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.

Tuesday, January 17, 2023
Dark City Poet’s Society
Jan 17 @ 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm
Black Mountain Library

Great news for poets and poetry lovers: Dark City Poet’s Society is returning to the Black Mountain Library. DCPS is a completely free poetry group that is open to poets of all ages and experience levels. Join us at the Black Mountain Library from 6-7:30 p.m. on the first Tuesday of every month for our (respectful) critique group. DCPS will meet at BAD Craft from 6-7 p.m. on the third Tuesday for our monthly open mic Poetry Night. Find out more on Instagram @darkcitypoetssociety or contact the Black Mountain Library.

Stitch n’ Bitch
Jan 17 @ 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm
CONTINUUM ART

Stitch n' Bitch

Join us for a stitch n’ bitch fiber arts group! Debbie and Alicia are knowledgeable in knitting, crochet, embroidery, and historical fiber techniques including spinning yarn and traditional darning. Ideal for beginners that need guidance or for the seasoned professionally looking for a social group to craft with!
*potluck snacks and beverages always welcome!

Stitch n’ Bitch
Jan 17 @ 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm
CONTINUUM ART

Join us for a stitch n’ bitch fiber arts group! Debbie and Alicia are knowledgeable in knitting, crochet, embroidery, and historical fiber techniques including spinning yarn and traditional darning. Ideal for beginners that need guidance or for the seasoned professionally looking for a social group to craft with!
*potluck snacks and beverages always welcome!

Wednesday, January 18, 2023
Treasures | Focus Gallery Exhibition
Jan 18 @ 10:00 am – 5:00 pm
Folk Art Center

Featured Artists:
Allen Davis (wood)
Vicki Love (leather)
Lynne Harrill (fiber)
Ruthie Cohen & David Alberts (jewelry)
Gigi Renee’ Fasano (fiber)

Leonardo da Vinci 500 Years of Genius
Jan 18 @ 10:30 am
Biltmore Estate

Explore Biltmore House with an Audio Guide that introduces you to the Vanderbilt family and their magnificent home’s history, architecture, and collections of fine art and furnishings.

PLUS: Immersive, multi-sensory Leonardo da Vinci – 500 Years of Genius exhibition created and produced by Grande Experiences

PLUS: FREE next-day access to Biltmore’s Gardens and Grounds

This visit includes access to:

  • Leonardo da Vinci – 500 Years of Genius at Amherst at Deerpark®
  • 8,000 Acres of Gardens and Grounds for two consecutive days
  • Antler Hill Village & Winery
  • Complimentary Wine Tastings at the Winery
  • Tastings require a Day-of-Visit Reservation, which can be made by:
    • Scanning the QR Code found in your Estate Guide
    • Visiting any Guest Services location
  • Complimentary parking

Art Exhibition: Leonardo da Vinci – 500 Years of Genius

Immerse yourself in the world’s most comprehensive and thrilling Da Vinci experience as his brilliance and extraordinary achievements are brought to vivid life!

Colby Caldwell: landmarks
Jan 18 @ 11:00 am – 5:00 pm
Tracey Morgan Gallery

 

Tracey Morgan Gallery is pleased to present landmarks, an exhibition of new work by photographer Colby Caldwell. On view are large-scale, wax coated color photographic prints of elements from the natural world abstracted by digital interventions. Paired with these are small, meditative photographs taken from the forest floor of bright skies framed by treetops. In his most recent work, Caldwell explores the forests of the Blue Ridge Mountains collecting what could be thought of as visual “field recordings.” Using a flatbed scanner as a makeshift camera, Caldwell documents what he encounters on his wanderings: decomposing leaves, moss, lichen, tree bark. The resulting images are punctuated by digital interferences – unnatural hues of pinks, reds, and greens, swaths of pixilation, and large streaks where the scanner attempts and fails to “accurately” record information. Caldwell asks us to examine often overlooked details from the forest floor in a new view, not shying from the digital idiosyncrasies inherent in the process of scanning 3-dimensional objects on a flat surface. Where much of Caldwell’s previous work has included bringing nature into his studio, this series flips the script in a unique examination of technology’s place in the natural world. The work pushes at the parameters of traditional, photo historical nature specimen documentation. Caldwell is less interested in precisely cataloging samples, and more interested in investigating which tools we use to do so. The work additionally looks at how history is held within the landscape, and the ways humans have appropriated the land, contested its ownership, and used it for sustenance. Caldwell’s unconventional, experimental methodology of documentation seems to be pointing to the many ways these histories have been obscured, and the way our connection to nature has changed in the contemporary digital era. Colby Caldwell (American, born 1965), once a student of history, has tested virtually every avenue of the personal uses of photography as an instrument of memory. While his early work replicated the theatrical feeling of 19th Century “drawing with light,” his most recent efforts deconstruct the very elements of digital photography. Caldwell has held teaching positions at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, DC; St. Mary’s College of Maryland; and currently at Warren Wilson College, Swannanoa, NC. His work is included in the collections of The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC; and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans, LA. Caldwell received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Corcoran College of Art + Design in 1990. Recent solo exhibitions include Selu Songs at the Radford Art Museum in early 2022. He was featured in the book Art of the State, published November 2022, which surveys contemporary art in his home state of North Carolina. He currently lives and works in Asheville, NC.

Learn about Polymer Clay w/ the Blue Ridge Polymer Clay Guild
Jan 18 @ 11:00 am – 3:00 pm
Leicester Library

Learn how to work with polymer clay with the guidance of the Blue Ridge Polymer Clay Guild. Newcomers welcome to drop in to observe and practice. No supplies needed. Adults and teens 16 and above welcome. No registration required.

Natural Collector | Gifts of Fleur S. Bresler
Jan 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.

Sherrill Roland: Sugar, Water, Lemon Squeeze
Jan 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
Jan 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.” 

Special Exhibit: Hidden History in the JAM Songbook
Jan 18 @ 6:30 pm
Tryon Fine Arts Center
Special Exhibit:
Hidden History in the
JAM Songbook
Opening January 18 @ 6:30 PM
Free TFAC Lobby Exhibit
with light refreshments
TFAC’s PacJAM supports community music. Come see this special exhibit supported by South Arts.
Thursday, January 19, 2023
Treasures | Focus Gallery Exhibition
Jan 19 @ 10:00 am – 5:00 pm
Folk Art Center

Featured Artists:
Allen Davis (wood)
Vicki Love (leather)
Lynne Harrill (fiber)
Ruthie Cohen & David Alberts (jewelry)
Gigi Renee’ Fasano (fiber)

Leonardo da Vinci 500 Years of Genius
Jan 19 @ 10:30 am
Biltmore Estate

Explore Biltmore House with an Audio Guide that introduces you to the Vanderbilt family and their magnificent home’s history, architecture, and collections of fine art and furnishings.

PLUS: Immersive, multi-sensory Leonardo da Vinci – 500 Years of Genius exhibition created and produced by Grande Experiences

PLUS: FREE next-day access to Biltmore’s Gardens and Grounds

This visit includes access to:

  • Leonardo da Vinci – 500 Years of Genius at Amherst at Deerpark®
  • 8,000 Acres of Gardens and Grounds for two consecutive days
  • Antler Hill Village & Winery
  • Complimentary Wine Tastings at the Winery
  • Tastings require a Day-of-Visit Reservation, which can be made by:
    • Scanning the QR Code found in your Estate Guide
    • Visiting any Guest Services location
  • Complimentary parking

Art Exhibition: Leonardo da Vinci – 500 Years of Genius

Immerse yourself in the world’s most comprehensive and thrilling Da Vinci experience as his brilliance and extraordinary achievements are brought to vivid life!

Colby Caldwell: landmarks
Jan 19 @ 11:00 am – 5:00 pm
Tracey Morgan Gallery

 

Tracey Morgan Gallery is pleased to present landmarks, an exhibition of new work by photographer Colby Caldwell. On view are large-scale, wax coated color photographic prints of elements from the natural world abstracted by digital interventions. Paired with these are small, meditative photographs taken from the forest floor of bright skies framed by treetops. In his most recent work, Caldwell explores the forests of the Blue Ridge Mountains collecting what could be thought of as visual “field recordings.” Using a flatbed scanner as a makeshift camera, Caldwell documents what he encounters on his wanderings: decomposing leaves, moss, lichen, tree bark. The resulting images are punctuated by digital interferences – unnatural hues of pinks, reds, and greens, swaths of pixilation, and large streaks where the scanner attempts and fails to “accurately” record information. Caldwell asks us to examine often overlooked details from the forest floor in a new view, not shying from the digital idiosyncrasies inherent in the process of scanning 3-dimensional objects on a flat surface. Where much of Caldwell’s previous work has included bringing nature into his studio, this series flips the script in a unique examination of technology’s place in the natural world. The work pushes at the parameters of traditional, photo historical nature specimen documentation. Caldwell is less interested in precisely cataloging samples, and more interested in investigating which tools we use to do so. The work additionally looks at how history is held within the landscape, and the ways humans have appropriated the land, contested its ownership, and used it for sustenance. Caldwell’s unconventional, experimental methodology of documentation seems to be pointing to the many ways these histories have been obscured, and the way our connection to nature has changed in the contemporary digital era. Colby Caldwell (American, born 1965), once a student of history, has tested virtually every avenue of the personal uses of photography as an instrument of memory. While his early work replicated the theatrical feeling of 19th Century “drawing with light,” his most recent efforts deconstruct the very elements of digital photography. Caldwell has held teaching positions at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, DC; St. Mary’s College of Maryland; and currently at Warren Wilson College, Swannanoa, NC. His work is included in the collections of The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC; and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans, LA. Caldwell received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Corcoran College of Art + Design in 1990. Recent solo exhibitions include Selu Songs at the Radford Art Museum in early 2022. He was featured in the book Art of the State, published November 2022, which surveys contemporary art in his home state of North Carolina. He currently lives and works in Asheville, NC.

Natural Collector | Gifts of Fleur S. Bresler
Jan 19 @ 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.

Sherrill Roland: Sugar, Water, Lemon Squeeze
Jan 19 @ 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
Jan 19 @ 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.” 

Art In Conversation: Ani Volkan
Jan 19 @ 4:00 pm – 5:00 pm
Asheville Art Museum

Investigation in Print: Mark-Making, Multiples, and Nostalgia

Join printmaker and educator, Ani Volkan for a talk exploring the ways printmaking processes like etching translates marks, explores multiples, and captures a moment in time. The talk will conclude with a gallery walk through of the special exhibition, In the Age of the Etching Revival, on view through January 23, 2023.

 

Ani Volkan received her MFA in Printmaking and has taught with after-school arts programs, museums, universities, and non-profits. Her work combines storytelling with her Armenian heritage, and incorporates old family photographs, textiles, and everything printmaking. She helped open a community print shop in Kansas City MO, called Print League KC and was its director from 2017-2019. Then, she also received a 2018-2019 Innovation Grant from ArtsKC to investigate better inclusivity in community spaces. Recently, she received a NC Artist Support Grant to research Armenian folklore and fairytales in Los Angeles, CA. She is the Treasurer of the Mid America Print Council executive board 2022-2024, and resides in Asheville NC with the goal of bringing a bit of Print League KC to the Blue Ridge Mountains by opening another community print shop.

 

Stoney Lamar Classroom and Van Winkle Gallery

MakerSpace: Third Thursday
Jan 19 @ 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.

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.

THIRD THURSDAYS

Each third Thursday, the Museum and community partners offer fun events for adults to socialize through interactive art-related activities, delicious drinks, and tasty treats. For more information or to add your name to our Third Thursday mailing list, click here to email us or call 828.253.3227 x121.

Friday, January 20, 2023
Treasures | Focus Gallery Exhibition
Jan 20 @ 10:00 am – 5:00 pm
Folk Art Center

Featured Artists:
Allen Davis (wood)
Vicki Love (leather)
Lynne Harrill (fiber)
Ruthie Cohen & David Alberts (jewelry)
Gigi Renee’ Fasano (fiber)

Leonardo da Vinci 500 Years of Genius
Jan 20 @ 10:30 am
Biltmore Estate

Explore Biltmore House with an Audio Guide that introduces you to the Vanderbilt family and their magnificent home’s history, architecture, and collections of fine art and furnishings.

PLUS: Immersive, multi-sensory Leonardo da Vinci – 500 Years of Genius exhibition created and produced by Grande Experiences

PLUS: FREE next-day access to Biltmore’s Gardens and Grounds

This visit includes access to:

  • Leonardo da Vinci – 500 Years of Genius at Amherst at Deerpark®
  • 8,000 Acres of Gardens and Grounds for two consecutive days
  • Antler Hill Village & Winery
  • Complimentary Wine Tastings at the Winery
  • Tastings require a Day-of-Visit Reservation, which can be made by:
    • Scanning the QR Code found in your Estate Guide
    • Visiting any Guest Services location
  • Complimentary parking

Art Exhibition: Leonardo da Vinci – 500 Years of Genius

Immerse yourself in the world’s most comprehensive and thrilling Da Vinci experience as his brilliance and extraordinary achievements are brought to vivid life!

Colby Caldwell: landmarks
Jan 20 @ 11:00 am – 5:00 pm
Tracey Morgan Gallery

 

Tracey Morgan Gallery is pleased to present landmarks, an exhibition of new work by photographer Colby Caldwell. On view are large-scale, wax coated color photographic prints of elements from the natural world abstracted by digital interventions. Paired with these are small, meditative photographs taken from the forest floor of bright skies framed by treetops. In his most recent work, Caldwell explores the forests of the Blue Ridge Mountains collecting what could be thought of as visual “field recordings.” Using a flatbed scanner as a makeshift camera, Caldwell documents what he encounters on his wanderings: decomposing leaves, moss, lichen, tree bark. The resulting images are punctuated by digital interferences – unnatural hues of pinks, reds, and greens, swaths of pixilation, and large streaks where the scanner attempts and fails to “accurately” record information. Caldwell asks us to examine often overlooked details from the forest floor in a new view, not shying from the digital idiosyncrasies inherent in the process of scanning 3-dimensional objects on a flat surface. Where much of Caldwell’s previous work has included bringing nature into his studio, this series flips the script in a unique examination of technology’s place in the natural world. The work pushes at the parameters of traditional, photo historical nature specimen documentation. Caldwell is less interested in precisely cataloging samples, and more interested in investigating which tools we use to do so. The work additionally looks at how history is held within the landscape, and the ways humans have appropriated the land, contested its ownership, and used it for sustenance. Caldwell’s unconventional, experimental methodology of documentation seems to be pointing to the many ways these histories have been obscured, and the way our connection to nature has changed in the contemporary digital era. Colby Caldwell (American, born 1965), once a student of history, has tested virtually every avenue of the personal uses of photography as an instrument of memory. While his early work replicated the theatrical feeling of 19th Century “drawing with light,” his most recent efforts deconstruct the very elements of digital photography. Caldwell has held teaching positions at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, DC; St. Mary’s College of Maryland; and currently at Warren Wilson College, Swannanoa, NC. His work is included in the collections of The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC; and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans, LA. Caldwell received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Corcoran College of Art + Design in 1990. Recent solo exhibitions include Selu Songs at the Radford Art Museum in early 2022. He was featured in the book Art of the State, published November 2022, which surveys contemporary art in his home state of North Carolina. He currently lives and works in Asheville, NC.

Natural Collector | Gifts of Fleur S. Bresler
Jan 20 @ 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.

Sherrill Roland: Sugar, Water, Lemon Squeeze
Jan 20 @ 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
Jan 20 @ 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.” 

Saturday, January 21, 2023
Treasures | Focus Gallery Exhibition
Jan 21 @ 10:00 am – 5:00 pm
Folk Art Center

Featured Artists:
Allen Davis (wood)
Vicki Love (leather)
Lynne Harrill (fiber)
Ruthie Cohen & David Alberts (jewelry)
Gigi Renee’ Fasano (fiber)

Gatherings of Artists + Writers Coffee
Jan 21 @ 10:30 am – 12:00 pm
Tryon Fine Arts Center

TFAC invites all artists: painters, sculptors, writers, performers & more — to a casual weekly drop-in gathering on Saturday mornings at 9 AM to share your works in progress, alert others, and chat about art and what’s happening in your community.

The first weekly Coffee is Saturday, August 20 at 9 am.

No RSVP needed, just drop by!

Free parking available on Melrose Avenue, behind and alongside TFAC.

Leonardo da Vinci 500 Years of Genius
Jan 21 @ 10:30 am
Biltmore Estate

Explore Biltmore House with an Audio Guide that introduces you to the Vanderbilt family and their magnificent home’s history, architecture, and collections of fine art and furnishings.

PLUS: Immersive, multi-sensory Leonardo da Vinci – 500 Years of Genius exhibition created and produced by Grande Experiences

PLUS: FREE next-day access to Biltmore’s Gardens and Grounds

This visit includes access to:

  • Leonardo da Vinci – 500 Years of Genius at Amherst at Deerpark®
  • 8,000 Acres of Gardens and Grounds for two consecutive days
  • Antler Hill Village & Winery
  • Complimentary Wine Tastings at the Winery
  • Tastings require a Day-of-Visit Reservation, which can be made by:
    • Scanning the QR Code found in your Estate Guide
    • Visiting any Guest Services location
  • Complimentary parking

Art Exhibition: Leonardo da Vinci – 500 Years of Genius

Immerse yourself in the world’s most comprehensive and thrilling Da Vinci experience as his brilliance and extraordinary achievements are brought to vivid life!

Colby Caldwell: landmarks
Jan 21 @ 11:00 am – 5:00 pm
Tracey Morgan Gallery

 

Tracey Morgan Gallery is pleased to present landmarks, an exhibition of new work by photographer Colby Caldwell. On view are large-scale, wax coated color photographic prints of elements from the natural world abstracted by digital interventions. Paired with these are small, meditative photographs taken from the forest floor of bright skies framed by treetops. In his most recent work, Caldwell explores the forests of the Blue Ridge Mountains collecting what could be thought of as visual “field recordings.” Using a flatbed scanner as a makeshift camera, Caldwell documents what he encounters on his wanderings: decomposing leaves, moss, lichen, tree bark. The resulting images are punctuated by digital interferences – unnatural hues of pinks, reds, and greens, swaths of pixilation, and large streaks where the scanner attempts and fails to “accurately” record information. Caldwell asks us to examine often overlooked details from the forest floor in a new view, not shying from the digital idiosyncrasies inherent in the process of scanning 3-dimensional objects on a flat surface. Where much of Caldwell’s previous work has included bringing nature into his studio, this series flips the script in a unique examination of technology’s place in the natural world. The work pushes at the parameters of traditional, photo historical nature specimen documentation. Caldwell is less interested in precisely cataloging samples, and more interested in investigating which tools we use to do so. The work additionally looks at how history is held within the landscape, and the ways humans have appropriated the land, contested its ownership, and used it for sustenance. Caldwell’s unconventional, experimental methodology of documentation seems to be pointing to the many ways these histories have been obscured, and the way our connection to nature has changed in the contemporary digital era. Colby Caldwell (American, born 1965), once a student of history, has tested virtually every avenue of the personal uses of photography as an instrument of memory. While his early work replicated the theatrical feeling of 19th Century “drawing with light,” his most recent efforts deconstruct the very elements of digital photography. Caldwell has held teaching positions at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, DC; St. Mary’s College of Maryland; and currently at Warren Wilson College, Swannanoa, NC. His work is included in the collections of The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC; and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans, LA. Caldwell received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Corcoran College of Art + Design in 1990. Recent solo exhibitions include Selu Songs at the Radford Art Museum in early 2022. He was featured in the book Art of the State, published November 2022, which surveys contemporary art in his home state of North Carolina. He currently lives and works in Asheville, NC.

Natural Collector | Gifts of Fleur S. Bresler
Jan 21 @ 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.