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.

Thursday, November 17, 2022
TAPAAS for Buncombe County Schools
Nov 17 all-day
online w/

LEAF
                                                          Downtown

TAPAAS is an arts-integration program that implements high quality artist residencies to create craft and performance experiences across all curriculum. Since 2010, TAPAAS has impacted more than 9,000 students, trained over 55 artists, and provided more than 850 days of artists in residence. Teachers report that 94% of TAPAAS residencies scored as ‘excellent’ in student enthusiasm and participation; student understanding of the curriculum was deeper when taught as a creative project, and there was increased parent engagement in the classroom. Now in its 11th year, TAPAAS has maintained the ability to be a cost-effective, far-reaching program with a profound impact on both individual artists and students in our community. In 2021, Asheville Area Arts Council partnered with the Asheville City Schools Foundation and the Buncombe County School District to expand programming into Buncombe County Schools– increasing the depth and breadth of this program.

View the Fall 2022 Catalog

TAPAAS Grant for BCS Educators
Nov 17 all-day
online

TAPAAS for BCS Educators

Apply by November 18 | TAPAAS is an arts-integration program that implements high quality artist residencies to create craft and performance experiences across all curriculum. Since 2010, TAPAAS has impacted more than 9,000 students, trained over 55 artists, and provided more than 850 days of artists in residence. All teachers in the Buncombe County Schools district are welcome to apply — application opens October 17.

Thursday Produce Sorting/Box Prep with Bounty + Soul
Nov 17 @ 10:00 am – 12:00 pm
Bounty + Soul

Before you even begin thinking about volunteering, ask yourself – Am I well enough to volunteer?

Your safety and limiting the spread of COVID-19 is everyone’s main priority. We encourage you to review and adhere to the recommendations on the Buncombe County readiness site on how best to avoid COVID-19 and what to do if you think you might have it.


Bounty & Soul is a community-based non-profit with a mission to connect people to food, education and each other.

This opportunity involves sorting and inspecting produce donations from local grocers and placing them into food boxes that are distributed at weekly drive-thru markets. 

Time Commitment:

  • Thursdays 10am-12pm
  • Thursdays 1-3pm

Requirements:

  • Volunteers should agree to adhere to all the safety measures implemented
  • Ability to lift 25 lbs.
  • Bending, stooping, and twisting may be required
  • Closed toed shoes

Health/Safety:

  • We are asking volunteers to wear/bring their own face covering when delivering items
    • Cloth covering nose and mouth
    • Fabric or disposable face mask
  • Asking volunteers to maintain physical distance of 6 feet or more when possible
    • Note: there are times when the volunteer task requires volunteers to engage closer than 6 feet. Please do not sign up if you feel uncomfortable.

 

1 and older
Is Family Friendly
Is Not Outdoors
Is Wheelchair Accessible
Toe River Arts: The Fall Studio Tour Preview Exhibition
Nov 17 @ 10:30 am – 5:00 pm
Toe River Arts

The Fall Studio Tour Preview Exhibition opens in the Kokol Gallery, in Toe River Arts’ Spruce Pine location at 269 Oak Ave, October 29 and runs through the end December 2022.  This exhibition gives visitors an opportunity to have a glimpse into each studio and plan their route. It’s also a great place to begin the tour or take a break from a day of non-stop art and artists.

There’s something breathtaking and awe-inspiring about driving through the mountains of western North Carolina in the Fall.  The way the trees show off by turning vibrant shades of red, yellow, and orange before leaving bare branches to the crisp winds and snowy days of winter, reminds us that nature herself is the original artist.

 

For more than a quarter century, the Toe River Arts Studio Tour has intrigued those who make the journey to visit places of inspiration and creation. Situated between Roan Mountain which boasts the world’s largest rhododendron garden and Mt. Mitchell, the highest peak east of the Mississippi, the Toe River Arts Studio Tour is a free, self-guided journey of the arts. This arts adventure through Mitchell and Yancey Counties will take visitors along the meandering Toe River, across its many bridges, around barns, acres of fields and miles of forests all while visiting the 83 talented studio artists who often take inspiration from the mountains they call home and 8 galleries featuring local and international art.

 

It doesn’t matter if you live up the hill or across the state. The Studio Tour provides an adventure for the intrepid seeker of the art experience. Artist studios come in many iterations—the building off to the side of the house, or across the field or down the road or right off the main road or down a gravel one-lane. Two-stories with a gallery space or small and cozy with a table set up or cleared off for display. Still there are others that devote a corner to each artist sharing the space. Wherever and however they are set up, the studios are exciting places to visit because they demonstrate the dynamic process used to create a finished piece. Every artist has their own way of telling a story, inviting visitors to ask questions, hold their work, and share a moment.

 

The art is as diverse as the artists who create it and features the work of glassblowers, jewelers, printmakers, potters, fiber artists, ironworkers, painters, sculptors, and woodworkers.

“Matewan as Metaphor” Exhibit by Jean Hess
Nov 17 @ 11:00 am – 5:00 pm
Flood Gallery Fine Art Center

Collage paintings, assemblages, textiles, & faux artifacts designed by Jean Hess to explore the 1920 WV mining labor dispute as metaphor for the human condition.

Three rooms are filled with an eclectic mix of collage paintings ranging in scale from 6×6” to 50×70”; 3-D assemblages and faux artifacts; hand-stitched textiles; documentation in the form of historic notes, catalog entries for a collection of ephemera, photographs.
Call 828-273-3332 for weekend hours or to make an appointment. Exhibits through November 30, 2022.
Flood Gallery Fine Art Center is a non-profit 501(c)3 organization, and educates, encourages, challenges and inspires the community through music, film, literary, and contemporary art.

“Matewan as Metaphor” is an experiment in artistic license. Mixed-media artist Jean Hess creates a personal story by combining real and imagined resources with the intention of healing her own memory and transcending limits on what is possible and allowed in creative and scholarly endeavors as well as in visual art. The 1920 mining labor dispute in Matewan, West Virginia, which involved her own family, stands for a full life and its adversities.

Matewan was, in 1920, the scene of an armed skirmish between coal miners, mining companies, local union officials and hired strike-breakers. Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency thugs hired by the coal operators traveled by train to cast striking miners and their families out of their homes. The local mayor and several Baldwin-Felts agents were killed. The chief of police, the Matewan mayor, and several other locals gathered at the train station to confront the hired guns about the unlawful evictions. The Baldwin-Felts agents refused to recognize the local authority, and a shootout ensued. The mayor, some miners, and several detectives were killed. This was one of many violent conflicts that took place in Southern WV between pro-union miners and men hired by coal companies to use force and intimidation to prevent miners from unionizing.

Jean Hess takes serious training in cultural anthropology and visual art to playful levels. Her mixed-media paintings and constructions come from personal memory and nostalgia, ancestral ties and historical fact. Mining illustrations and maps signify coal mining in early twentieth century Appalachia, as well as issues concerning extractive industries, population displacement, exploitative labor practices, suffering and loss. Using collage, paint, layered resins and found ephemera Hess experiments with myriad ways one can obfuscate, surprise and entice. Found imagery is from geography and history textbooks from the early 1900’s and before. Dimensional objects are from her family or found in junk shops over time. Much of her material may be deconstructed, obscured, scrambled or carefully embellished.
Jean Hess’ multi-variant creative output segues with an equally unpredictable life. She has lived in Washington, DC, Baltimore, Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Abiquiu, New Mexico as well as Atlanta, Dallas and now Knoxville, Tennessee. Her work-for-pay background includes stints as a computer programmer, Montessori teacher, museum registrar, writer and research consultant for government and private industry. With degrees [BA, MA] in cultural anthropology she tends to draw inspiration from wide-ranging interests, and not always according to established rules.

Hess is well-known for experimental mixed-media collage paintings and assemblages that combine the skillful use of layered paint and resins, light refraction and found materials such as antique ephemera and pressed plants. Because her palette, surface and touch are consistent, one can always tell a work of art is hers. And yet Hess likes surprises, plays with materials that are sometimes unfamiliar, operates in a controlled-experiment spirit and likes accidental detours that energize her work. While she took some undergraduate art courses she is largely self-taught.

Public collections include: Huntsville Museum of Art; Evansville Museum of Art, History and Science; Knoxville Museum of Art; University of Virginia; Farm Credit Administration; Knoxville Convention Center; City of Chattanooga; St. Mary’s Hospital Heart Institute [IN]; Canon USA.

Jean Hess is proud that much of her work is in private collections, cared for by sympathetic individuals.

Natural Collector | Gifts of Fleur S. Bresler
Nov 17 @ 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
Asheville Art Museum

Natural Collector is organized by the Asheville Art Museum. IMAGE: Christian Burchard, Untitled (nesting bowls), 1998, madrone burl, various from 6 × 6 × 6 to ⅜ × ⅜ × ⅜ inches. Gift of Fleur S. Bresler, 2021.76.01.
Natural Collector Gifts of Fleur S. Bresler features around 15 artworks from the collection of Fleur S. Bresler, which include important examples of modern and contemporary American craft including wood and fiber art, as well as glass and ceramics. These works that were generously donated by contemporary craft collector Bresler to the Asheville Art Museum over the years reflect her strong interest in wood-based art and themes of nature.

According to Associate Curator Whitney Richardson, “This exhibition highlights artworks that consider the natural element from which they were created or replicate known flora and fauna in unexpected materials. The selection of objects displayed illustrates how Bresler’s eye for collecting craft not only draws attention to nature and artists’ interest in it, but also accentuates her role as a natural collector with an intuitive ability to identify themes and ideas that speak to one another.”

This exhibition presents work from the Collection representing the first generation of American wood turners like Rude Osolnik and Ed Moulthrop, as well as those that came after and learned from them, such as Philip Moulthrop, John Jordan, and local Western North Carolina (WNC) artist Stoney Lamar. Other WNC-based artists in Natural Collector include Anne Lemanski, whose paper sculpture of a snake captures the viewer’s imagination, and Michael Sherrill’s multimedia work that tricks the eye with its similarity to true-to-life berries. Also represented are beadwork and sculpture by Joyce J. Scott and Jack and Linda Fifield.

Rebel/Re-Belle: Exploring Gender, Agency, and Identity | Selections from the Asheville Art Museum and Rubell Museum
Nov 17 @ 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
Asheville Art Museum
Wednesday through Monday from 11am to 6pm
Corn Wagon Thunder, Laundromat from the Wonder series, 2017. Archival print on Epson Ultra Premium Presentation matte paper, 10 × 15 inches, Asheville Art Museum. © Corn Wagon Thunder.

Rebel/Re-Belle: Exploring Gender, Agency, and Identity Selections from the Asheville Art Museum and Rubell Museum combines works, primarily created by women, from two significant collections of contemporary art to explore how artists have innovated, influenced, interrogated, and inspired visual culture in the past 100 years.

Stained with Glass: Vitreograph Prints from the Studio of Harvey K. Littleton Exhibition
Nov 17 @ 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
Asheville Art Museum
 
Left: Thermon Statom, Frankincense, 1999, siligraphy from glass plate with digital transfer on BFK Rives paper, edition 50/50, 36 1/4 × 29 3/8 inches. Asheville Art Museum. © Thermon Statom. | Right: Dale Chihuly, Suite of Ten Prints: Chandelier, 1994, 4-color intaglio from glass plate on BRK Rives paper, edition 34/50, image: 29 ½ × 23 ½ inches, sheet: 36 × 29 ½ inches. Asheville Art Museum. © Dale Chihuly / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Asheville, N.C.—The selection of works from the Asheville Art Museum’s Collection presented in Stained with Glass: Vitreograph Prints from the Studio of Harvey K. Littleton features imagery that recreates the sensation and colors of stained glass. The exhibition showcases Littleton and the range of makers who worked with him, including Dale Chihuly, Cynthia Bringle, Thermon Statom, and more. This exhibition—organized by the Asheville Art Museum and curated by Hilary Schroeder, assistant curator—will be on view in The Van Winkle Law Firm Gallery at the Museum from January 12 through May 23, 2022.

In 1974 Harvey K. Littleton (Corning, NY 1922–2013 Spruce Pine, NC) developed a process for using glass to create prints on paper. Littleton, who began as a ceramicist and became a leading figure in the American Studio Glass Movement, expanded his curiosity around the experimental potential of glass into innovations in the world of printmaking. A wide circle of artists in a variety of media—including glass, ceramics, and painting—were invited to Littleton’s studio in Spruce Pine, NC, to create prints using the vitreograph process developed by Littleton. Upending notions of both traditional glassmaking and printmaking, vitreographs innovatively combine the two into something new. The resulting prints created through a process of etched glass, ink, and paper create rich, colorful scenes reminiscent of luminous stained glass.

“Printmaking is a medium that many artists explore at some point in their career,” says Hilary Schroeder, assistant curator. “The process is often collaborative, as they may find themselves working with a print studio and highly skilled printmaker. The medium can also be quite experimental. Harvey Littleton’s contribution to the field is very much so in this spirit, as seen in his incorporation of glass and his invitation to artists who might otherwise not have explored works on paper. Through this exhibition, we are able to appreciate how the artists bring their work in clay, glass, or paint to ink and paper.” 

Verner Experiential Garden Helpers
Nov 17 @ 11:00 am – 3:00 pm
Verner Center for Early Learning

Verner Center for Early Learning is a nonprofit agency providing high quality, affordable early care and education to children birth to five years of age throughout Buncombe County. The mission of Verner Center is to foster holistic learning environments where young children and families thrive. The organization embraces a philosophy that includes excellence in early childhood practices, diversity among children and families, and partnerships and collaboration with families and communities. This philosophy is demonstrated through provision of high quality education, family services, health and nutrition services, and professional development for teachers.

We are currently looking for compassionate volunteers to support our experiential garden.

Volunteer Opportunity Includes:

  • Pulling weeds
  • Cleaning out garden beds
  • Prepping new garden beds
  • Building small projects
  • Mowing
  • Weed eating
  • Laying mulch
  • Watering

Volunteer Requirements:

  • Respond to the shift
  • Comfortable working in various weather conditions
  • Comfortable bending, stooping, twisting
  • Ability to stand for 1-2 hours at a time
Thursday Produce Sorting/Box Prep with Bounty + Soul
Nov 17 @ 1:00 pm – 3:00 pm
Bounty + Soul

Before you even begin thinking about volunteering, ask yourself – Am I well enough to volunteer?

Your safety and limiting the spread of COVID-19 is everyone’s main priority. We encourage you to review and adhere to the recommendations on the Buncombe County readiness site on how best to avoid COVID-19 and what to do if you think you might have it.


Bounty & Soul is a community-based non-profit with a mission to connect people to food, education and each other.

This opportunity involves sorting and inspecting produce donations from local grocers and placing them into food boxes that are distributed at weekly drive-thru markets. 

Time Commitment:

  • Thursdays 10am-12pm
  • Thursdays 1-3pm

Requirements:

  • Volunteers should agree to adhere to all the safety measures implemented
  • Ability to lift 25 lbs.
  • Bending, stooping, and twisting may be required
  • Closed toed shoes

Health/Safety:

  • We are asking volunteers to wear/bring their own face covering when delivering items
    • Cloth covering nose and mouth
    • Fabric or disposable face mask
  • Asking volunteers to maintain physical distance of 6 feet or more when possible
    • Note: there are times when the volunteer task requires volunteers to engage closer than 6 feet. Please do not sign up if you feel uncomfortable.

 

1 and older
Is Family Friendly
Is Not Outdoors
Is Wheelchair Accessible
Elementary After-School Volunteer Creative Peacemakers
Nov 17 @ 3:00 pm – 5:00 pm
Deaverview Apartment Community

We are seeking volunteers to assist us in our small after school program for children in West Asheville in low-income housing.  We provide a safe and nourishing environment, healthy snacks, and creative activities.  Our program currently meets during the school year on most Tuesday and Thursday afternoons from 3:00-5:00pm. You may volunteer for one or two days a week. 

Volunteer Responsibilities:

  • Assist with serving snacks
  • Interact with children during activity time
  • Supervise games and outdoor free time
  • For people with background in education, there is also an opportunity to assist with curriculum development and program planning and administration

Requirements:

  • Background check
  • Orientation booklets will be provided
  • Masks are required if unvaccinated
MakerSpace: Upcycled Art with Aspen Johnson
Nov 17 @ 5:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Asheville Art Museum

Drop into our studio to experiment freely and collaborate using different materials, tools, and techniques! Visit a chosen artwork in the galleries for inspiration, then head to the studio to create. All ages and abilities are welcome (children must be accompanied by an adult); no reservations are required.

This month, participants will work with local artist Aspen Johnston. Working with recycled materials, come experiment with wire sculpture, recycled materials, and hot glue,  to express your unique inner animal turning what we view as “trash” into art.

Make sure to check out our newest exhibition, Rebel/Re-Belle for inspiration for the upcycled MakerSpace.

Please note:

  • In accordance with Buncombe County and city directives, a limited number of people can be in the studio at one time. To ensure all participants have time to create, we may ask you to limit your time.
Friday, November 18, 2022
TAPAAS for Buncombe County Schools
Nov 18 all-day
online w/

LEAF
                                                          Downtown

TAPAAS is an arts-integration program that implements high quality artist residencies to create craft and performance experiences across all curriculum. Since 2010, TAPAAS has impacted more than 9,000 students, trained over 55 artists, and provided more than 850 days of artists in residence. Teachers report that 94% of TAPAAS residencies scored as ‘excellent’ in student enthusiasm and participation; student understanding of the curriculum was deeper when taught as a creative project, and there was increased parent engagement in the classroom. Now in its 11th year, TAPAAS has maintained the ability to be a cost-effective, far-reaching program with a profound impact on both individual artists and students in our community. In 2021, Asheville Area Arts Council partnered with the Asheville City Schools Foundation and the Buncombe County School District to expand programming into Buncombe County Schools– increasing the depth and breadth of this program.

View the Fall 2022 Catalog

TAPAAS Grant for BCS Educators
Nov 18 all-day
online

TAPAAS for BCS Educators

Apply by November 18 | TAPAAS is an arts-integration program that implements high quality artist residencies to create craft and performance experiences across all curriculum. Since 2010, TAPAAS has impacted more than 9,000 students, trained over 55 artists, and provided more than 850 days of artists in residence. All teachers in the Buncombe County Schools district are welcome to apply — application opens October 17.

Help Seniors Fill Out Applications for Benefits
Nov 18 @ 9:00 am – 5:00 pm
The Council on Aging of Buncombe County
  • The Council on Aging of Buncombe County was formed in 1964 to address the needs of seniors in our community
  • We provide essential support to people over 60 who need assistance with food, heat or a/c, and health care
  • Our volunteers make this work possible– consider joining us today!

Our Mission Statement: Promote the Independence, dignity, and well-being of adults through service, education, and advocacy

We are looking for volunteers to work with low-income Medicare recipients as an unbiased, knowledgeable guide, providing education and assistance with navigating through the application process to help them receive much-needed assistance with the following programs:

  • Medicare Part D Extra Help/Low-Income Subsidy (LIS)
  • Medicare Savings Programs
  • Medicaid
  • Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP – formerly known as Food Stamps)
  • Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP)
  • Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSFP)

The safety of our clients is our highest priority. Here’s what’s required for this role:

  • Clear criminal background check and driving record.
  • Minimum $100,000/300,000 in auto liability coverage.
  • Orientation and training with the Council on Aging.
  • A reliable vehicle that will pass NC safety inspection.

Additionally, we are very flexible and will work with your schedule.

Who would make a strong candidate for this volunteer role?

  • You care about seniors and want to support those who need help most
  • A resident of Buncombe County, NC, or a nearby town.
  • Someone willing to learn basic education about the Benefits Enrollment Center (BEC) and what benefits are available for lower-income Seniors.
  • Someone willing to receive education about outreach, what larger events entail, and how to assist with these events.
  • Someone willing to travel around Buncombe County and set up a table at outreach events, educating the community on the services offered at Council on Aging and the Benefits Enrollment Center.
  • Someone able to assist clients with benefits applications and maintain awareness of changes to income guidelines.

If you want to help make a difference in the lives of real people right here in western North Carolina, we would love to welcome you on board as a volunteer.

‘Tis the Season Holiday Fair
Nov 18 @ 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
WNC Agricultural Center

Tis the Season Holiday Fair - Asheville, NC

IT’S BEGINNING TO LOOK A LOT LIKE CHRISTMAS HERE IN THE BEAUTIFUL WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA MOUNTAINS.

‘Tis the Season Holiday Fair is a festive shopping event featuring fabulous arts, crafts, gifts, adornments for the home as well as delectable holiday food and North Carolina wines.
YWCA Aquatics Volunteer
Nov 18 @ 10:00 am – 4:00 pm
YWCA Asheville

YWCA of Asheville is a nonprofit organization working to bridge gaps in education, health, childcare, and earning power for women and families in the Asheville region. The mission of the YWCA of Asheville is to eliminate racism; empower women; and promote peace,  justice, freedom, and dignity for all.

The YWCA indoor pool hosts a comprehensive Aquatics Program with activities for all ages, abilities, and interests.

Volunteer Roles and Responsibilities 

  • Join the fun in the pool as a swim assistant. Help children and adults learn the basics of floating, kicking, breathing, and diving.
  • Support the Aquatics Program with behind-the-scenes administrative work or on-the-deck supervising

Time Commitment

  • Flexible time commitment

Volunteer Requirements

  • Background check
Toe River Arts: The Fall Studio Tour Preview Exhibition
Nov 18 @ 10:30 am – 5:00 pm
Toe River Arts

The Fall Studio Tour Preview Exhibition opens in the Kokol Gallery, in Toe River Arts’ Spruce Pine location at 269 Oak Ave, October 29 and runs through the end December 2022.  This exhibition gives visitors an opportunity to have a glimpse into each studio and plan their route. It’s also a great place to begin the tour or take a break from a day of non-stop art and artists.

There’s something breathtaking and awe-inspiring about driving through the mountains of western North Carolina in the Fall.  The way the trees show off by turning vibrant shades of red, yellow, and orange before leaving bare branches to the crisp winds and snowy days of winter, reminds us that nature herself is the original artist.

 

For more than a quarter century, the Toe River Arts Studio Tour has intrigued those who make the journey to visit places of inspiration and creation. Situated between Roan Mountain which boasts the world’s largest rhododendron garden and Mt. Mitchell, the highest peak east of the Mississippi, the Toe River Arts Studio Tour is a free, self-guided journey of the arts. This arts adventure through Mitchell and Yancey Counties will take visitors along the meandering Toe River, across its many bridges, around barns, acres of fields and miles of forests all while visiting the 83 talented studio artists who often take inspiration from the mountains they call home and 8 galleries featuring local and international art.

 

It doesn’t matter if you live up the hill or across the state. The Studio Tour provides an adventure for the intrepid seeker of the art experience. Artist studios come in many iterations—the building off to the side of the house, or across the field or down the road or right off the main road or down a gravel one-lane. Two-stories with a gallery space or small and cozy with a table set up or cleared off for display. Still there are others that devote a corner to each artist sharing the space. Wherever and however they are set up, the studios are exciting places to visit because they demonstrate the dynamic process used to create a finished piece. Every artist has their own way of telling a story, inviting visitors to ask questions, hold their work, and share a moment.

 

The art is as diverse as the artists who create it and features the work of glassblowers, jewelers, printmakers, potters, fiber artists, ironworkers, painters, sculptors, and woodworkers.

“Matewan as Metaphor” Exhibit by Jean Hess
Nov 18 @ 11:00 am – 5:00 pm
Flood Gallery Fine Art Center

Collage paintings, assemblages, textiles, & faux artifacts designed by Jean Hess to explore the 1920 WV mining labor dispute as metaphor for the human condition.

Three rooms are filled with an eclectic mix of collage paintings ranging in scale from 6×6” to 50×70”; 3-D assemblages and faux artifacts; hand-stitched textiles; documentation in the form of historic notes, catalog entries for a collection of ephemera, photographs.
Call 828-273-3332 for weekend hours or to make an appointment. Exhibits through November 30, 2022.
Flood Gallery Fine Art Center is a non-profit 501(c)3 organization, and educates, encourages, challenges and inspires the community through music, film, literary, and contemporary art.

“Matewan as Metaphor” is an experiment in artistic license. Mixed-media artist Jean Hess creates a personal story by combining real and imagined resources with the intention of healing her own memory and transcending limits on what is possible and allowed in creative and scholarly endeavors as well as in visual art. The 1920 mining labor dispute in Matewan, West Virginia, which involved her own family, stands for a full life and its adversities.

Matewan was, in 1920, the scene of an armed skirmish between coal miners, mining companies, local union officials and hired strike-breakers. Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency thugs hired by the coal operators traveled by train to cast striking miners and their families out of their homes. The local mayor and several Baldwin-Felts agents were killed. The chief of police, the Matewan mayor, and several other locals gathered at the train station to confront the hired guns about the unlawful evictions. The Baldwin-Felts agents refused to recognize the local authority, and a shootout ensued. The mayor, some miners, and several detectives were killed. This was one of many violent conflicts that took place in Southern WV between pro-union miners and men hired by coal companies to use force and intimidation to prevent miners from unionizing.

Jean Hess takes serious training in cultural anthropology and visual art to playful levels. Her mixed-media paintings and constructions come from personal memory and nostalgia, ancestral ties and historical fact. Mining illustrations and maps signify coal mining in early twentieth century Appalachia, as well as issues concerning extractive industries, population displacement, exploitative labor practices, suffering and loss. Using collage, paint, layered resins and found ephemera Hess experiments with myriad ways one can obfuscate, surprise and entice. Found imagery is from geography and history textbooks from the early 1900’s and before. Dimensional objects are from her family or found in junk shops over time. Much of her material may be deconstructed, obscured, scrambled or carefully embellished.
Jean Hess’ multi-variant creative output segues with an equally unpredictable life. She has lived in Washington, DC, Baltimore, Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Abiquiu, New Mexico as well as Atlanta, Dallas and now Knoxville, Tennessee. Her work-for-pay background includes stints as a computer programmer, Montessori teacher, museum registrar, writer and research consultant for government and private industry. With degrees [BA, MA] in cultural anthropology she tends to draw inspiration from wide-ranging interests, and not always according to established rules.

Hess is well-known for experimental mixed-media collage paintings and assemblages that combine the skillful use of layered paint and resins, light refraction and found materials such as antique ephemera and pressed plants. Because her palette, surface and touch are consistent, one can always tell a work of art is hers. And yet Hess likes surprises, plays with materials that are sometimes unfamiliar, operates in a controlled-experiment spirit and likes accidental detours that energize her work. While she took some undergraduate art courses she is largely self-taught.

Public collections include: Huntsville Museum of Art; Evansville Museum of Art, History and Science; Knoxville Museum of Art; University of Virginia; Farm Credit Administration; Knoxville Convention Center; City of Chattanooga; St. Mary’s Hospital Heart Institute [IN]; Canon USA.

Jean Hess is proud that much of her work is in private collections, cared for by sympathetic individuals.

Natural Collector | Gifts of Fleur S. Bresler
Nov 18 @ 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
Asheville Art Museum

Natural Collector is organized by the Asheville Art Museum. IMAGE: Christian Burchard, Untitled (nesting bowls), 1998, madrone burl, various from 6 × 6 × 6 to ⅜ × ⅜ × ⅜ inches. Gift of Fleur S. Bresler, 2021.76.01.
Natural Collector Gifts of Fleur S. Bresler features around 15 artworks from the collection of Fleur S. Bresler, which include important examples of modern and contemporary American craft including wood and fiber art, as well as glass and ceramics. These works that were generously donated by contemporary craft collector Bresler to the Asheville Art Museum over the years reflect her strong interest in wood-based art and themes of nature.

According to Associate Curator Whitney Richardson, “This exhibition highlights artworks that consider the natural element from which they were created or replicate known flora and fauna in unexpected materials. The selection of objects displayed illustrates how Bresler’s eye for collecting craft not only draws attention to nature and artists’ interest in it, but also accentuates her role as a natural collector with an intuitive ability to identify themes and ideas that speak to one another.”

This exhibition presents work from the Collection representing the first generation of American wood turners like Rude Osolnik and Ed Moulthrop, as well as those that came after and learned from them, such as Philip Moulthrop, John Jordan, and local Western North Carolina (WNC) artist Stoney Lamar. Other WNC-based artists in Natural Collector include Anne Lemanski, whose paper sculpture of a snake captures the viewer’s imagination, and Michael Sherrill’s multimedia work that tricks the eye with its similarity to true-to-life berries. Also represented are beadwork and sculpture by Joyce J. Scott and Jack and Linda Fifield.

Rebel/Re-Belle: Exploring Gender, Agency, and Identity | Selections from the Asheville Art Museum and Rubell Museum
Nov 18 @ 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
Asheville Art Museum
Wednesday through Monday from 11am to 6pm
Corn Wagon Thunder, Laundromat from the Wonder series, 2017. Archival print on Epson Ultra Premium Presentation matte paper, 10 × 15 inches, Asheville Art Museum. © Corn Wagon Thunder.

Rebel/Re-Belle: Exploring Gender, Agency, and Identity Selections from the Asheville Art Museum and Rubell Museum combines works, primarily created by women, from two significant collections of contemporary art to explore how artists have innovated, influenced, interrogated, and inspired visual culture in the past 100 years.

Sherrill Roland: Sugar, Water, Lemon Squeeze
Nov 18 @ 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
Asheville Art Museum

Asheville-born and Raleigh-Durham-based interdisciplinary artist Sherrill Roland’s socially driven practice draws upon his experience with wrongful incarceration for a crime he did not commit and seeks to open conversations about how we care for our communities and one another with compassion and understanding. Through sculpture, installation, and conceptual art, Roland engages visitors in dialogues around community, social contract, identity, biases, and other deeply human experiences. Comprised of artwork created from 2016 to the present, Sherrill Roland: Sugar, Water, Lemon Squeeze reflects on making something from nothing, lemonade from lemons, the best of a situation. A reference to a simple recipe from the artist’s childhood, the title also speaks to Roland’s employment of materials available to him while incarcerated, such as Kool-Aid and mail from family members. In the face of his personal experiences, he invites viewers to confront their own uncomfortable complicity in perpetuating injustice. Roland’s work humanizes these difficult topics and creates a space for communication and envisioning a better future. This exhibition is organized by the Asheville Art Museum and curated by Hilary Schroeder, assistant curator, in collaboration with the Artist. This exhibition is funded, in part, by a grant from South Arts in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts.

Stained with Glass: Vitreograph Prints from the Studio of Harvey K. Littleton Exhibition
Nov 18 @ 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
Asheville Art Museum
 
Left: Thermon Statom, Frankincense, 1999, siligraphy from glass plate with digital transfer on BFK Rives paper, edition 50/50, 36 1/4 × 29 3/8 inches. Asheville Art Museum. © Thermon Statom. | Right: Dale Chihuly, Suite of Ten Prints: Chandelier, 1994, 4-color intaglio from glass plate on BRK Rives paper, edition 34/50, image: 29 ½ × 23 ½ inches, sheet: 36 × 29 ½ inches. Asheville Art Museum. © Dale Chihuly / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Asheville, N.C.—The selection of works from the Asheville Art Museum’s Collection presented in Stained with Glass: Vitreograph Prints from the Studio of Harvey K. Littleton features imagery that recreates the sensation and colors of stained glass. The exhibition showcases Littleton and the range of makers who worked with him, including Dale Chihuly, Cynthia Bringle, Thermon Statom, and more. This exhibition—organized by the Asheville Art Museum and curated by Hilary Schroeder, assistant curator—will be on view in The Van Winkle Law Firm Gallery at the Museum from January 12 through May 23, 2022.

In 1974 Harvey K. Littleton (Corning, NY 1922–2013 Spruce Pine, NC) developed a process for using glass to create prints on paper. Littleton, who began as a ceramicist and became a leading figure in the American Studio Glass Movement, expanded his curiosity around the experimental potential of glass into innovations in the world of printmaking. A wide circle of artists in a variety of media—including glass, ceramics, and painting—were invited to Littleton’s studio in Spruce Pine, NC, to create prints using the vitreograph process developed by Littleton. Upending notions of both traditional glassmaking and printmaking, vitreographs innovatively combine the two into something new. The resulting prints created through a process of etched glass, ink, and paper create rich, colorful scenes reminiscent of luminous stained glass.

“Printmaking is a medium that many artists explore at some point in their career,” says Hilary Schroeder, assistant curator. “The process is often collaborative, as they may find themselves working with a print studio and highly skilled printmaker. The medium can also be quite experimental. Harvey Littleton’s contribution to the field is very much so in this spirit, as seen in his incorporation of glass and his invitation to artists who might otherwise not have explored works on paper. Through this exhibition, we are able to appreciate how the artists bring their work in clay, glass, or paint to ink and paper.” 

Day With(out) Art: Being + Belonging
Nov 18 @ 12:00 pm – 9:00 pm
Asheville Art Museum

The Asheville Art Museum is proud to partner with Western North Carolina Aids Project and Visual AIDS for Day With(out) Art 2022. The day will begin with a moment of remembrance before presenting Being & Belonging, a program of seven short videos highlighting under-told stories of HIV and AIDS from the perspective of artists living with HIV across the world.

Being & Belonging will be on continuous loop starting at noon on December 1 in the Museum’s Multipurpose Space on Level 1 and run during Museum hours from December 2 to December 4.

Posters throughout the atrium will share HIV-related statistics and data. Each of the five posters contain QR codes that link to audio recordings of related conversations between HIV+ individuals living in Western North Carolina.

Place and Wonder
Nov 18 @ 4:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Tyger Tyger Gallery

Image for Place and Wonder

lace and Wonder presents five American artists whose work considers what we know and cannot entirely know about locations – whether real spaces or mental ones-  through depictions and transcriptions of landscape, delight, humor, memory, and narrative.

 

If the lurid world known as ‘The Upside-Down’ from Netflix’s Stranger Things had contemporary art situated somewhere within it, New York artist Barbara Friedman’s mood-enhanced paintings of Pinocchio and Gumby as giants invading dystopian suburban spaces might be just the thing. With an oddly satisfying neon-to-smoky palette, Friedman conjures a hyperbolic gloaming with cinematic intensity. David Skinner’s paintings are similarly situated in an atmosphere of isolation and ambiguous states of being. He remixes references to folklore, frontiers, masculinity, longing, and technological evolution with collage-like fields of painterly color and intuitive scrawls intersecting with rendered figures and landscape elements.

 

Only recently painting in North Carolina after living and working in Michigan and Chicago, Selene Plum describes her elegant, reductive oil and encaustic paintings as “the bone structure of this landscape and everything beneath it.” Her ongoing series Moon Mudras considers the earth, stars, and moon painted responsively onto weathered wood substrates often salvaged from local tobacco barns. North Carolina artist Melanie Norris’ airy, light-filled paintings in water media evoke a heady, buzzing summertime. Enchanted with repetition of form and color found in the stripes of drive-by tent revivals on the side of the road or clothing swinging on a line to dry, Norris contemplates the inhabited spaces of her everyday life with a confident, joyful hand.

 

Brooklyn artist Barry Hazard’s self-titled ‘sculpture paintings’ feature spectacular vistas of glaciers, canyons, meadows and waterfalls scaled to hobby-size. Spilling out of their frames and projecting into three-dimensional space, Hazard’s playful, deceptively lighthearted, paint-encrusted scenes form a dioramic notational catalog of the natural world and humanity’s relationship to it. Suggested narratives touching on art history and our collective love of wide-open spaces compel the viewer into a childlike and wonder-filled state of seeing.

 

The heady present moments and hits of nostalgia laced throughout Place and Wonder invite an immersive state of abandon, like a series of bedtime stories and lullabies strung together and dreaming out loud.

1st Anniversary Pick Your Project Workshop
Nov 18 @ 6:00 pm – 9:00 pm
Located on Tunnel Road next to Radius Chiropractic

Looking for a fun way to connect with friends or family and help us celebrate our 1st anniversary? Join our most popular DIY workshop and create your own unique wood sign! Select a wood project from our gallery. We provide all the materials and instruct you step-by-step to create a beautiful piece for your home or for a gift. Choose from a variety of paint and wood stain colors in the workshop. Pre-registration is required. We look forward to seeing you soon! All paid registrants get TWO entries to win a FREE workshop for each season of 2023 (valued at $292).

FREE dessert and goodie bags! Please arrive by 5:45pm.

Exhibition Opening: Sugar, Water, Lemon Squeeze
Nov 18 @ 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm
Asheville Art Museum

Asheville-born and Raleigh-Durham-based interdisciplinary artist Sherrill Roland’s socially driven practice draws upon his experience with wrongful incarceration for a crime he did not commit and seeks to open conversations about how we care for our communities and one another with compassion and understanding. Through sculpture, installation, and conceptual art, Roland engages visitors in dialogues around community, social contract, identity, biases, and other deeply human experiences. Comprised of artwork created from 2016 to the present, Sherrill Roland: Sugar, Water, Lemon Squeeze reflects on making something from nothing, lemonade from lemons, the best of a situation. A reference to a simple recipe from the artist’s childhood, the title also speaks to Roland’s employment of materials available to him while incarcerated, such as Kool-Aid and mail from family members. In the face of his personal experiences, he invites viewers to confront their own uncomfortable complicity in perpetuating injustice. Roland’s work humanizes these difficult topics and creates a space for communication and envisioning a better future. This exhibition is organized by the Asheville Art Museum and curated by Hilary Schroeder, assistant curator, in collaboration with the Artist. This exhibition is funded, in part, by a grant from South Arts in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts.

Saturday, November 19, 2022
Yarn Bombing Day
Nov 19 @ 9:00 am – 1:00 pm
Hendersonville Historic Depot Plaza

Yarn bombing is a global trend, it is a type of soft, removable graffiti street art that employs colorful
displays of knitted or crocheted yarn or fiber rather than paint or chalk, come to one of the “Yarn-In” days to knit or crochet your
own wonderful creations in a group setting, free yarn and needles available or bring your own, recommended to bring your own
chair as seating is limited to non-existent at this outdoor event.

‘Tis the Season Holiday Fair
Nov 19 @ 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
WNC Agricultural Center

Tis the Season Holiday Fair - Asheville, NC

IT’S BEGINNING TO LOOK A LOT LIKE CHRISTMAS HERE IN THE BEAUTIFUL WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA MOUNTAINS.

‘Tis the Season Holiday Fair is a festive shopping event featuring fabulous arts, crafts, gifts, adornments for the home as well as delectable holiday food and North Carolina wines.
The 25th Voorhees Family Art Show and Sale
Nov 19 @ 10:00 am – 5:00 pm
Norwood Park area of North Asheville

 

This weekend art show and sale is free and open to the public. This year’s annual event will feature new art work created by six Voorhees family members along with two guest artists. The event will again be featured in a family home, this year at Susan Voorhees’ house. Meet this extraordinary family of artists known throughout North Carolina and the Southeast.

Marking the 25th event there will be an online raffle benefiting a local non-profit this year. Everything will be easily accessible online through the website: www.voorheesfamilyart.com

The arts legacy began with Edwin Voorhees, (1919-1999) and Mildred Voorhees (1924-2007) both accomplished painters and well known throughout NC for their artwork. The first Voorhees Family Art Show was held in the family home in Morehead City in 1998. Edwin passed away the next year but the Voorhees Family Art Show continued in Morehead for several years. With Mildred’s move to Asheville the show followed with it being hosted in one of several Voorhees family homes in North Asheville ever since. The Voorhees Family was recently recognized with an exhibition “Nature & Nurture: The Voorhees Family Artistic Legacy” at the NC Arboretum.

This year’s show celebrates the 25th show for the Voorhees Family and continues the legacy begun by Edwin Voorhees back in 1998. Three of Edwin and Mildred’s six children and two daughters-in-law, and David’s son-in-law will be showing their work at this event: Susan Voorhees, oil and pastel paintings; Jane Voorhees, watercolors, prints, cards and calendars; David Voorhees, wood-fired stoneware and porcelain pottery; David’s wife, Molly Sharp Voorhees, sterling silver and gold jewelry. David’s son-in-law, James Becker with resin art creations; and Amy Cusick Voorhees (son Chad’s wife), oil paintings. Also exhibiting are guest artists Cheryl Stippich, stained glass and polymer clay, and Chad Alice Hagen, felted art and handmade books. For more information and map visit www.voorheesfamilyart.com