A new partnership from Buncombe County and the City of Asheville aims to help reduce greenhouse gases and organic matter in the landfill by offering residents a place to drop off compostable matter. Starting Oct. 4, County residents can drop off food scraps and other compostable materials at the Buncombe County Landfill Convenience Center to be recycled into compost. The City of Asheville is operating a drop-off location at Stephens-Lee Recreation Center that also opens to the public on Oct. 4. Read more about that initiative here.

Organic waste in landfills generates methane, a potent greenhouse gas. By composting wasted food and other organics, methane emissions may be significantly reduced. For residents who are interested in composting but worry about bears or finding the space for backyard composting Buncombe County is proud to partner with the City of Asheville and Food Waste Solutions to open two compost drop-off locations for County residents.

In alignment with the Buncombe County Strategic Plan goals, the Landfill compost drop-off center is part of a pilot program designed to assess interest and engagement for food waste diversion and composting in Buncombe County.

How the compost drop-off works

• Collect compostable materials at home and make sure to remove all produce stickers, rubber bands, wrappers, ties, bags, and plastics.
• To collect materials use a compost pail, bucket, paper bags, or other certified compostable bag.
• At the landfill scalehouse let us know you would like to drop off your compostable materials and staff will direct you to the drop-off location.
• Empty food scraps and compostable waste into the cart on-site.
• Close and secure lid when finished.
• Do not overfill.

The City of Asheville will accept proposals from government agencies and nonprofits for community projects funded through the American Rescue Plan. At their September 14 meeting, Asheville City Council voted to fund projects in the following categories: Affordable housing Care for aging residents City infrastructure Climate change Community communication Domestic violence prevention and assistance Food systems Homelessness services Small business recovery Workforce development Projects must serve City residents and fall under one of the categories above. For more information, including the timeline for the process

With the convenience of being open year-round, 7 days a week, the WNC Farmers Market offers a selection of farm-fresh produce at the lowest prices in Western N.C. Our popular retail buildings, providing a selection of non-perishables, fruits, vegetables, crafts and more, are open daily.

Artist Michael Fowler creates evocative abstract landscape paintings by incorporating vibrant colors with subtle, complex details. His semi-large-scale approach invites viewers to step into his work and build a sense of wonder and contemplation surrounding the natural world. Fowler’s artistic response in contemplating nature is to capture something of a landscape’s pleasantness, which is often unexpected harmonies of color and shape. In his latest exhibit, Arbor Huescapes, Fowler highlights the distinctive vegetation – primarily trees – and topography of North and South Carolina’s midlands and piedmont regions.

Fowler received his Bachelor of Arts from Harding University in Searcy, Arkansas with a focus in Advertising Design. He then attended the University of Nebraska where he received a Master’s degree in Fine Arts in Painting and Drawing with a minor in Art History. From there, he attended the University of Memphis where he earned a Doctorate in Higher Education. Based in North Augusta, South Carolina, Fowler is currently an associate professor of design and computer graphics and serves as the Mary Durban Toole Chair of Art at the University of South Carolina in Aiken. His paintings are in a number of public and private collections nationally, and he actively exhibits in regional and national shows.

Please note: Arbor Huescapes has been rescheduled due to the COVID-19 crisis and will now open in fall 2021. The exhibit is on display daily September 18, 2021 – January 9, 2022, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. inside the Baker Exhibit Center. All works are available for purchase and a portion of sales will be donated to The North Carolina Arboretum Society.

To answer your gardening questions, Extension Master Gardener Volunteers of Buncombe County are working from home to keep the Garden Helpline operational. For the month of October, they are available to respond to voicemails and emails on Fridays only. Send an email or leave a voice message at any time, and a Master Gardener will respond to you the following Friday. When emailing, please include a photo, it helps describe your garden question.

The U.S. Small Business Administration announced the opening of a Business Recovery Center at the Asheville Buncombe Technical Community College Enka campus to assist all businesses and residents with one-on-one assistance in submitting a disaster loan application for remnants of Tropical Storm Fred on Aug. 16-18.

Physical disaster loans are available to businesses of all sizes, nonprofit organizations, homeowners and renters in the primary counties of Buncombe, Haywood, and Transylvania counties in North Carolina.

Economic injury disaster loans are available to small businesses and most nonprofit organizations in the primary counties and in the following adjacent counties: Henderson, Jackson, Madison, McDowell, Rutherford, Swain and Yancey in North Carolina; Greenville, Oconee and Pickens in South Carolina and Cocke and Sevier in Tennessee.

Location and office hours

SBA Business Recovery Center, Asheville Buncombe Technical Community College, 1465 Sand Hill Road, Suite 1054, Candler, NC  28715

Opens: Noon to 6 p.m. Thursday, September 16

Normal hours:  9 a.m. – 6 p.m. Monday – Friday; 10 a.m. – 2 p.m. Saturdays; closed on Sundays.

CODE: LV2DPS

“Shine and Dine” on the railway! We cordially invite you to hop on board The Carolina Shine, GSMR’s All-Adult First Class Moonshine Car! We will be proudly serving hand crafted, triple-distilled, craft moonshine. Some of the smoothest tasting moonshine in the Carolinas!

Offered on the Nantahala Gorge excursion, this shine and dine experience begins in a renovated First Class train fleet car, The Carolina Shine. The interior features copper lined walls filled with the history of moonshining in North Carolina. Learn about the proud tradition that the Appalachians established when bootlegging was an acceptable way of life and local home brews were the best in town. Read about Swain County’s very own Major Redmond, the most famous mountain moonshine outlaw of the 19th century.

Nancy Graves, Parable of Nostalgia from the Tango portfolio, 1991, intaglio on cotton rag paper, edition 12/26, publisher: Iris Editions, New York, image: 26 × 17 5/8 inches, sheet: 35 3/4 × 26 inches. Asheville Art Museum. © Nancy Graves Foundation, Inc. / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.

A Dance of Images and Words: The Nancy Graves/Pedro Cuperman Tango Portfolio features a series of eight intaglio prints that depict plants and animals alongside eleven sheets of prose that explore the steps of the Argentinian dance, the tango. Organized by the Asheville Art Museum from the Museum’s Collection and curated by Hilary Schroeder, assistant curator, this exhibition will be on view in The Van Winkle Law Firm Gallery at the Museum from September 29, 2021 through January 10, 2022.

The common idiom “it takes two to tango” is immediately called into question in both the imagery and words of the Tango portfolio. The portfolio is an expression of artist Nancy Graves (Pittsfield, MA 1939–1995 New York, NY) writer Pedro Cuperman’s (1936–2016 Buenos Aires, Argentina) meditations on the dance. Their imagery and words become paired in an illustrated book though their explorations take different formats and directions. Both Graves and Cuperman look towards humankind and nature as a place where beings come together in the experience of living. This exhibition presents Graves’s eight prints alongside the portfolio frontispiece and a page of Cuperman’s text to immerse visitors in the collaborative dance of the tango.

Contemporary art, interdisciplinary research communities, and the inspiration of Appalachia converge in Rural Avant-Garde: The Mountain Lake Experience. This exhibition showcases a selection of collaborative creative works that emerged from nearly four decades of the Mountain Lake Workshop series, a program sited in rural southwestern Virginia.

Founded by artist and scholar Ray Kass in 1980 and co-organized with influential art critics Dr. Donald B. Kuspit and Dr. Howard Risatti, as well as the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA), the Mountain Lake Workshops integrated the arts and sciences in a dynamic experimental creative process that pushed past the traditional boundaries of art, dance, and performance.

Community-centered from its inception, the Mountain Lake Workshop demonstrated the relevance of the arts across disciplines, as well as social and participatory learning. This exhibition offers a focused look at art that investigated new conceptual limits, born of the region in southwestern Virginia, just a few hundred miles north of Asheville, NC. Works range from large-scale watercolors and photographic installation to relics of performances and other experimentations in artmaking.

Highlights include composer and conceptual artist John Cage’s New River Rocks and Washes(1990). A significant late-career work by Cage, this rarely exhibited watercolor extends nearly 30 feet in length, produced using methods of chance to trace stones gathered from the workshop’s natural surroundings.

This exhibition was organized by the Longwood Center for the Visual Arts at Longwood University. Generous funding was provided in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Artist Walter B. Stephen (Clinton, IA 1875–1961 Asheville, NC) contributed to Western North Carolina’s identity as a flourishing site for pottery production and craftsmanship in the early 20th century. Walter B. Stephen Pottery: Cameo to Crystalline features art pottery and functional vessels from each stage of Stephen’s career, from his origins discovering the medium alongside his mother Nellie C. Randall Stephen in Shelby County, TN from 1901 through 1910 to his multi-decade production just outside of Asheville. This exhibition will be on view in the Asheville Art Museum’s Debra McClinton Gallery July 28, 2021 through January 17, 2022.

In 1926, Stephen founded his third and last pottery studio, Pisgah Forest, in Arden, NC, which he operated until his death in 1961. It was at this studio that the artist perfected the “cameo” decoration technique for which he became best known. His hand-painted images, achieved with layers of white translucent clay, often feature American folk imagery, from covered wagons and livestock to cabins and spinning wheels. A selection of works from the Museum’s Collection showcase his innovation in form and in decorative surface details, including experimentation with crystalline glazing.

Join us for Animoday! Every Monday all day. Listen to anime music, play anime games, watch anime, and talk anime!

OAKS Afterschool Program
Pre-registration required. FREE for the 2021-2022 school year
September 7-December 17, 2021 | Monday-Friday | 2:30-5:30pm
An inclusive recreation program designed to support rising 1st5th graders and their families. OAKS will provide homework
assistance and opportunities to play through a variety of activities
and field trips. Participants will benefit from lower child to
staff ratios, continuation of scholastic goals (as applicable),
and individualized treatment plans (facilitated by LRT/CTRS
and program staff). Participants who cannot meet eligibility
requirements may attend with a 1:1 worker.
Location: Oakley

Pre-registration required. FREE for the 2021-2022 school year
August 23, 2021-June 3, 2022 | Monday-Friday | 2:45-6pm
K-6th graders.
Does your child enjoy having fun and making new friends? Offering
arts, crafts, special events, homework assistance and more!
Families currently enrolled in the school system’s reduced or free
meal program, please contact your recreation center for discount
fee information.
Locations: Burton, Grant, Montford, Shiloh, Stephens-Lee

Montford Pre-Teen Afterschool Program
Pre-registration required. FREE for the 2021-2022 school year
August 23, 2021 – June 3, 2022 | Monday-Friday | 3:30-6pm
5th-6th graders.
New program designed to meet the needs of your pre-teen.
Providing time dedicated to school assignments, life skills, arts,
communication, leadership, fitness, nutrition, and loads of fun.
Location: Montford

Teen Leadership Program
Pre-registration required. FREE for the 2021-2022 school year
August 23, 2021-June 3, 2022 | Monday-Friday | 3:30-6pm
6th-9th graders.
Looking for a cool and enriching alternative for your Teen to attend
this school year? We offer creative activities, diverse projects,
field trips, and more.
Locations: Grant, Shiloh, Stephens-Lee

Our online silent auction is back! Starting Friday, October 8 at 5pm sharp, you can shop an exciting selection of products and services from Asheville-area businesses — many of which are truly one-of-a-kind experiences. Stay up-to-date on the offerings by RSVPing to our FaceBook event. We’ll be sharing items as they come in… trust us, you won’t want to miss out on this years’ event!

Literacy Together will collaborate with the Refugee Resettlement Program of Catholic Charities (Charlotte Diocese) to provide English language tutors for as many as 40 Afghan refugees that will be coming to Asheville in the near future. Sign up online to volunteer: https://lit-together.org/literacy-together-will-provide-esol-tutors-for-40-afghan-refugees/, or send an email to [email protected]. Thank you!

In this eight-week semester, young artists will learn to create dynamic relationships through theatre games, improvisation, and scene work. With an emphasis on ensemble storytelling, character creation, physicality, and voice and speech, students will leave feeling more collaborative, creative, and confident making bold choices on stage and in life. Apply your skills in an informal showcase for friends and family. No prior experience is necessary, only an open mind! With new material every semester, this class can (and should) be taken multiple times.

Instructor: Tania Battista

Notes: To ensure increased ventilation, this class will be held outside whenever possible. If rain forces the program indoors, all students and staff will be required to wear masks. Thank you for understanding as we work to keep our community safe. Read more about our Covid Safety Guidelines here. 

*Need-based scholarships are available upon application.
Learn more below about payment plans and multi-student discounts.