Costume Sale

Come find a treasure or two at our next Costume Sale!

September sale is cancelled – but our October 23 sale is ON!

The sale will include costumes pulled from ACT’s extensive collection and donated items. Vintage petticoats and bloomers have been added to the sale, along with men’s dress and formal shirts, fur coats and accessories, hats, evening dresses, and children’s costumes. Men’s and women’s day wear and a variety of fabric pieces will also be available.

Weather permitting, the sale will be held in our parking lot and the newly fenced in side yard below the theatre. In the case of rain, the sale will take place in 35below, on the lower level of the theatre.

Masks are required regardless of vaccination status.

Cards only, please – no cash!

Eden of the Eel acrylic on canvas 36 x 36 inches

Bender Gallery is excited to present Harpies, Hybrids, and Hidden Worlds, a solo exhibition of extraordinary paintings by Columbus, Ohio based artist Laine Bachman. Inspired by myths, folklore, and nature, Bachman infuses the colorful worlds she creates with lush foliage, archetypal imagery, underlying themes, exotic fauna, and meticulous detail. The exhibition runs through October 31 during the gallery’s regular business hours. If you haven’t already done so, please visit the virtual tour to experience Laine’s world. Virtual Tour of the Exhibition

Starting this weekend, we’ll be selling local heirloom and edible pumpkins from Sandy Mush, NC, and decorative gourds from Union Grove, NC!

Come join us at the farm as we get into the fall spirit & celebrate the harvest

Looking to get involved, stay active, and meet some new friends? Sand Hill Community Garden workdays take place on Wednesdays (6-8 p.m.) and Saturdays (10 a.m.-noon) from Feb. 27-Oct. 30, 2021, at Buncombe County Sports Park. The garden is located on 16 Apac Dr. in West Asheville/Enka-Candler.

Join friends and neighbors as they come together on common ground to raise fresh, organic vegetables and fruits for the Enka community.

Expect to wear a mask and maintain social distance throughout. Tools and hand sanitizer are available, but any gloves, loppers, pruners, or gardening tools you can bring will decrease the amount of contact between volunteers. Please wear work clothes to get dirty and closed-toe shoes. Sunscreen, water, and a hat are also handy items to have on hand.

Sand Hill Community Garden has been growing fresh produce since 2011 and raised over 1,200 lbs. of organic produce last year.

NOTE: Community workdays are weather dependent. Please join the community garden email list (send your info to [email protected]) to stay up on workday tasks and other garden news.

To receive the I Heart Parks monthly newsletter, sign up online. Follow Buncombe County Recreation on Facebook and Instagram for the latest updates.

• A 20 minute workout at each of our 4 clinic locations in Asheville, Candler, and Hendersonville
• Free pint glass & t-shirt for all participants (while supplies last)
• Raffle prizes from community partners

Celebrate movement with Movement for Life Physical Therapy! The physical therapy practice will be offering free 20 minute workouts at each of their four locations in Candler, North Asheville, South Asheville and Hendersonville throughout the day, as well as giveaways and raffle prizes from local community partners.

Movement for Life Physical Therapy regularly treats patients with Parkinson’s Disease through their Knock Out Parkinson’s program, which they recently expanded to offer at all WNC clinic locations. Knock Out Parkinson’s is a non-contact boxing program, utilizing a combination of cardiovascular exercise, weight training, balance skills and boxing.

While there is no cure for Parkinson’s Disease, evidence has shown people who participate in high intensity exercise programs make positive gains in all stages of the disease, as well as protect important areas of their brain. The mission of Knock Out Parkinson’s is to give people the power and motivation to battle Parkinson’s Disease. The program works to improve the mental and physical capabilities of those with Parkinson’s Disease through movement and enhance their quality of life.

The Knock Out Parkinson’s Challenge on October 23^rd will offer a taste of what the program is all about. The event is open to folks of all abilities, whether or not you have been affected by Parkinson’s Disease.

Movement for Life Physical Therapy takes the health and safety of its community very seriously. Masks are required at all clinic locations.

Are you one of those gardeners who likes to collect seeds from a variety of different plants to try next year?  If so, come and join the Master Gardeners at The Learning Garden, weather permitting, as we harvest seeds from selected plants. Some of the plants to choose from include zinnias, scabiosa, snapdragons, monarda, milkweed, and flowering vines.

Master Gardeners will be on-site to help explain the process and help you collect seeds.  We will provide envelopes to hold the seeds. Due to ongoing concerns about the transmission of Covid-19, social distancing is recommended at the event. When maintaining a distance of six feet is not possible, wearing a face mask is requested.

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.

“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.

The exhibit was developed as part of the celebration of the 450th anniversary of the Juan Pardo expeditions. Several years ago, archaeologists identified a site near Morganton as the location of Joara, one of the largest Native American towns in what is today Western North Carolina.

Joara was occupied from approximately 1400-1600 A.D. Two Spanish expeditions led respectively by Hernando de Soto and Juan Pardo visited the town in the 1500s. The Pardo expedition was part of a larger effort to establish a string of forts from the coast of present-day South Carolina all the way to Mexico. In 2013, archaeologists confirmed that Joara was also the site of Fort San Juan, established by Pardo in 1567, nearly 20 years before the English settlement at Roanoke on the coast of North Carolina and 40 years before the settlement at Jamestown.

Through various artifacts uncovered by the archaeology, the exhibit showcases the Spanish occupation of Fort San Juan and the lives of the native people who lived in the Joara area.

The exhibit is on loan from the Exploring Joara Foundation Inc. Exploring Joara engages the public in archaeology in the Carolinas, and emphasizes the discovery of the Native American town of Joara and Fort San Juan. The exhibit will be on display at the Western North Carolina Historical Association’s gallery inside the Smith-McDowell House through December 15.

The gallery is open for visitation Thursday, Friday, and Saturday between 10:30am and 4:00pm. Reservations are recommended.

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.

Continuum Arts Gallery will host its first, curated gallery show beginning on September 18th, 2021. Titled ‘Haec Culti’, the group show will run from September 18 – November 9th, featuring artists Kat Knutsen, Kevin Yaun, Frank Lombardo, and Conrado Lopez. For our opening day, light horderves will be served and live music will be showcased throughout the day. Miami Gold, a local Asehville band, hits the stage at 7pm! This event is free and open to the public.

Open Sun-Tues by appointment only

If you can sew on a machine, hand sew, crochet, knit, or stuff a pillow, the Hominy Creek Comfort Makers at the Enka-Candler Library can use your help.

TOUCH-A-TRUCK is a community wide event where both kids and kids at heart have the opportunity to see, touch, and learn about vehicles of all types, including public service, emergency, utility, construction, transportation, and delivery—all in one place! Guests will get to meet the drivers and people who operate these vehicles.

Each child will be given a bag of candy upon exiting the event. Additional activities on-site will include nonprofit organizations that focus on family and children’s issues, complimentary balloon creations, and other special attractions. Parental supervision is required and cameras are highly recommended to capture the day’s special adventures.

Costumes are encouraged but not required.  At this time, the JLA will require that anyone ages 3 and up wear a face covering/face mask to attend the event.  Please follow their Facebook event page for any potential updates on this requirement.

The last event in 2019 exceeded expectations with over 2,000 attendees from the Asheville community and the surrounding areas. The TOUCH-A-TRUCK Family Festival offers local organizations a unique opportunity to showcase their brand and interact with the community in a fun and educational environment. There are several opportunities for organizations to participate: event sponsorship, truck/vehicle exhibition, or in-kind support.

Financial sponsors for this year’s event include collaborating sponsors New Dream Renovations, Bayou North and Kids Garden; as well as supporting sponsors Zaniac Asheville, Tracey Morgan Gallery, and Fields Auto Group

The Junior League of Asheville organizes TOUCH-A-TRUCK Family Festival for the community to enjoy.  It also supports the League’s mission of promoting voluntarism, developing the potential of women, and improving our community through the effective action and leadership of trained volunteers.

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.

The Friends of the Weaverville Library (FOWL) are excited to announce the opening of their used bookstore in Weaverville on Thursday, July 8. Located in the lower level of the Weaverville Library at 41 N. Main St., the store will be open Thursdays 1-5 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays 11 a.m.-2 p.m., with expanded hours beginning in September. The store is stocked with thousands of books, audiobooks, CDs, DVDs, and more. All adult books are priced at $1.50-$3.00, children and teen books at $1.00-$1.50, audio and video at $2.00.

There is also a bargain-priced area and a collection of special finds that are priced individually. Please feel free to contact us at 828-641-1812 or [email protected]. All proceeds from the store will benefit the Weaverville Library.

Returning 2021 – Guests will hear a narration of Schulz’s “It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” as the train travels to the Pumpkin Patch. Upon arrival, passengers will be greeted and have a photo opportunity with Charlie Brown, Lucy, and Snoopy. During your 1 hour and 30 minute layover, your activities to enjoy at The Great Pumpkin Patch will include:

• campfire marshmallows
• coloring station
• temporary tattoos
• trick or treating
• bouncy house (weather permitting)
• wagon rides

And kids, don’t forget to wear your Halloween costumes! There will be plenty of PEANUTS™ merchandise at the GSMR Gift Store and Train Museum! Each child will also select their own pumpkin from The Great Pumpkin Patch to take home.