Join us as we move beyond wellness as an individual experience and explore it as wholeness in every dimension of being – personally, socially, ecologically, and cosmologically.
Guided by embodied Self-awareness and creative Self-expression, we practice an integrated form of Self-care.
Learn how to move from disconnection to reconnection with yourself, others, and the larger world around you with playful invitations to:
• Author Your Cosmic Story
• Venture Into Your Embodied Wisdom
• Weave a Community Vision
• Design a Personal Wholeness Practice

Explore Asheville with the whole family!

Age Restrictions

All Ages Welcome!
(Content is geared towards ages 5-12 years old)
Children must be accompanied by an adult.
Children 3 and under do not need a ticket if they are sitting in an adults lap.

Duration

60 Minutes

What’s Included

Crazy funny guide
Off-bus characters
Fun facts about Asheville
Age-appropriate jokes

About

Now’s your chance to bring the whole family on the big purple bus! Educational and entertaining, LaZoom’s Kids’ Comedy tour features a perfect blend of Asheville information and kid-centric comedy. Geared specifically towards the 5-12 year old crowd, you’ll learn about our city’s history and see the sights in true LaZoom style – complete with our famously outlandish tour guides, hilarious comedy skits, and all sorts of special appearances! Perfect for birthday parties or school field trips, it’s the best thing to do with your kids in Asheville. It’s a show on wheels!

The tour is 60 minutes long and includes no stops. The tour is hosted by a zany tour guide, and along the way other characters will hop on the bus and perform kid-centric sketches (Candy Pirate, Ninja, and a Levitator) The tour is not only fun – it’s educational! Kids and adults will learn new and interesting facts about Asheville along the way. There must be 1 adult for every 4 children. We do not allow any unaccompanied children. Children 3 and under do not need a ticket if they are sitting in an adults lap.

Waitlist

If your desired time and availability is full, then please give us a call to be added to the waitlist.

Maker Faire is a gathering of fascinating, curious people who enjoy learning and who love sharing what they can do. From engineers to artists toscientists to crafters, Maker Faire is a venue for these “makers” to show hobbies, experiments, projects.

We call it the Greatest Show (& Tell) on Earth – a family-friendly showcase of invention, creativity, and resourcefulness.

Glimpse the future and get inspired!

Calling all artists, inventors, scientists, creatives and curious tinkerers of all ages!

You are invited to the 4th annual Asheville Maker Faire on Saturday, April 13 from 10 a.m.-3 p.m. at the AB Tech Conference Center located at 16 Fernihurst Drive in Asheville. Part crafting, part programming, part puppetry and part mechatronics, Maker Faire Asheville (MFA) celebrates all things uniquely creative to Western North Carolina.

Originating in 2006 in the San Francisco Bay Area as a project for the editors of Make: Magazine,  the Asheville Maker Faire showcases the best of WNC’s creative talent and innovation all under one roof! Peruse stations featuring makers of all kinds and enjoy hands-on tinkering projects perfect for the whole family!

At MFA, you can get an up close look at a vintage 3D printing machine with software engineer James Montgomerie, gawk at a live robot demo with Glitch 2.0 Robotics Team or geek out with Star Wars Droid-Building.

Are you intrigued by the sound of a 7-foot-tall geodesic dome that plays music when touched? Or maybe you’d like to build your own electronic musical instrument with a MicroKit? Then budding musicians and engineers will feel right at home at the Faire.

If you’re feeling a little intimidated by these high tech innovations, there are plenty of hands-on, low tech options for you to experience, such as making pop culture buttons with the Buncombe County librarians or designing paper roller coasters with creator Andrew Gatt.

Other community maker groups include:  Asheville Makers, WNC Repair Café, Asheville Tool Library, Street Creature Puppets and so much more!

Don’t forget to stop by the Buncombe County Public Library booth, a proud co-sponsor,  to make your own button and build with some cool maker kits.

You can get your free ticket on EventBrite today.

Neighborhood roadside (Fri. April 12) and riverside (Sat. April 13) litter clean-up in Alexander area. Organizers will be coordinating supplies of vests, bags, and pick-up from GreenWorks. Call to sign up and for more information. Come out, take care of our community, meet your neighbors, and enjoy the results! Refreshments to follow.

Who should attend: All willing neighbors in Alexander area; kids encouraged for Saturday clean-up of riverside with a parent.

Prefer not to work clean-up but would like to supply snack or refreshments? That is good too!

Call Sheila O’Brien at (828) 242-2945 to RSVP and find out more.

Let’s PULL together again to Pick Up Leicester Litter and make our community a cleaner and safer place to live! Join us in keeping our adopted stretch of New Leicester Highway clean and litter-free (and hang out with other community-minded Dems!).

Bags, gloves, safety vests, etc. will be provided by AVL Greenworks.

Who should attend: All Dems and interested folks who want to help with our quarterly Adopt-a-Highway clean-up.

Join Us in the Outdoor Classroom

Over the years our education programs have engaged thousands of students with their local streams and rivers. The moments when we get to share students’ excitement at finding a crayfish, simulating a major flood, or simply splashing in the water are truly inspiring. Facilitating these experiences is a great joy for our small education team, but we can always use some extra help.

We’ve created a new volunteer education program for adults to share in the joy and help us educate the next generation of river stewards. Whether you’re a retired teacher looking to engage with kids again, a fledgling environmental educator wanting more experience, or just a lover of the river, we’d be thrilled to have you join us at a lesson.

To provide an enriching experience for you and ensure the safety of students, all interested volunteers will complete a training and a background check. We will be hosting our first volunteer educator training.

Sigal Music Museum’s current special exhibition, Worlds Apart: Musical Instruments from Secular to Sacred, highlights items from the JoAnn and Frank Edwinn Collection, which hails from all over the world. Showing November 2023 – May 2024, Worlds Apart uses a diverse range of historical instruments, objects, and visuals to bring together musical narratives from seemingly disparate parts of the globe.

 

Worlds Apart: Musical Instruments from Secular to Sacred aims to increase public access to historical instruments from around the world and improve visitors’ understanding of musical traditions at the global level. Expanding beyond the typical parameters of the Western musical canon, Worlds Apart seeks to expose audiences to musical instruments and customs that are often overlooked or exotified. The instruments and other exhibit materials will offer visitors new perspectives on global music and a chance to consider how music is used for prayer and leisure in cultures around the world. By celebrating these stories, the museum intends to further its mission to collect and preserve historical musical instruments, objects, and information, which engage and enrich people of all ages through exhibits, performances, and experiential programs.

 

Displaying various objects from the JoAnn and Frank Edwinn Collection, Worlds Apart: Musical Instruments from Secular to Sacred focuses on international musical instruments and cultures, celebrating rites and traditions with ancient histories and contemporary legacies. Frank Edwinn, a successful basso in the mid-20th century, studied and toured internationally, eventually settling in North Carolina, where he taught music at the University of North Carolina Asheville. Throughout his life, he purchased various objects from around the world, aiming to expose students, and himself, to the wide and wonderful world of musical instruments. This impressive collection occupies a unique position for educating audiences unfamiliar with the vast scope of global music.

And, UNCA’s Ramsey Library Special Collections is now processing the Edwinn’s papers and a few recordings that will be accessible next semester!

Saturdays from 10:30 AM – 12 PM

TAKE A TRAIN RIDE ALONG SIDE THE BEAUTIFUL NANTAHALA RIVER ON OUR NANTAHALA GORGE EXCURSION! DEPARTING FROM BRYSON CITY, THIS 4½ HOUR ROUNDTRIP EXCURSION CARRIES YOU 44 MILES TO THE NANTAHALA GORGE AND BACK AGAIN ARRIVING AT OUR BRYSON CITY DEPOT.

Ride this excursion via Steam or Diesel locomotive power!

Enjoy the sights and sounds of the Great Smoky Mountains while traveling along the Tennessee and Nantahala (nan-tuh-HAY-luh) River. The historic trellis bridge Fontana Trestle takes you across Fontana Lake and into the beautiful Nantahala Gorge. Onboard dining is available in First Class Seating and selecting from our First Class dining menu options OR you can pre-purchase a box lunch option to make this an amazing unique moving dining experience. Arrive at our layover destination in the heart of the Nantahala Gorge for a one-hour layover where you can relax by the river or enjoy sightseeing!

Itinerary

Images: Left: Minna Wright Citron, Squid Under Pier, 1948, color etching, soft-ground, and engraving on paper, edition 42/50, 15 x 17 7/8 inches, 2010 Collections Circle purchase, Asheville Art Museum. © Estate of Minna Citron/Licensed by VAGA at ARS, New York. Right: Dorothy Dehner, Woman #2, 1954, watercolor and ink on paper, 22 3/4 x 18”, courtesy of Dolan Maxwell.

The Asheville Art Museum is pleased to announce the upcoming exhibition American Art in the Atomic Age: 1940–1960, which explores the groundbreaking contributions of artists who worked at the experimental printmaking studio Atelier 17 in the wake of World War II. Co-curated by Marilyn Laufer and Tom Butler, American Art in the Atomic Age which draws from the holdings of Dolan/Maxwell, the Asheville Art Museum Collection, and private collections will be on view from November 10, 2023–April 29, 2024.

Atelier 17 operated in New York for fifteen years, between 1940 and 1955. The studio’s founder, Stanley William Hayter (1901–1988) established the workshop in Paris but relocated to New York just as the Nazi occupation of Paris began in 1940. Hayter’s new studio attracted European emigrants like André Masson, Yves Tanguy, and Joan Miró, as well as American artists like Dorothy Dehner, Judith Rothschild, and Karl Schrag, allowing for an exchange of artistic ideas and processes between European and American artists.

The Asheville Art Museum will present over 100 works that exemplify the cross-cultural exchange and profound social and political impact of Atelier 17 on American art. Prints made at Atelier 17—including those by Stanley William Hayter, Louise Nevelson, and Perle Fine—will be in conversation with works by European Surrealists who were working at the studio in the 1940s and 1950s. The exhibition will also feature a selection of domestic mid-century objects that exemplify how the ideas and aesthetics of post-war abstraction became a part of everyday life.

In the early 1900s, travel by train and automobile became more accessible in the United States, leading to an increase in tourism and a revitalized interest in landscape painting. The relative ease of transportation, as well as the creation of National Parks, allowed people to experience the breathtaking landscapes of the United States in new ways. Artists traveled along popular routes, recording the terrain they encountered.

This exhibition explores the sublime natural landscapes of the Smokey Mountains of Western North Carolina and Tennessee. While there were several regional schools of painting around this time, this group is largely from the Midwest and many of the artists trained at the Art Institute of Chicago or in New York City. Through their travels, they captured waterfalls, sunsets, thunderstorms, autumn foliage, lush green summers, and snow-covered mountains—elements that were novel for viewers from cities and rural areas. Though some of these paintings include people, they are usually used for scale and painted with little to no detail, highlighting the magnificence of nature.

Rudolph F. Ingerle, Mirrored Mountain, not dated, oil on canvas, 28 × 32 inches. Courtesy of Allen & Barry Huffman, Asheville Art Museum.

Bender Gallery Artists Featured in Asheville Art Museum Exhibition The New Salon: A Contemporary View The Asheville Art Museum will be opening their exhibit, The New Salon: A Contemporary View, on March 8 and it will run until August 19, 2024. The New Salon offers a modern take on the prestigious tradition of the Parisian Salon with the diversity and innovation of today’s art world. Guest-curated by Gabriel Shaffer, the show will include works from Pop Surrealism, Outsider Art, Street Art, and Graffiti genres.   Bender Gallery has been collaborating with the Asheville Art Museum to loan four paintings from three of our artists. The artists are Laine Bachman, Kukula, and Yui Sakamoto. Be sure to check out this special exhibition in downtown Asheville. Learn More Kukula, Impossible Voyage, oil on board, 48 x 24 inches Kukula (b. 1980, Israel) Nataly Abramovitch, better known in the art world as, Kukula, paints imagined worlds filled with elaborately dressed women in fanciful settings. The artist does extensive research on the layouts of paintings from the Renaissance and Rococo periods. Kukula subverts these images by depicting women characters in place of traditionally male positions and settings. Her characters are powerful, commanding, and have an air of indifference. Available Work Yui Sakamoto, Self Portrait, oil on canvas, 63 x 63 inches Yui Sakamoto (b. 1981, Japan) Our surrealist artist, Yui Sakamoto, will have two paintings featured including My Soul and Self Portrait. Self Portrait is still available from his recent solo exhibition at Bender Gallery. Standing in front of Self Portrait, one is immersed in the dual-worlds of Sakamoto’s Japanese and Mexican cultures. There is a sense of calm reflected in the repeating rose pattern, mixed with the uneasy realization that the coral, fungi, and otherworldly forms are what makeup the figure. Available Work Laine Bachman, Night Bloomers, acrylic on canvas, 18 x 24 inches Laine Bachman (b. 1974, USA) Our prolific Magical Realism artist, Laine Bachman, makes a feature in the exhibition with her painting, Night Bloomers. She has been hard at work making 17 new pieces for her solo exhibition at the Canton Art Museum in Canton, Ohio. The Canton show opens on April 28 and continues through to July 28, 2024. Available Work

Our pick-your-own tulips are a spring crop, and you are invited to pick as many of these beauties as you like. We charge $2 per stem. You will not need clippers. You can bring your own container or buy one from us.

Tulip season will start on Friday, March 22, 2024.

Hours:
Friday: 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Saturday: 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Sunday: 1 to 4 pm.

Exhibition and Public Programming

Vera B. Williams, an award-winning author and illustrator of children’s books, started making pictures almost as soon as she could walk. She studied at Black Mountain College in a time where summer institutes were held with classes taught by John Cage and Merce Cunningham. Williams studied under the Bauhaus luminary Josef Albers and went on to make art for the rest of her life. At the time of her death, The New York Times wrote: “Her illustrations, known for bold colors and a style reminiscent of folk art, were praised by reviewers for their great tenderness and crackling vitality.” Despite numerous awards and recognition for her children’s books, much of her wider life and work remains unexplored. This retrospective will showcase the complete range of Williams’ life and work. It will highlight her time at Black Mountain College, her political activism, and her establishment, with Paul Williams, of an influential yet little-known artist community, in addition to her work as an author and illustrator.

Author and illustrator of 17 children’s books, including Caldecott medal winner, A Chair for My Mother, Vera B. Williams always had a passion for the arts. Williams grew up in the Bronx, NY, and in 1936, when she was nine years old, one of her paintings, called Yentas, opens a new window, was included in an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. While Williams is widely known for her children’s books today, this exhibition’s expansive scope highlights unexplored aspects of her artistic practice and eight decades of life. From groundbreaking, powerful covers for Liberation Magazine, to Peace calendar collaborations with writer activist Grace Paley, to scenic sketches for Julian Beck and Judith Malina’s Living Theater, to hundreds of late life “Aging and Illness” cartoons sketches and doodles, Vera never sat still.

Williams arrived at Black Mountain College in 1945. While there, she embraced all aspects of living, working, and learning in the intensely creative college community. She was at BMC during a particularly fertile period, which allowed her to study with faculty members Buckminster Fuller and Josef Albers, and to participate in the famed summer sessions with John Cage, Merce Cunningham, M.C. Richards, and Robert Rauschenberg. In 1948, she graduated with Josef Albers as her advisor and sculptor Richard Lippold as her outside examiner. Forever one of the College’s shining stars, Vera graduated from BMC with just six semesters of coursework, at only twenty-one years old. She continued to visit BMC for years afterward, staying deeply involved with the artistic community that BMC incubated.

Anticipating the eventual closure of BMC, Williams, alongside her husband Paul Williams and a group of influential former BMC figures, founded The Gate Hill Cooperative Artists community located 30 miles north of NYC on the outskirts of Stony Point, NY. The Gate Hill Cooperative, also known as The Land, became an outcropping of Black Mountain College’s experimental ethos. Students and faculty including John Cage, M.C. Richards, David Tudor, Karen Karnes, David Weinrib, Stan VanDerBeek, and Patsy Lynch Wood shaped Gate Hill as founding members of the community. Vera B. Williams raised her three children at Gate Hill while continuing to make work.

The early Gate Hill era represented an especially creative phase for the BMC group. For Williams, this period saw the creation of 76 covers for Liberation Magazine, a radical, groundbreaking publication. This exhibition will feature some of Williams’ most powerful Liberation covers including a design for the June 1963 edition, which contained the first full publication of MLK’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” Williams’ activism work continued throughout her life. As president of PEN’s Children Committee and member of The War Resisters league, she created a wide range of political and educational posters and journal covers. Williams protested the war in Vietnam and nuclear proliferation while supporting women’s causes and racial equality. In 1981, Williams was arrested and spent a month in a federal prison on charges stemming from her political activism.

In her late 40’s, Williams embarked in earnest on her career as a children’s book author and illustrator, a career which garnered the NY Public Library’s recognition of A Chair for My Mother as one of the greatest 100 children’s books of all time. Infinitely curious and always a wanderer at heart, Williams’ personal life was as expansive as her art. In addition to her prolific picture making, Williams started and helped run a Summerhill-based alternative school, canoed the Yukon, and lived alone on a houseboat in Vancouver Harbor. She helped to organize and attended dozens of political demonstrations throughout her adult life.

Her books won many awards including the Caldecott Medal Honor Book for A Chair for My Mother in 1983, the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award– Fiction category– for Scooter in 1994, the Jane Addams Honor for Amber Was Brave, Essie Was Smart in 2002, and the NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s Literature in 2009. Her books reflected her values, emphasizing love, compassion, kindness, joy, strength, individuality, and courage.

Images:

Cover of Vera B. Williams’ A Chair for My Mother, published in 1982.

Vera B. Williams, Cover for Liberation Magazine, November 1958.

Join us for the first canvass of Lindsey Prather’s re-election campaign right after the April monthly meeting! We’ll be knocking doors in Weaverville to let folks know about Lindsey, how she’s delivered for Buncombe County in the State House, and how important her race is this year.

Special Guest: Wesley Harris, Democratic Nominee for State Treasurer

We’ll gather at the Democratic headquarters first to distribute lists and campaign materials, then we’ll head out to Weaverville. We’d love to see you there!

Reach out to [email protected] if you have any questions.

Ride the free ArtsAVL Trolley connecting the Downtown and River Arts Districts with two overlapping routes every Second Saturday from 12-6 pm.

EXPLORE ASHEVILLE’S ART SCENE

Ride the free  ArtsAVL Trolley linking the Downtown and River Arts Districts with two overlapping loops every Second Saturday from 12-6 pm. Trolley loops take about 20-25 mins, and riders are free to hop on or off at any stop.

On Saturday, April 13, Warren Wilson College will host Fiddles and Folklife, an annual Appalachian festival and old-time music and dance competition, with cash prizes for old-time fiddle, banjo, folksong, flatfooting, and string band. There will be a separate contest for youth in fiddle and banjo. Other activities include old-time music jams, food and craft vendors, folklife demonstrators, and a cake raffle. This event is free and open to the public.

Fiddles and Folklore takes place from 12 noon – 5 p.m., on the Warren Wilson College campus, in the historic Bryson Gym, 102 Upper College Road. Registration for contestants opens at 11:30 a.m. There is no entry fee for the contests. For more info, visit Warren Wilson College Music on Facebook, and click on the “Events” tab.

Visit LEAF Global Arts every Saturday for an in-house cultural exchange with Adama Dembele. Experience the Ivory Coast with our Culture Keeper from the House of Djembe.

MEN’S BASKETBALL

Asheville Parks & Recreation invites mountain families to an up-close look at big trucks, small trucks, transit buses, construction vehicles, and more when Truck City AVL returns to Tanger Outlets, Asheville! Kids and adults can explore, touch, and ask questions about their favorite trucks and cars in one place at this FREE community event.

From rescue vehicles and public works equipment to utility tractors and construction machines, it’s an excellent opportunity to ‘pull back the curtain’ and learn about the equipment and skills required to maintain our city, parks, and public safety systems. With more than 30 vehicles, plan plenty of time to explore trucks of all shapes and sizes.

1-2pm is a planned quiet hour to provide a positive experience for those with autism, dementia, PTSD, hyposensitivity, and other sensory considerations.

In addition to the trucks and vehicles, Asheville Parks & Recreation’s Rec ‘n’ Roll game and play zone, a race course, and other hands-on activities are available.

Adult supervision is required. Truck City AVL takes place rain or shine.

2024 Gardening Series
Sign up for one or sign up for the whole series!