Make a Free Appointment Today

Appointments can be made online at www.pisgahlegal.org/aca or by calling (828) 210-3404. For the safety of consumers, staff and volunteers, all appointments are currently being conducted by phone. Depending on where you live in WNC, some of Pisgah Legal’s ACA Partners may be offering in-person appointments.

Last year, more than 90 percent of North Carolinians who enrolled for coverage through the Health Insurance Marketplace (www.healthcare.gov) received financial assistance to make their plans more affordable. Subsidies are based on household taxable income and may be difficult for consumers to calculate themselves. Pisgah Legal can help with this process and can factor in unemployment benefits if needed. Pisgah Legal can also answer questions about other coverage, such as COBRA, and help people apply for Medicaid and CHIP.

Pisgah Legal and other Enrollment Partners of WNC participating organizations give local residents free, unbiased health insurance information and enrollment assistance in the NC Health Insurance Marketplace. These organizations include: Council on Aging of Buncombe County, Blue Ridge Community Health Services, Legal Aid of North Carolina, Mountain Projects, Inc., Western Carolina Medical Society, and Pisgah Legal Services.

The ACA – also known as “Obamacare” – is the law that ensures access to quality, affordable health insurance on the Health Insurance Marketplace. With these plans, consumers are protected and:

• Can’t be denied coverage for a pre-existing health condition and can’t be dropped for getting sick;
• Insurers can’t charge higher premiums to women; and
• Insurers can’t sell substandard plans that don’t pay for essential health care benefits.

RiverLink is partnering with the City of Asheville and local volunteers to protect water quality through an Adopt-A-Storm Drain Program. Pollution from stormwater runoff is the biggest threat to clean water in our urban streams. Stormwater is rain that flows across the landscape—rather than soaking into the ground—where it picks up pollutants before flowing into a storm drain and emptying into the nearest stream.

With funding from the Pigeon River Fund, a grant administered by the Community Foundation of Western North Carolina, this pilot program will pair volunteers with a storm drain in the Central Asheville Watershed.

The goal is to get 100 storm drains adopted in 2021. Volunteers will be awarded with fun prizes for their commitment and enthusiasm, and  if successful, the Adopt A Storm Drain program will expand to include other areas in the City of Asheville.

How does it work?

Select a storm drain in a convenient location of the Central Asheville Watershed. It could be in front of your home, business, or where you exercise regularly. By adopting a storm drain, you commit to checking the drain in between rain events and keeping it clear of litter and debris. All it takes are gloves and a trash bag. Then with a smartphone or computer, you can report debris cleaned/cleared, and conditions such as illegal dumping or flooding. In a matter of minutes, you help protect water quality and prevent street flooding from clogged drains!

Income-qualifying households in Buncombe County are eligible for free energy-saving weatherization upgrades to their homes through the Energy Saver’s Network (ESN). The ESN sends volunteers to local homes to install many types of upgrades depending on the needs of the home. The work can take anywhere between one and three hours, and includes:

• weather stripping
• air register and duct sealant
• water pipe insulation
• low-flow water fixtures
• light bulb replacement
• custom interior storm windows
• repairing minor air leaks
• smoke alarm installation, and more.

In 2019, the ESN completed 200 projects, clocked 1,879 volunteer hours, and installed upgrades to homes resulting in 2,341 less tons of CO2 and over 108,000 total kWh savings per year for all of its clients. ESN’s goal is to provide upgrades to 200 homes per year.

ESN is a nonprofit organization founded on a dual mission: to help people and combat climate change. The organization envisions a sustainable future where communities are free from the worst impacts of fossil fuel history. If you want to know if you qualify, are looking to volunteer, or want more information, you can visit energysaversnetwork.org, send them a message on their Facebook/Instagram page, or call Hannah Egan at 828-585-4492.

The Energy Saver’s Network is made up from a partnership with Asheville’s Green Built Alliance, Sierra Club, Buncombe County Government, and the City of Asheville. This also includes partner organizations that help find people to serve or for volunteers, like the Blue Horizon Project, Mountain Housing Opportunities, and Eblen Charities. Make a phone call today to see if you quality for free upgrades to your home.

People have a new opportunity to enroll in health insurance for 2021 on HealthCare.gov, but only for a limited time. This new COVID-19 Special Enrollment period starts on February 15, 2021 and ends on May 15, 2021. Pisgah Legal Services (PLS), and its enrollment partners of WNC, are once again offering free assistance helping people in the 18-county mountain region review their options and sign up for ACA health insurance.

With job losses continuing to mount amid the COVID-19 resurgence, and millions of people having lost their job-based health insurance since the start of this public health and economic crisis, the Biden Administration has opened up HealthCare.gov to give people who need health insurance a new opportunity to get covered, but they must act quickly. For free help locally, with trained assisters, make an appointment at pisgahlegal.org/aca or call (828) 210-3404.

“More than 535,000 North Carolinians enrolled in a health insurance plan during the last Open Enrollment period,” said Shannon Cornelius, Pisgah Legal’s Health Justice Program Director. “This is a new chance for people to sign up, and anyone who needs health insurance should visit HealthCare.gov today, or contact Pisgah Legal Services if you need assistance. Don’t delay.”

Health insurance is more affordable than many people think. In North Carolina, 83 percent of current marketplace consumers had plans available for 2021 that cost less than $50 per month, after financial help. Nine out of 10 marketplace enrollees in North Carolina received financial help that lowered their monthly health insurance premiums last year. In addition, 57 percent of enrollees also qualified for lower out-of-pocket costs for health care services.

“With this new Special Enrollment Period, both new and existing marketplace consumers can shop for marketplace pans, compare options, costs and even make changes. It opens up the ability to get health insurance outside of Open Enrollment. Our certified application counselors can help answer questions and get you enrolled in the plan that works best for you and your family,” said Cornelius.

Consumers enrolling in a plan on HealthCare.gov are guaranteed to receive comprehensive coverage, with no pre-existing condition exclusions or markups. All plans cover essential benefits, including doctor and hospital visits, prescription drugs, mental health treatment, and maternity care. In addition, consumers receive free preventive care services, such as immunizations and health screenings. Testing and treatment of COVID-19 are considered essential health benefits and are covered by all HealthCare.gov plans.

Consumers should avoid insurance plans offered outside of HealthCare.gov that seem too good to be true. “Junk insurance” products and short-term limited duration plans pose huge financial risks to consumers. These products can refuse to pay for care for pre-existing conditions, charge consumers more based on their gender, and impose annual coverage limits.

“HealthCare.gov is the only website where North Carolina consumers are guaranteed to get comprehensive coverage,” said Cornelius.

Make a Free Appointment Today

The health insurance landscape can be confusing, but free, local help is available. Appointments can be made online at www.pisgahlegal.org/aca or by calling (828) 210-3404. For the safety of consumers, staff and volunteers, all Pisgah Legal Services appointments are currently being conducted by phone, some community partners may offer in person assistance.

Pack Youth Services introduces Take & Play, a pilot program that offers everyone the opportunity to borrow games, ukuleles, and disc golf sets from the Youth Services department at Pack Library. Take & Play items check out for three weeks, and you need to pick them up and drop them off at Pack Library. Games, ukuleles, and disc golf sets are available on a first-come, first-served basis and you check them out with your library card just like a book. Call 250-4720 for details, or drop by the library anytime we’re open.

All our library hours are listed here.

The Enveloping Landscape: A Contemplative Photographic Journey is a visual celebration of the transformative power of place-based education. In this first-ever collaboration between the Arboretum’s Exhibits and Adult Education programs, images from award-winning documentary photographer Susan Patrice join those of 22 student photographers in a breathtaking exhibit that explores the ways that we are indelibly shaped by place. Through their images, these photographers reveal not only the rich biodiversity of Southern Appalachia, but a renewed sense of kinship with their local landscapes found through photography.

What began as a documentary photography project launched by Patrice in 2016 became a collaborative Arboretum workshop led by the artist in early 2020. The project invited photographers of all levels to return each season to focus their gaze on what called to them in the landscape — deepening a contemplative practice of seeing, knowing and caring for a place. When everything abruptly changed in March of last year, this photographic community wasted no time in moving online. What seemed like an unnatural distance imposed by technology became a path into both familiar and uncharted places. This exhibition chronicles these photographers’ year-long journey, inviting viewers to step into an intimate world where the landscape is alive, waiting to be met, understood and entered.

The Enveloping Landscape: A Contemplative Photographic Journey is on display daily January 16 – May 2, 2021, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., inside the Baker Exhibit Center. Face coverings are required for visitors ages 5 years and older.

Exhibit support for The Enveloping Landscape: A Contemplative Photographic Journey is provided in part by The North Carolina Arboretum Society; Asheville Citizen-Times; RomanticAsheville.com Travel Guide; Smoky Mountain Living Magazine; The Laurel of Asheville; and Henco North Creative Imaging.

Image: Susan Patrice, Enveloping Landscape #1, archival pigment print, 45 x 45 inches, © Susan Patrice

Included with admission

Our fun-for-all-ages botanical model train displays invite you to experience our grounds in an engaging new way. Located in the Conservatory in the Walled Garden, the displays feature replicas of structures connected with Biltmore and its founder George Vanderbilt. Each beautifully executed piece was handcrafted from such natural elements as leaves, bark, and twigs.

In compliance with state and local mandates related to COVID-19, all guests must enter the Conservatory via the ADA entrance in the back and follow a one-way route.

Included with admission

A unique-to-Biltmore, large-scale outdoor sculpture will be crafted and installed in Antler Hill Village this spring by Patrick Dougherty. Over the last three decades, this internationally-acclaimed artist has combined his carpentry skills and love of nature to build over 300 of these wondrous works, captivating the hearts and imaginations of viewers worldwide.

Image: Close Ties (2006) Scottish Basketmakers Circle, Dingwall, Scotland. Photo: Fin Macrae
NOTE: This is an example of Patrick Dougherty’s work; the artist will create Biltmore’s unique structure in Antler Hill Village this spring.

April is National Poetry Month and we invite all poets, would be poets and poetry fans to celebrate with Buncombe County Public Libraries.  We’ll be hosting the following free events at libraries all over the county.  For more information on any of these programs, contact your friendly neighborhood library.

Black Out Poetry Kits Available at the Library
All Month Long
Every Library

Come to any library and pick up a free kit to create a black out poetry masterpiece. Black out poetry doesn’t start with a blank page, it starts with a page of words taken from an old book. Poets will eliminate words to create a poem composed of the words left on the page. Visit any branch of Buncombe County Public Libraries in April to pick up your very own black out poetry kit featuring markers, inspiration and pages of print to begin your creation. When you’re finished, photograph your creation and upload it to facebook or instagram. Tag your library’s account and we’ll feature it as a post! You can also drop your poem by the library and we’ll post it for you. Kits are available while supplies last.

“Take a Woolworth Walk on the Wild Side” – Participating local
artists will donate a percentage of sales of art depicting native wildlife in
a variety of mediums.

Woolworth Walk and participating local artists join to support
Appalachian Wild’s mission to help save injured and orphaned wildlife.
Appalachian Wild provides care for approximately 2,000 animals
annually.

Featuring more than 40 paintings and works on paper, Beauford Delaney’s Metamorphosis into Freedom examines the career evolution of modern painter Beauford Delaney (Knoxville, TN 1901–1979 Paris, France) within the context of his 38-year friendship with writer James Baldwin. The works in this exhibition bring into special focus Delaney’s intensified experiments with abstraction sparked by the artist’s 1955 move to the Paris suburb of Clamart, as well as the ways that the artist and Baldwin’s ongoing intellectual exchange shaped one another’s creative output and worldview from their first meeting in 1940 until Delaney’s death in 1979. This exhibition also calls attention to Baldwin’s role as “witness” to the painter’s evolution, which he deemed “one of the most extraordinary personal and artistic journeys of our time.”

The Asheville Art Museum announces Meeting the Moon, an exhibition featuring prints, photographs, ceramics, sculptures, and more from the Museum’s Collection. This exhibition will be on view in the Asheville Art Museum’s McClinton Gallery February 3 through July 26, 2021.

2021 marks the 60th anniversary of the beginning of the Apollo space program at NASA, but its inception was hardly the beginning of humankind’s fascination with Earth’s only moon. Before space travel existed, the moon—its shape, its mystery, and the face we see in it—inspired countless artists. Once astronauts landed on the moon and we saw our world from a new perspective, a surge of creativity flooded the American art scene, in paintings, prints, sculpture, music, crafts, film, and poetry.

This exhibition, whose title is taken from a 1913 Robert Frost poem, examines artwork in the Asheville Art Museum’s Collection of artists who were inspired by the unknown, then increasingly familiar moon. Meeting the Moon includes works by nationally renowned artists Newcomb Pottery, James Rosenquist, Maltby Sykes, Paul Soldner, John Lewis, Richard Ritter (Bakersville, NC), and Mark Peiser (Penland, NC). Western North Carolina artists include Jane Peiser (Penland, NC), Jak Brewer (Zionville, NC), Dirck Cruser (Asheville, NC), George Peterson (Lake Toxaway, NC), John B. Neff (NC), and Maud Gatewood (Yanceyville, NC).

“Meeting the Moon offers the opportunity to combine science and popular culture with works of art in the Museum’s Collection,” says Whitney Richardson, associate curator. “I think all visitors will find something that draws them into this exhibition, whether it’s the artwork, poetry, music, or science of space travel. It’s such an affirmation of humanity to find these mysteries, like the moon, which enchant us all.”

This exhibition is organized by the Asheville Art Museum and curated by Whitney Richardson, associate curator. Visit ashevilleart.org for more information about this and other exhibitions.

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.

Desire Paths looks at makers within the discourse of craft and those existing on the periphery of the craftscape who focus on the movement of the body towards something desirable. These desires of the body are in relationship to nature, technology, self, and society. Using architectural theory and queer curatorial strategies, Desire Paths examines the possibilities and futures of bodies, revealing connections between the corporeal and craft.

“Desire paths,” a term taken from urban planning, are lines trodden in the landscape when constructed walkways do not provide a direct or desired route. Through action, repetition, and intentionality, desire paths are crafted modifications to the landscape that allow for a body to move towards a horizon. The format of the works include traditional craft media, performance, video, and interactive web-based work. Through this variety of media and performative tactics the makers in Desire Paths consider how we view, value, and ascribe meaning to a body/the body/the others body. They show us the power and agency held in body and present us with crafted visions of the body that confront and expand expectations

The works in this exhibition reclaim the concept of craft from its historical associations with the decorative, frivolous, feminine, indigenous, and the other. The makers use the medium of craft, and the action of crafting, to produce powerful representations and counter narratives to dominant culture.

Two Ways to View

Virtual Tour

Online visitors can register to attend a virtual tour of this exhibition. This is a free event. A $5-10 donation at time of registration is recommended.

In-Person

The Center is offering free, unguided visits and affordable tours of its exhibitions to the public. Guests can reserve a 30-minute visit to explore the current exhibitions, learn more about the Center’s national impact in their Craft Research Fund Study Collection, and enjoy interactive activities. The Center is open to the public Tuesday-Friday, 11 am -5 pm. Hours of operation may be subject to change.

Center for Craft is monitoring the effects of COVID-19 on the community and following the instruction of federal, state, and local health departments. Our top priority is always the health and safety of our staff, coworkers, and visitors. At this time, the Center can only allow a maximum of five guests in its public space at once and will require the use of masks or face coverings by all visitors, including children. The Center reserves the right to refuse entry to any visitor that will not comply.

This insider excursion provides you with tips and local secrets about the best way to do Asheville on a budget! You will have a better understanding of how Asheville became the unique, quirky city you see now and learn everything we are doing to “Keep Asheville Weird.” This is the only walking tour provided that allows you to choose how much you think a walking tour is worth and pay whatever you like. We will follow the urban trail, stop along the way for some free honey tastings and finish the tour with some special beer tastings at one of the best local breweries in South Slope! At the brewery, you will also be able to participate in a free raffle where you receive gifts donated from local businesses like free salsa classes, local theatre performances, books and more! I want you to know and love my city as much as I do and I am excited to share this experience with you!

Pay what you want at the end!

Connections is a new arts-based program serving community-dwelling adults with mild to moderate memory loss and their care partners. Led by specially trained Museum staff, contractors, and volunteers, each monthly Connections program includes a guided gallery conversation and a related activity. Space is limited, and reservations are required; call 828.253.3227 x122. Read more about Connections here.

We have been an active club since 1924. We currently have 65 active members of all collecting interests and meet once per month to share programs, auctions, ideas, buy, sell & trade stamps, and just plain camaraderie. Many of our members have extensive collecting, exhibiting, or speaking experience, and discussions are always interesting and rewarding. New and developing collectors will find an audience ready and willing to help with expanding one’s knowledge and enjoyment of the hobby.

Western North Carolina is in an interesting geographical location: we get visitors from the north during the winter, from the south during the summer, and many people who decide they’ve had enough of either of those climates to move here permanently! We urge visitors of any age with philatelic interests to join us, even if only for a short time. We may even convince you to enjoy our region full-time!

Membership

We welcome collectors of all ages and interests.
Dues are $10.00 a year and includes our bimonthly newsletter “The Smoky Mountain Philatelist”, complete membership list that includes “what we collect” and notices about our meetings with urging to attend and share your interest with us.
Download the Membership Application in .pdf format.

The next regular meeting of the Asheville Stamp Club, the April Meeting, will NOT be on the 3rd Sunday. That’s Easter this year. The April meeting will be April 28, 2019, the Sunday after Easter Sunday.

The program for the April meeting will be a talk by Vice-President Bob Bouvier on Canadian Precancels. These stamps turn up in old albums and large lots but don’t always excite a lot of interest because they are not listed in major catalogues nor widely collected. Bob will describe how he became a precancel collector and will illustrate the basic styles, varieties, and rarities that are found. He will also provide information on sources and literature. See you there!

Join us EVERY Wednesday night for Kid’s Night! Children receive a free four-count kid’s meal with the purchase of an adult meal. See you on Wednesdays!