this holiday season for everyone on your list at the 10th annual 𝗛𝗼𝗹𝗶𝗱𝗮𝘆 𝗣𝗼𝗽 𝗨𝗽 𝗦𝗵𝗼𝗽! Shop local, shop small and support local artists, makers, and vintage collectors.
We’ve decked the halls of the Ideation Lab inside the Center for Craft in Downtown Asheville. Shop over 100 vendors; housewares, handmade jewelry, ceramics, apparel, vintage clothes, ornaments, candles, gifts for our furry friends and more.
WHEN:
Open Nov 29 through Dec 24
10am-8pm daily
WHERE:
The Ideation Lab inside the Center for Craft
67 Broadway St, Asheville, NC 28801
Pieces made from nylon fabric ripstop, which keeps tears from spreading, invite viewers into created, fantastical worlds, only to highlight the complex—even impossible—architectures of their construction. Before the pandemic, Adrian primarily focused on personal experiences and interrogations of queerness, identity, and sexuality. Since then, the work has zoomed out in its scope, still centering identity but placed in larger infrastructure and surveillance systems that mediate, manipulate, and control desire.
Adrian counts queer fiber art, BDSM and kink culture, theatre, camp horror, puppetry, and drag among his many influences. Works in RIPSTOP, like the modernist bounce house sculpture A Fallible Complex (2021), evoke spaces for play, beckoning visitors in through their alluring aesthetic and then blocking their entrance or revealing structural instabilities, like missing floors. Others, like The Sensational Inflatable Furry Divines (2017-19), use sensual materials, like faux fur, spandex, and pleather, which connect to theatrical performance and counterculture. The materials “play on people’s initial associations and serve as a gateway into greater conversations about identity construction, performance, desire, and technology,” he shares.Pieces also nod to the history of quilting, including the AIDS Memorial Quilt, another influence on Adrian’s work. “Even when pieces aren’t explicitly making quilt references, I want the history of quilting and sewing-based craft to be part of the conversation of the work,” he says. “Craft is so much about the processes and histories behind materials. It’s about connecting with communities of people who practice those techniques. It’s about material and technique being a doorway into a greater relationship with an object.”
Themes of transformation—of structures, identities, and bodies—run throughout the show. “What I love about drag and puppetry is the sense of transformation and play, specifically with bodies,” Adrian says. “Within these art forms, a body can become mutable and capable of performing and becoming in unexpected states.” The sculptures also transform throughout viewers’ experiences, going through stages of inflation and deflation and existing in many different states.
RIPSTOP’s constant interplay between surface and depth, assumption and reality, are all a part of what Adrian describes as “looking behind the curtain,” which they trace back to the theatre. “When I’m thinking about systems, and the systems desire fits into, I’m thinking of stage construction, the backstage, the things that go on behind the show, and performance of our desires,” they explain.
As a craft artist, Adrian’s philosophy “comes down to having an intentional relationship with material, process, and technique,” he says. “Those aspects of art making are just as – if not more – important than an intellectualized concept being illustrated by an artwork.”
“Broadened definitions of craft that highlight communities of practice are foundational for the Center for Craft’s new strategic direction,” explains Executive Director Stephanie Moore. “Max Adrian’s work in RIPSTOP exemplifies the expansive and meaningful forms craft can take.” The Center for Craft is an institution Adrian credits for their professional growth. “The Center for Craft has felt like such a supporting institution for me specifically and for so many other craft artists I know,” they note. “To be able to bring this amount of work to Asheville is pretty cool.”
See Max Adrian: RIPSTOP at the Center for Craft Beginning July 26. A reception will be held on August 15. RIPSTOP is organized by Houston Center for Contemporary Craft and curated by Sarah Darro.
Welcome to our weekly community contra dance in West Asheville! The Monday Night Dance has been around for decades, and we are carrying the torch forward! We are a loving, kind, and safe dance community and highly encourage masking during the dance. No derogatory comments in relation to masking will be tolerated! We encourage non-maskers to mask while partnering with a dancer wearing a mask, or to at least ask if the person would like them to mask while they dance with them.
Time: Contra dancing 8:15–10:30pm, with a beginner lesson starting at 7:45 and a waltz session ending the evening.
Location: St. George’s Center for Art and Spirit, 1 School Rd., Asheville, NC 28806
Cost: $12–$45 sliding scale, CASH ONLY. Please pay as much as you can afford to cover the cost of the wonderful live music, the caller, sound person, rent, and other expenses! ATMs are available at banks on Patton Ave., as well as cash back options at local gas stations and grocery stores.
Requirements: Face masks and sign-in agreeing to the dance’s Safety Guidelines.
Please enter through the front red doors to the sanctuary. Extra parking available in the lots between Moore’s Foot and Ankle and St. George’s (please avoid parking in front of their practice.) This is a scent-free dance. Please bring your own water and water bottle. Beginners are encouraged to attend! Beginner-friendly dances start the contra dancing in lieu of a lesson.
Community Focus
The Monday Night Dance is more than just a dance; the community is deeply rooted. Folks are welcome to sell their wares, like jewelry, dance shoes, dance clothes, pottery, etc. They are also welcome to leave business cards and help wanted or work needed ads. Additionally, the Take Some Leave Some Closet is a new feature of the MND. You can take any clothes, food, produce, feminine products or first aid supplies that we have, and as you are able you can also leave some to replenish. Private times to receive from the closet can also be arranged during the week depending on to the dance organizer’s availability.
We emphasize safety here at the MND. Mask wearing is strongly encouraged, and courtesy to those choosing to mask is required. No discrimination to those wearing masks will be tolerated! In addition, this is a family and LGBTQ-friendly dance and a safe event for ALL races, ethnicities, genders, ages, shapes, and sizes. Accordingly, no discrimination, inappropriate sexually predatory behavior, racist or discriminatory comments, bullying, or verbal or physical abuse of ANY kind will be tolerated. See our Safety Guidelines for more info.
Ours is a dance built on volunteerism, and we need your help to survive! Please consider volunteering or becoming a patron by giving a monetary gift. Opening, door and closing help are some of the volunteer jobs available. Those completing their entire shift dance free! Email [email protected] for more info and to sign up.
Finally, please follow, like and join us on Facebook!
Thanks so much and see you on the dance floor!
Find the perfect gift this holiday season for everyone on your list at the 10th annual 𝗛𝗼𝗹𝗶𝗱𝗮𝘆 𝗣𝗼𝗽 𝗨𝗽 𝗦𝗵𝗼𝗽! Shop local, shop small and support local artists, makers, and vintage collectors.
We’ve decked the halls of the Ideation Lab inside the Center for Craft in Downtown Asheville. Shop over 100 vendors; housewares, handmade jewelry, ceramics, apparel, vintage clothes, ornaments, candles, gifts for our furry friends and more.
WHEN:
Open Nov 29 through Dec 24
10am-8pm daily
WHERE:
The Ideation Lab inside the Center for Craft
67 Broadway St, Asheville, NC 28801
Pieces made from nylon fabric ripstop, which keeps tears from spreading, invite viewers into created, fantastical worlds, only to highlight the complex—even impossible—architectures of their construction. Before the pandemic, Adrian primarily focused on personal experiences and interrogations of queerness, identity, and sexuality. Since then, the work has zoomed out in its scope, still centering identity but placed in larger infrastructure and surveillance systems that mediate, manipulate, and control desire.
Adrian counts queer fiber art, BDSM and kink culture, theatre, camp horror, puppetry, and drag among his many influences. Works in RIPSTOP, like the modernist bounce house sculpture A Fallible Complex (2021), evoke spaces for play, beckoning visitors in through their alluring aesthetic and then blocking their entrance or revealing structural instabilities, like missing floors. Others, like The Sensational Inflatable Furry Divines (2017-19), use sensual materials, like faux fur, spandex, and pleather, which connect to theatrical performance and counterculture. The materials “play on people’s initial associations and serve as a gateway into greater conversations about identity construction, performance, desire, and technology,” he shares.Pieces also nod to the history of quilting, including the AIDS Memorial Quilt, another influence on Adrian’s work. “Even when pieces aren’t explicitly making quilt references, I want the history of quilting and sewing-based craft to be part of the conversation of the work,” he says. “Craft is so much about the processes and histories behind materials. It’s about connecting with communities of people who practice those techniques. It’s about material and technique being a doorway into a greater relationship with an object.”
Themes of transformation—of structures, identities, and bodies—run throughout the show. “What I love about drag and puppetry is the sense of transformation and play, specifically with bodies,” Adrian says. “Within these art forms, a body can become mutable and capable of performing and becoming in unexpected states.” The sculptures also transform throughout viewers’ experiences, going through stages of inflation and deflation and existing in many different states.
RIPSTOP’s constant interplay between surface and depth, assumption and reality, are all a part of what Adrian describes as “looking behind the curtain,” which they trace back to the theatre. “When I’m thinking about systems, and the systems desire fits into, I’m thinking of stage construction, the backstage, the things that go on behind the show, and performance of our desires,” they explain.
As a craft artist, Adrian’s philosophy “comes down to having an intentional relationship with material, process, and technique,” he says. “Those aspects of art making are just as – if not more – important than an intellectualized concept being illustrated by an artwork.”
“Broadened definitions of craft that highlight communities of practice are foundational for the Center for Craft’s new strategic direction,” explains Executive Director Stephanie Moore. “Max Adrian’s work in RIPSTOP exemplifies the expansive and meaningful forms craft can take.” The Center for Craft is an institution Adrian credits for their professional growth. “The Center for Craft has felt like such a supporting institution for me specifically and for so many other craft artists I know,” they note. “To be able to bring this amount of work to Asheville is pretty cool.”
See Max Adrian: RIPSTOP at the Center for Craft Beginning July 26. A reception will be held on August 15. RIPSTOP is organized by Houston Center for Contemporary Craft and curated by Sarah Darro.
Find the perfect gift this holiday season for everyone on your list at the 10th annual 𝗛𝗼𝗹𝗶𝗱𝗮𝘆 𝗣𝗼𝗽 𝗨𝗽 𝗦𝗵𝗼𝗽! Shop local, shop small and support local artists, makers, and vintage collectors.
We’ve decked the halls of the Ideation Lab inside the Center for Craft in Downtown Asheville. Shop over 100 vendors; housewares, handmade jewelry, ceramics, apparel, vintage clothes, ornaments, candles, gifts for our furry friends and more.
WHEN:
Open Nov 29 through Dec 24
10am-8pm daily
WHERE:
The Ideation Lab inside the Center for Craft
67 Broadway St, Asheville, NC 28801
Pieces made from nylon fabric ripstop, which keeps tears from spreading, invite viewers into created, fantastical worlds, only to highlight the complex—even impossible—architectures of their construction. Before the pandemic, Adrian primarily focused on personal experiences and interrogations of queerness, identity, and sexuality. Since then, the work has zoomed out in its scope, still centering identity but placed in larger infrastructure and surveillance systems that mediate, manipulate, and control desire.
Adrian counts queer fiber art, BDSM and kink culture, theatre, camp horror, puppetry, and drag among his many influences. Works in RIPSTOP, like the modernist bounce house sculpture A Fallible Complex (2021), evoke spaces for play, beckoning visitors in through their alluring aesthetic and then blocking their entrance or revealing structural instabilities, like missing floors. Others, like The Sensational Inflatable Furry Divines (2017-19), use sensual materials, like faux fur, spandex, and pleather, which connect to theatrical performance and counterculture. The materials “play on people’s initial associations and serve as a gateway into greater conversations about identity construction, performance, desire, and technology,” he shares.Pieces also nod to the history of quilting, including the AIDS Memorial Quilt, another influence on Adrian’s work. “Even when pieces aren’t explicitly making quilt references, I want the history of quilting and sewing-based craft to be part of the conversation of the work,” he says. “Craft is so much about the processes and histories behind materials. It’s about connecting with communities of people who practice those techniques. It’s about material and technique being a doorway into a greater relationship with an object.”
Themes of transformation—of structures, identities, and bodies—run throughout the show. “What I love about drag and puppetry is the sense of transformation and play, specifically with bodies,” Adrian says. “Within these art forms, a body can become mutable and capable of performing and becoming in unexpected states.” The sculptures also transform throughout viewers’ experiences, going through stages of inflation and deflation and existing in many different states.
RIPSTOP’s constant interplay between surface and depth, assumption and reality, are all a part of what Adrian describes as “looking behind the curtain,” which they trace back to the theatre. “When I’m thinking about systems, and the systems desire fits into, I’m thinking of stage construction, the backstage, the things that go on behind the show, and performance of our desires,” they explain.
As a craft artist, Adrian’s philosophy “comes down to having an intentional relationship with material, process, and technique,” he says. “Those aspects of art making are just as – if not more – important than an intellectualized concept being illustrated by an artwork.”
“Broadened definitions of craft that highlight communities of practice are foundational for the Center for Craft’s new strategic direction,” explains Executive Director Stephanie Moore. “Max Adrian’s work in RIPSTOP exemplifies the expansive and meaningful forms craft can take.” The Center for Craft is an institution Adrian credits for their professional growth. “The Center for Craft has felt like such a supporting institution for me specifically and for so many other craft artists I know,” they note. “To be able to bring this amount of work to Asheville is pretty cool.”
See Max Adrian: RIPSTOP at the Center for Craft Beginning July 26. A reception will be held on August 15. RIPSTOP is organized by Houston Center for Contemporary Craft and curated by Sarah Darro.
American Made: Paintings and Sculpture from the DeMell Jacobsen Collection features more than 100 works of art by renowned American artists. The exhibition beautifully illustrates distinctive styles and thought-provoking art explored by American artists over the past two centuries. Though many objects from the DeMell Jacobsen Collection have been on view at other museums, ranging from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum to the Amon Carter Museum of American Art and Saint Louis Art Museum, this exhibition features the best of the collection brought together in one location. The exhibition begins with Colonial-era portraits by masters, such as Benjamin West, Thomas Sully, and Sarah Miriam Peale, and then moves on to highlight the development of mid-19th-century landscape painting. Viewers will discover works depicting the United States from coast to coast by artists, including Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, Jasper Francis Copsey, and even a monumental arctic scene by William Bradford.
Bill Viola’s Moving Stillness: Mount Rainier, 1979 on loan from Art Bridges is an immersive experience that explores the ideas of death and regeneration in nature. In a darkened room, sounds from nature envelop the viewer, as a placid pool of water reflects a projected image of Mount Rainier onto a screen. The water is periodically disturbed, causing the image to dissolve and slowly recompose as the pool settles. As an active volcano at rest, Mount Rainier embodies both quiet beauty and dramatic violence. Using time as both a tool and a theme in his work, Viola visualizes the dualities of nature’s rhythms of renewal, which include moments of both fragility and strength.
Tracey Morgan Gallery is pleased to present “The Boys Will Get Hungry if They See Fruit,” an exhibition of new paintings and soft sculptures by multidisciplinary artist Carly Owens Weiss. This is Weiss’ first solo exhibition with the gallery. A reception for the artist will be held Friday, November 15 from 6-8PM.
Regular gallery hours are Wed- Sat 11am-5pm
Ceramic artists throughout history have become masters of all four elements—creating clay from a mixture of earth and water to shape their work, drying it in air, and hardening it in fire. Throughout this process, the artist decides which aspects of the work will be tightly controlled, and when the elements can step in to leave nature’s mark. This exhibition traces the historical, stylistic, and conceptual origins of work that either embraces or refuses the element of chance in ceramics, looking at modern and contemporary work made in Western North Carolina.
The Asheville Art Museum is pleased to present Ginny Ruffner’s Reforestation of the Imagination, organized and toured by the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The exhibition imagines an apocalyptic landscape of withered plant forms that come to life when activated with augmented reality. In collaboration with animator and media artist Grant Kirkpatrick, Ruffner illuminates the delicate balance between nature and the artificial human-built world around us, putting forth an optimistic hope for the future: that technology can be a means to understand and help save the earth from environmental devastation. Visitors can download the free app “Reforestation” on their phones or use the iPads in the gallery to bring this second reality to life. When the tree rings of a stump are viewed through a device’s camera lens, a hologram of a fictional plant appears to sprout from the sculpture. These imagined fruits and flowers have evolved from existing flora, developing dramatic appendages and skills necessary to flourish in this radically different environment. In Ruffner’s fantastical reality, tulips develop stem flexibility, pears contain windows to the outside world, and flowers take on the form of birds. The installation includes Ruffner’s tongue-in-cheek descriptions of her surreal flora and their remarkable, sometimes humorous adaptations. Used as inspiration for the AR images, 19 original drawings by the artist will also be on view.
Swing into the holiday spirit at Haywood Park Hotel and a jazzy Swingin’ Lil Christmas Party featuring Drayton & the Dreamboats.
Enjoy holiday cocktails, mocktails, and treats, plus a swing dance lesson (7-8 PM). Dress to impress and celebrate the glamour of the swing era at The Cellar below Haywood Park Hotel. No partner? No problem—new moves and festive fun await!
Find the perfect gift this holiday season for everyone on your list at the 10th annual 𝗛𝗼𝗹𝗶𝗱𝗮𝘆 𝗣𝗼𝗽 𝗨𝗽 𝗦𝗵𝗼𝗽! Shop local, shop small and support local artists, makers, and vintage collectors.
We’ve decked the halls of the Ideation Lab inside the Center for Craft in Downtown Asheville. Shop over 100 vendors; housewares, handmade jewelry, ceramics, apparel, vintage clothes, ornaments, candles, gifts for our furry friends and more.
WHEN:
Open Nov 29 through Dec 24
10am-8pm daily
WHERE:
The Ideation Lab inside the Center for Craft
67 Broadway St, Asheville, NC 28801
Pieces made from nylon fabric ripstop, which keeps tears from spreading, invite viewers into created, fantastical worlds, only to highlight the complex—even impossible—architectures of their construction. Before the pandemic, Adrian primarily focused on personal experiences and interrogations of queerness, identity, and sexuality. Since then, the work has zoomed out in its scope, still centering identity but placed in larger infrastructure and surveillance systems that mediate, manipulate, and control desire.
Adrian counts queer fiber art, BDSM and kink culture, theatre, camp horror, puppetry, and drag among his many influences. Works in RIPSTOP, like the modernist bounce house sculpture A Fallible Complex (2021), evoke spaces for play, beckoning visitors in through their alluring aesthetic and then blocking their entrance or revealing structural instabilities, like missing floors. Others, like The Sensational Inflatable Furry Divines (2017-19), use sensual materials, like faux fur, spandex, and pleather, which connect to theatrical performance and counterculture. The materials “play on people’s initial associations and serve as a gateway into greater conversations about identity construction, performance, desire, and technology,” he shares.Pieces also nod to the history of quilting, including the AIDS Memorial Quilt, another influence on Adrian’s work. “Even when pieces aren’t explicitly making quilt references, I want the history of quilting and sewing-based craft to be part of the conversation of the work,” he says. “Craft is so much about the processes and histories behind materials. It’s about connecting with communities of people who practice those techniques. It’s about material and technique being a doorway into a greater relationship with an object.”
Themes of transformation—of structures, identities, and bodies—run throughout the show. “What I love about drag and puppetry is the sense of transformation and play, specifically with bodies,” Adrian says. “Within these art forms, a body can become mutable and capable of performing and becoming in unexpected states.” The sculptures also transform throughout viewers’ experiences, going through stages of inflation and deflation and existing in many different states.
RIPSTOP’s constant interplay between surface and depth, assumption and reality, are all a part of what Adrian describes as “looking behind the curtain,” which they trace back to the theatre. “When I’m thinking about systems, and the systems desire fits into, I’m thinking of stage construction, the backstage, the things that go on behind the show, and performance of our desires,” they explain.
As a craft artist, Adrian’s philosophy “comes down to having an intentional relationship with material, process, and technique,” he says. “Those aspects of art making are just as – if not more – important than an intellectualized concept being illustrated by an artwork.”
“Broadened definitions of craft that highlight communities of practice are foundational for the Center for Craft’s new strategic direction,” explains Executive Director Stephanie Moore. “Max Adrian’s work in RIPSTOP exemplifies the expansive and meaningful forms craft can take.” The Center for Craft is an institution Adrian credits for their professional growth. “The Center for Craft has felt like such a supporting institution for me specifically and for so many other craft artists I know,” they note. “To be able to bring this amount of work to Asheville is pretty cool.”
See Max Adrian: RIPSTOP at the Center for Craft Beginning July 26. A reception will be held on August 15. RIPSTOP is organized by Houston Center for Contemporary Craft and curated by Sarah Darro.
American Made: Paintings and Sculpture from the DeMell Jacobsen Collection features more than 100 works of art by renowned American artists. The exhibition beautifully illustrates distinctive styles and thought-provoking art explored by American artists over the past two centuries. Though many objects from the DeMell Jacobsen Collection have been on view at other museums, ranging from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum to the Amon Carter Museum of American Art and Saint Louis Art Museum, this exhibition features the best of the collection brought together in one location. The exhibition begins with Colonial-era portraits by masters, such as Benjamin West, Thomas Sully, and Sarah Miriam Peale, and then moves on to highlight the development of mid-19th-century landscape painting. Viewers will discover works depicting the United States from coast to coast by artists, including Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, Jasper Francis Copsey, and even a monumental arctic scene by William Bradford.
Bill Viola’s Moving Stillness: Mount Rainier, 1979 on loan from Art Bridges is an immersive experience that explores the ideas of death and regeneration in nature. In a darkened room, sounds from nature envelop the viewer, as a placid pool of water reflects a projected image of Mount Rainier onto a screen. The water is periodically disturbed, causing the image to dissolve and slowly recompose as the pool settles. As an active volcano at rest, Mount Rainier embodies both quiet beauty and dramatic violence. Using time as both a tool and a theme in his work, Viola visualizes the dualities of nature’s rhythms of renewal, which include moments of both fragility and strength.
Tracey Morgan Gallery is pleased to present “The Boys Will Get Hungry if They See Fruit,” an exhibition of new paintings and soft sculptures by multidisciplinary artist Carly Owens Weiss. This is Weiss’ first solo exhibition with the gallery. A reception for the artist will be held Friday, November 15 from 6-8PM.
Regular gallery hours are Wed- Sat 11am-5pm
Ceramic artists throughout history have become masters of all four elements—creating clay from a mixture of earth and water to shape their work, drying it in air, and hardening it in fire. Throughout this process, the artist decides which aspects of the work will be tightly controlled, and when the elements can step in to leave nature’s mark. This exhibition traces the historical, stylistic, and conceptual origins of work that either embraces or refuses the element of chance in ceramics, looking at modern and contemporary work made in Western North Carolina.
The Asheville Art Museum is pleased to present Ginny Ruffner’s Reforestation of the Imagination, organized and toured by the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The exhibition imagines an apocalyptic landscape of withered plant forms that come to life when activated with augmented reality. In collaboration with animator and media artist Grant Kirkpatrick, Ruffner illuminates the delicate balance between nature and the artificial human-built world around us, putting forth an optimistic hope for the future: that technology can be a means to understand and help save the earth from environmental devastation. Visitors can download the free app “Reforestation” on their phones or use the iPads in the gallery to bring this second reality to life. When the tree rings of a stump are viewed through a device’s camera lens, a hologram of a fictional plant appears to sprout from the sculpture. These imagined fruits and flowers have evolved from existing flora, developing dramatic appendages and skills necessary to flourish in this radically different environment. In Ruffner’s fantastical reality, tulips develop stem flexibility, pears contain windows to the outside world, and flowers take on the form of birds. The installation includes Ruffner’s tongue-in-cheek descriptions of her surreal flora and their remarkable, sometimes humorous adaptations. Used as inspiration for the AR images, 19 original drawings by the artist will also be on view.
This dance is fragrance-free (no perfume, cologne, strong deodorant, etc.), out of respect for those with sensitivities.
If this is your first time dancing with us, your second dance is free!
Find the perfect gift this holiday season for everyone on your list at the 10th annual 𝗛𝗼𝗹𝗶𝗱𝗮𝘆 𝗣𝗼𝗽 𝗨𝗽 𝗦𝗵𝗼𝗽! Shop local, shop small and support local artists, makers, and vintage collectors.
We’ve decked the halls of the Ideation Lab inside the Center for Craft in Downtown Asheville. Shop over 100 vendors; housewares, handmade jewelry, ceramics, apparel, vintage clothes, ornaments, candles, gifts for our furry friends and more.
WHEN:
Open Nov 29 through Dec 24
10am-8pm daily
WHERE:
The Ideation Lab inside the Center for Craft
67 Broadway St, Asheville, NC 28801
Pieces made from nylon fabric ripstop, which keeps tears from spreading, invite viewers into created, fantastical worlds, only to highlight the complex—even impossible—architectures of their construction. Before the pandemic, Adrian primarily focused on personal experiences and interrogations of queerness, identity, and sexuality. Since then, the work has zoomed out in its scope, still centering identity but placed in larger infrastructure and surveillance systems that mediate, manipulate, and control desire.
Adrian counts queer fiber art, BDSM and kink culture, theatre, camp horror, puppetry, and drag among his many influences. Works in RIPSTOP, like the modernist bounce house sculpture A Fallible Complex (2021), evoke spaces for play, beckoning visitors in through their alluring aesthetic and then blocking their entrance or revealing structural instabilities, like missing floors. Others, like The Sensational Inflatable Furry Divines (2017-19), use sensual materials, like faux fur, spandex, and pleather, which connect to theatrical performance and counterculture. The materials “play on people’s initial associations and serve as a gateway into greater conversations about identity construction, performance, desire, and technology,” he shares.Pieces also nod to the history of quilting, including the AIDS Memorial Quilt, another influence on Adrian’s work. “Even when pieces aren’t explicitly making quilt references, I want the history of quilting and sewing-based craft to be part of the conversation of the work,” he says. “Craft is so much about the processes and histories behind materials. It’s about connecting with communities of people who practice those techniques. It’s about material and technique being a doorway into a greater relationship with an object.”
Themes of transformation—of structures, identities, and bodies—run throughout the show. “What I love about drag and puppetry is the sense of transformation and play, specifically with bodies,” Adrian says. “Within these art forms, a body can become mutable and capable of performing and becoming in unexpected states.” The sculptures also transform throughout viewers’ experiences, going through stages of inflation and deflation and existing in many different states.
RIPSTOP’s constant interplay between surface and depth, assumption and reality, are all a part of what Adrian describes as “looking behind the curtain,” which they trace back to the theatre. “When I’m thinking about systems, and the systems desire fits into, I’m thinking of stage construction, the backstage, the things that go on behind the show, and performance of our desires,” they explain.
As a craft artist, Adrian’s philosophy “comes down to having an intentional relationship with material, process, and technique,” he says. “Those aspects of art making are just as – if not more – important than an intellectualized concept being illustrated by an artwork.”
“Broadened definitions of craft that highlight communities of practice are foundational for the Center for Craft’s new strategic direction,” explains Executive Director Stephanie Moore. “Max Adrian’s work in RIPSTOP exemplifies the expansive and meaningful forms craft can take.” The Center for Craft is an institution Adrian credits for their professional growth. “The Center for Craft has felt like such a supporting institution for me specifically and for so many other craft artists I know,” they note. “To be able to bring this amount of work to Asheville is pretty cool.”
See Max Adrian: RIPSTOP at the Center for Craft Beginning July 26. A reception will be held on August 15. RIPSTOP is organized by Houston Center for Contemporary Craft and curated by Sarah Darro.
American Made: Paintings and Sculpture from the DeMell Jacobsen Collection features more than 100 works of art by renowned American artists. The exhibition beautifully illustrates distinctive styles and thought-provoking art explored by American artists over the past two centuries. Though many objects from the DeMell Jacobsen Collection have been on view at other museums, ranging from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum to the Amon Carter Museum of American Art and Saint Louis Art Museum, this exhibition features the best of the collection brought together in one location. The exhibition begins with Colonial-era portraits by masters, such as Benjamin West, Thomas Sully, and Sarah Miriam Peale, and then moves on to highlight the development of mid-19th-century landscape painting. Viewers will discover works depicting the United States from coast to coast by artists, including Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, Jasper Francis Copsey, and even a monumental arctic scene by William Bradford.
Bill Viola’s Moving Stillness: Mount Rainier, 1979 on loan from Art Bridges is an immersive experience that explores the ideas of death and regeneration in nature. In a darkened room, sounds from nature envelop the viewer, as a placid pool of water reflects a projected image of Mount Rainier onto a screen. The water is periodically disturbed, causing the image to dissolve and slowly recompose as the pool settles. As an active volcano at rest, Mount Rainier embodies both quiet beauty and dramatic violence. Using time as both a tool and a theme in his work, Viola visualizes the dualities of nature’s rhythms of renewal, which include moments of both fragility and strength.
Tracey Morgan Gallery is pleased to present “The Boys Will Get Hungry if They See Fruit,” an exhibition of new paintings and soft sculptures by multidisciplinary artist Carly Owens Weiss. This is Weiss’ first solo exhibition with the gallery. A reception for the artist will be held Friday, November 15 from 6-8PM.
Regular gallery hours are Wed- Sat 11am-5pm
Ceramic artists throughout history have become masters of all four elements—creating clay from a mixture of earth and water to shape their work, drying it in air, and hardening it in fire. Throughout this process, the artist decides which aspects of the work will be tightly controlled, and when the elements can step in to leave nature’s mark. This exhibition traces the historical, stylistic, and conceptual origins of work that either embraces or refuses the element of chance in ceramics, looking at modern and contemporary work made in Western North Carolina.
The Asheville Art Museum is pleased to present Ginny Ruffner’s Reforestation of the Imagination, organized and toured by the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The exhibition imagines an apocalyptic landscape of withered plant forms that come to life when activated with augmented reality. In collaboration with animator and media artist Grant Kirkpatrick, Ruffner illuminates the delicate balance between nature and the artificial human-built world around us, putting forth an optimistic hope for the future: that technology can be a means to understand and help save the earth from environmental devastation. Visitors can download the free app “Reforestation” on their phones or use the iPads in the gallery to bring this second reality to life. When the tree rings of a stump are viewed through a device’s camera lens, a hologram of a fictional plant appears to sprout from the sculpture. These imagined fruits and flowers have evolved from existing flora, developing dramatic appendages and skills necessary to flourish in this radically different environment. In Ruffner’s fantastical reality, tulips develop stem flexibility, pears contain windows to the outside world, and flowers take on the form of birds. The installation includes Ruffner’s tongue-in-cheek descriptions of her surreal flora and their remarkable, sometimes humorous adaptations. Used as inspiration for the AR images, 19 original drawings by the artist will also be on view.
