On exhibit Saturdays and Sundays through October from 12 to 4 p.m. (weather permitting), Rocky Cove Railroad is a G-Scale (garden scale) model train that demonstrates the coming of trains to western North Carolina at the turn of the 20th century. The exhibit is located below the Grand Garden Promenade.
Calendar of Events
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.
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 (New York 1924-1987 Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France). The exhibition will be on view in the Asheville Art Museum’s Explore Asheville Exhibition Hall April 2 through June 21, 2021. The works in this exhibition bring into special focus Delaney’s 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. |
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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.

Jack’s Bluegrass Brunch is every Sunday! Our menu kicks off at 12Noon with live tunes by Supper Break from 1-3pm. Try our $6 Bloody Mary or Mimosa, or grab a $15 Bottles of Champagne & OJ! Try one of our tasty brunch specials or order from our artisanal sandwich menu. Sláinte Y’all!
Preserving & Promoting
Our
Carolina Flying Heritage


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!

Direct from Broadway, Mean Girls is the hilarious hit musical from an award-winning creative team, including book writer Tina Fey (30 Rock), composer Jeff Richmond (Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt), lyricist Nell Benjamin (Legally Blonde), and director Casey Nicholaw (The Book of Mormon).
Cady Heron may have grown up on an African savanna, but nothing prepared her for the vicious ways of her strange new home: suburban Illinois. Soon, this naïve newbie falls prey to a trio of lionized frenemies led by the charming but ruthless Regina George. But when Cady devises a plan to end Regina’s reign, she learns the hard way that you can’t cross a Queen Bee without getting stung.
New York Magazine cheers, “Mean Girls delivers with immense energy, a wicked sense of humor and joyful inside-jokery.” USA Today says, “We’ll let you in on a little secret, because we’re such good friends: GET YOUR TICKETS NOW!”

FIRST SET BY THE HOUSE BAND & SECOND SET IS A JAZZ JAM
Stop by on the first Sunday of the month 2-5pm to grab a beer, have a bite to eat and possibly meet your new best friend from Charlie’s Angels Animal Rescue.

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The A.R.M.E.S. Dance Concert 2021 is a showcase of our afterschool dance program at the Fine Arts Center. Dance 1 our youngest group and Dance 2 our intermediate group, will both perform ballet and modern dance pieces. Dance 3, is our oldest group that will be showcasing their ballet and modern pieces along with the classic “Farewell” piece.

In conjunction with Sunday Sessions Live (and virtual) music: Food Truck Sundays will bring a new or rotating “staff favorite” cuisine each week to the Beechams Curve offerings.
Gan Shan West, our main culinary provider 6 days a week, is closed on Sundays. Enjoy the convenience, delicious variety and the music – all in one Sunday Funday stop!
Jack of the Wood : Sunday-Irish Session
Sundays
1 till who knows when?
Traditional Irish music is kept alive at Jack of the Wood with our unplugged Sunday session.
Jack of the Wood
95 Patton ave
Asheville, NC 28801
(828) 252.5445
Join us for our monthly poetry event featuring three poets. This month, we welcome Fleda Brown, Rita Quillen, and Gretchen Primack. Click here to RSVP for this event. On the day of the event, we will send a reminder email with the link required to attend.
Like most of our events, this event is free. If you decide to attend and to purchase the authors’ books, we ask that you purchase from Malaprop’s. When you do this you make it possible for us to continue hosting author events and you keep more dollars in our community. You may also support our work by purchasing a gift card or making a donation of any amount below. Thank you!
Fleda Brown’s tenth collection of poems, Flying Through a Hole in the Storm (2021) won the Hollis Summers Prize from Ohio University Press. Earlier poems can be found in The Woods Are On Fire: New & Selected Poems, chosen by Ted Kooser for the University of Nebraska poetry series, 2017. Her work has appeared three times in The Best American Poetry and has won a Pushcart Prize, the Felix Pollak Prize, the Philip Levine Prize, and the Great Lakes Colleges New Writer’s Award, and has twice been a finalist for the National Poetry Series. Her new memoir, Mortality, with Friends will be out from Wayne State University Press Fall 2021. She is professor emerita at the University of Delaware and was poet laureate of Delaware from 2001-07. Read more at: https://www.fledabrown.com
Golda Meir once said, “Old age is like a plane flying through a storm. Once you’re aboard, there’s nothing you can do.” The poems in Fleda Brown’s brave collection, her thirteenth, take readers on a journey through the fury of this storm. There are plenty of tragedies to weather here, both personal and universal: the death of a father, a child’s terminal cancer, the extinction of bees, and environmental degradation. Brown’s poems are wise, honest, and deeply observant meditations on contemporary science, physics, family, politics, and aging. With tributes to visionary artists, including Frida Kahlo, Pablo Picasso, and Grandma Moses, as well as to life’s terrors, sadnesses, and joys, these works are beautiful dispatches from a renowned poet who sees the shadows lengthening and imagines what they might look like from the other side.
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Rita Quillen’s poetry book, Some Notes You Hold was published by Madville in 2020. She’s also author of the novel Wayland, Iris Press (2019), a full-length poetry collection, The Mad Farmer’s Wife, Texas Review Press, (2016), and was a finalist for the Weatherford Award in Appalachian Literature from Berea College. Her novel Hiding Ezra, released by Little Creek Books, was a finalist for the 2005 DANA Awards. One of six semi-finalists for the 2012-14 Poet Laureate of Virginia, she received three Pushcart nominations and a Best of the Net nomination in 2012. She lives, farms, writes songs, and takes photographs at Early Autumn Farm in southwestern Virginia. Read more at www.ritasimsquillen.com.
Some Notes You Hold is about surviving what life throws at us as we age. The so-called “golden years” are so named because of the high admission price—the tremendous losses, disappointments, illnesses, and failures we all experience if we live long enough. The first part of the book, called “Letting Go,” focuses on surviving deep grief. The middle section is a musical interlude, exploring the tremendous power of music to heal us mentally, physically, and spiritually and to reorder our thinking and our emotions. The last section, “Holding On,” explores the roads leading to survival: prayer and meditation, communion with the natural world, and writing.
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Gretchen Primack is the author of Kind, republished by Lantern Books in 2021; Visiting Days (Willow Books Editors Select Series); and Doris’ Red Spaces (Mayapple Press). She also co-wrote, with Jenny Brown, the memoir The Lucky Ones: My Passionate Fight for Farm Animals (Penguin Avery). Her poems have appeared in The Paris Review, Prairie Schooner, FIELD, Ploughshares, Poet Lore, and other journals and anthologies. Primack has administrated and taught with college programs and poetry workshops in prison for many years, and she moonlights at The Golden Notebook Bookstore in Woodstock, NY. Read more at http://www.gretchenprimack.com/bio.php
Kind is the kind of poetry book that makes you think differently about our world and the beings that inhabit it. Primack explores all facets of our lives with other beings—the beauty, the tragedy, and the absurdity that surrounds her existence. Kind cuts to one’s emotional core to make us think and feel. “It is this poet’s calling to hold kindness and its opposite in tension. What is that opposite? The poems in this volume offer unsettling answers. With Gretchen Primack’s poems, the absence of kindness causes a quaking in our bodies. A lyrical language of the present tense evokes a fierce and tender impatience with what should never have been settled for.”


Direct from Broadway, Mean Girls is the hilarious hit musical from an award-winning creative team, including book writer Tina Fey (30 Rock), composer Jeff Richmond (Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt), lyricist Nell Benjamin (Legally Blonde), and director Casey Nicholaw (The Book of Mormon).
Cady Heron may have grown up on an African savanna, but nothing prepared her for the vicious ways of her strange new home: suburban Illinois. Soon, this naïve newbie falls prey to a trio of lionized frenemies led by the charming but ruthless Regina George. But when Cady devises a plan to end Regina’s reign, she learns the hard way that you can’t cross a Queen Bee without getting stung.
New York Magazine cheers, “Mean Girls delivers with immense energy, a wicked sense of humor and joyful inside-jokery.” USA Today says, “We’ll let you in on a little secret, because we’re such good friends: GET YOUR TICKETS NOW!”

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The Speakeasy is designed to use improv for positive change through fast-paced play and collaboration. Through teaching the deeper nature of improv, The Speakeasy aims to inspire Artists to stay actively engaged in their craft, grow as individuals, and contribute to the growth of their artistic community. We want our community to have a blast, grow as people, and feel comfortable doing exactly what our name says… speak easy! Instructor Tim Hearn’s approach to both the arts as well as the craft of teaching prioritizes the process of play over the final result. He implements the rules of improv as a philosophy for living and as an indispensable tool for performance.
The first course offered will be “The Fellowship,” Sundays or Mondays at 7:00pm, beginning March 7th and running for 10 weeks. With specific learning targets addressed through a focus on process over product, this course is suited to new students who have never before taken an improv class as well as to seasoned improvisers looking for a new take on familiar techniques. Each week offers a distinct lesson designed to ensure students learn through group experience and active play. Classes will be in-person with enrollment limited to ten students, and all COVID precautions will be observed. Location is TBD.
More information about Speakeasy Improv, the curriculum, and enrollment can be found at: https://themagnetictheatre.org/speakeasy-improv
For questions, please contact Artistic Director
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Ready, set, snap! Connect with fellow nature lovers from around the world in the 2021 City Nature Challenge, a worldwide bioblitz held April 30 – May 3 that encourages participants to get outside and celebrate their region’s biodiversity by taking photos of the plants and animals found in their communities and uploading them to iNaturalist. The Arboretum will be serving as the lead institution for the Western North Carolina region and will be offering a variety of online programming for adults and youth in conjunction with this collaborative citizen-science initiative that helps scientists across the globe gather valuable data about the organisms around us.
How to Participate
1) Download iNaturalist, a free mobile application on your iPhone or Android device.
2) From April 30 – May 3, get outside in your backyard or a nearby natural area (while practicing social distancing) and take pictures of wildlife, including plants and animals (no pets, please!).
3) Upload your photos to iNaturalist and tell your friends to join in on the fun! **Children 12 & under can submit their photos via ecoexplore.net.
4) BONUS: Help identify organisms on iNaturalist during the Challenge’s “identifying” stage from May 4 – 9.
Earn Badges

Get to know the nature near you! This year, as part of the City Nature Challenge, the Arboretum’s ecoEXPLORE program will once again offer a special BioBlitz Bonus Badge to children in grades K-8 who complete the necessary “challenges.”
For adults looking for an extra challenge this spring, the Arboretum is offering the North Carolina BioBlitz patch. To earn the patch, participants will need to create a free iNaturalist account; attend the free “Intro to City Nature Challenge & iNaturalist“ course or stream it after the fact; make at least 40 nature observations during the City Nature Challenge; and help identify 10 or more observations made by others during the Challenge’s “identifying” stage (May 4 – 9). Students in the Arboretum’s Blue Ridge Naturalist and Blue Ridge Eco-Gardener certificate programs can earn 4 credit hours towards their Criteria 2 requirements by completing the steps necessary to earn their patch and will be asked to provide documentation of their observations and identifications in the form of screenshots. Candidates pursuing a North Carolina Environmental Education Certification can also receive these credits. Please contact Michelle Pearce, Teacher Education Coordinator, at [email protected] with any questions.
he 2021 Local Food Guide, ASAP’s annual free publication for finding local food and farms, hits newsstands this week. This definitive resource lists Appalachian GrownTM certified farms, farmers tailgate markets, restaurants, and travel destinations throughout Western North Carolina and surrounding counties in Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, and South Carolina. You can also view a digital version of the print Guide at asapconnections.org/guide.
The 2021 print edition of the Local Food Guide includes:
200+ Appalachian Grown farms, plus charts to easily locate farms offering u-pick, farm stands, lodging, visitor activities, and CSAs;
80+ farmers tailgate markets, plus information about holiday markets and a list of markets that operate in the winter;
80+ partner businesses, including restaurants, groceries, wholesalers, artisan producers, and travel destinations.
Articles and photography throughout the Guide highlight the unique farm stories and beauty of the region. This year’s Guide features The AppaLatin Farmstead, Colfax Creek Farm, Headwaters Market Garden, Kituwah Farm, New Roots Market Garden, and TK Family Farm. A primer on eating seasonally includes simple, vegetable-focused recipes.
As part of ASAP’s Appalachian Grown program, staff connects with markets, farms, and businesses to update listings each year. The Local Food Guide offers the most accurate, up-to-date information for consumers. ASAP also maintains the online Local Food Guide at appalachiangrown.org throughout the year. This database, including 1,350 listings, is searchable by products, locations, activities, and more.
Find Local Food Guide copies at farmers markets, visitors centers, libraries, community centers, groceries, restaurants, and other partner businesses throughout the region. They are also available to pick up in the lobby of ASAP’s office in Asheville at 306 W. Haywood St., Monday to Thursday, noon to 4 p.m. Contact ASAP if you need help locating a copy in your area.
The 2021 Local Food Guide is made possible with support from the USDA, Buncombe County Strategic Partnership fund, The Community Foundation of Western North Carolina, Pisgah Health Foundation, and Asheville Regional Airport.
ABOUT ASAP (APPALACHIAN SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE PROJECT)
ASAP’s mission is to help local farms thrive, link farmers to markets and supporters, and build healthy communities through connections to local food. To learn more, visit asapconnections.org.

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Join us and representatives from recycling companies, local governments, state and federal agencies, universities and colleges, state recycling organizations and other non-profits for our 31st Annual Conference & Trade Show: Learn. Network. Inspire. Virtually! We are offering a top of the line platform with live-streamed sessions, virtual round-tables, instant-access networking, an interactive exhibit hall, video and live chat, gaming, smart metrics, and of course all of the awesome programming you know and love. All registrants will receive instructions for accessing the platform and setting up your event experience prior to the conference start. Check out the awesome conference we have planned.
FABRICated presents an intergenerational look at new boundaries in art and craft through works that merge fiber-based processes with other media, like painting, sculpture, and blacksmithing. Each of the seven artists explores ideas of the body, identity, and their unique, personal stories by using a medium with a rich history of craft. Stitching, in and of itself, is slow and methodical and invites the audience to slow down and look carefully at the physicality of the thread, the textures of the fabric, and the paint and the found objects that are introduced into the mix. The result is an exhibition that questions the nature of what constitutes women’s work, the relationship of fine art and craft, and how these elements can come together to form a new kind of community conversation. FABRICated presents the work of two established artists, Virginia Derryberry (Asheville, NC) and Marcia Goldenstein (Knoxville, TN), along with five emerging artists who are exploring new boundaries in art and craft and, by so doing, open up an exploration between an older and a younger generation.
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Each year, thousands of residents and visitors take part in evaluating what’s best and brightest about a very wonderful place — Western North Carolina. With spring in full bloom and months of lockdown behind us, voting for what you love most about your community is a restorative affirmation.
Buncombe County Recreation Services dedication to low- and no-cost recreational programming and equitable access to quality outdoor spaces is reflected in its mission statement: Connect Communities. Preserve Culture. Change Lives. Among the ballot categories, we offer some suggestions for your consideration.
Kids
- Place for Outdoor Fun – Buncombe County Parks
- Playground – Lake Julian Park
- Place for Birthday Parties – Buncombe County Parks
Outdoors
- Picnic Spot – Lake Julian Park
- Fishing Spot – Lake Julian Park
Farm, Yard, & Garden
- Orchard – Sand Hill Native Tree Orchard
- Community Garden – Sand Hill Community Garden
Pets
- Outdoor Place to Take Your Pet – Buncombe County Parks
Uniquely Asheville
- Place to Connect With Nature Within Asheville City Limits – Buncombe County Sports Park
- Holiday Event (Winter/Spring) – Festival of Lights at Lake Julian Park
- Bumper Sticker – I ♥ Parks (Buncombe County Recreation Services)
Regional
- Local Place to Enjoy the Outdoors (Swannanoa/Black Mountain) – Charles D. Owen Park
- Local Place to Enjoy the Outdoors (Weaverville/Woodfin) – Ledges Whitewater River Park
To receive the I Heart Parks monthly newsletter, sign up online. Follow Buncombe County Recreation on Facebook and Instagram for the latest updates.

Are your special needs or changing physical abilities keeping you out of the garden? Are your garden chores becoming more challenging? Do you know how to select tools and equipment that will keep you healthy and safe in the garden? In this presentation Mary Hugenschmidt and Suzanne Wodek, Master Gardener Volunteers and longtime teachers of therapeutic horticulture, will tell us about ergonomic tools, garden structures and design, and proper body mechanics to get us back in the garden and keep us gardening for life.



