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.
John Fabian Carlson, Snowy Waters, circa 1920–1927, oil on canvas, 12 × 16 inches
Reading Public Museum, Reading, PA, museum purchase.
Registration deadline: March 12
In this virtual workshop, learn how to see and paint like the Impressionists! Discuss historic Impressionism and how it endures today before creating your own work based on photographs of the local area. Learn about and practice optical blending, color temperature, ways to convey light and shadow, and paint application. Some prior painting experience is helpful but not required; students may work in acrylics or oils, but instructor uses acrylics for demos.
Instructor Ben Hamburger is a painter, socially engaged artist, and educator born and raised outside of Washington, DC. Working within the convergence of visual art and social engagement, he creates artwork and facilitates artistic experiences with communities in the US and around the world. He holds an undergraduate degree in visual arts from Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, FL, and a graduate degree in fine/community arts from Maryland Institute College of Art. His work has been exhibited internationally in numerous group and solo exhibitions and is part of the permanent collection of the City of New Orleans, Tulane Medical School and private collections around the world.
Presented in conjunction with Across the Atlantic: American Impressionism Through the French Lens.
In this brand new live streamed show, Joshua Lozoff will amaze and amuse you, and quite possibly read your mind from hundreds or thousands of miles away! The show is designed for all ages, and is highly interactive. You and your family won’t just be watching a screen, you will be part of the magic. Using the Zoom app, you will have a front row seat to the most magical night you’ve had in a long time!
So, how have you been staying sane during the past year of lockdown?
That’s the question The Magnetic Theatre asked one “quaranteam” of actors, and while it remains to be seen how much sanity they’ve maintained, the answer is, “Playing With Our Food!” Get ready for a weird, wild, hilarious feast of gustatory one-act plays selected, directed, and performed by Tabitha Judy, Strother Stingley, and Tippin.
Each taking turns at the directing trough, this “food group” of artists serves up a heaping helping of dark comedy, absurdity, and silliness in the course of four quirky short plays by playwrights from around the country. “Three Women and an Onion,” written by Ryan Bultrowicz, finds a Kafkaesque purgatory in an errant allium. Evan Baughfman’s “The Last Beans in the Box” explores the secret lives of young wizards’ least favorite sweets. Jackie Martin’s “Cookies for Bethany” warns of the dangers of taking things that aren’t yours. And “37 Scenes, and a Watermelon,” by Ian Downes, asks the question, “Do they always cry so much?”
So, order some dinner, get comfy with your TV tray, and tuck in to this smorgasbord of tasty theatrical tidbits, delivered via live-stream direct to your living room!
“Guggisberg and Baldwin have laid a new avenue. By joining Italian coldworking to the Swedish overlay, they have embarked upon an innovative sequence of experimentation and research not only on surfaces, but also on color and the interplay of color and texture through surface treatment. These explorations have increasingly drawn them to probe the expressive fields of textural elements. Initially soft and tactile, with the new strong angles, facets and deep cuts, the surface itself takes on a kind of fourth dimension, something sculptural that moves beyond the limits set by height, width, and volume.”
A quote from Louise Berndt, writing in “Battuto 2002: Philip Baldwin and Monica Guggisberg”
Plein Air Painting Tips
Don Osterberg has illustrated some of his advice on plein air painting with step-by-step stages of his pastel “Looking Glass Falls in Pisgah Forest.”
The watermedia and mixed media paintings, drawings, and monotype prints of Costanza Knight, also known as Connie Knight, are contemporary expressions that explore and celebrate the human form and the landscape. Poetry and narratives are often her creative touchstone, but she also takes inspiration from the landscapes she loves. Her diverse interests are evident in her varied styles.
Diane Dean talks about the process of painting a commission painting
Acrylic Painter, Diane Dean teaches her technique for creating heavily textured acrylic paintings using heavy gesso for surface texture, fluid and heavy body acrylics, brushes and palette knives.
Mary Alice Braukman presented “Free Up: Collage Surprise,” a workshop that was videotaped for viewing on the League’s YouTube channel. Students: Lisa Casperson, JoAnn Jenson and Sharon Richmond participated. Lynn Padgett and Diane Dean video recorded this event for publication on the Art League website for all members to view.
Braukman was the Director of the Kanuga Watercolor Workshops for 17 years, held at the Kanuga Conference Center in Hendersonville, North Carolina. She teaches workshops throughout the United States, in experimental water media painting and collage for intermediate and advanced painters, consults on workshops, lectures, serves as juror in national, state and regional water media exhibitions.
Pat has been teaching workshops for over 20 years and has received several local and regional awards and has had solo shows as well as Kindred Spirit exhibits with her friend and colleague Janet Campbell. She is a signature member of the North East Watercolor Society, Audubon Artists, Inc. and a former elected member of the New Jersey Water Color Society and the Salmagundi Club in NYC.
Diane Dean demonstrates using a palette knife to complete a dogwood painting.
Acrylic Painter, Diane Dean teaches her technique for creating heavily textured acrylic paintings using heavy gesso for surface texture, fluid and heavy body acrylics, brushes and palette knives.
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The Asheville Art Museum is the only museum in North Carolina to be selected as a finalist for this award. Chapel Hill Public Library is the only library to be selected in North Carolina.
The National Medal is the nation’s highest honor given to museums and libraries that demonstrate significant impact in their communities. For more than 25 years, the award has honored institutions that demonstrate excellence in service to their communities.
To celebrate this honor, IMLS is encouraging the Asheville Art Museum’s community members to share stories, memories, pictures, and videos on social media as part of the Share Your Story Campaign, using the #IMLSmedals hashtag, and engage with IMLS on Facebook and Twitter. For more information, please visit the IMLS website. The Asheville Art Museum will be featured on IMLS’s social media accounts on Tuesday, March 30, and we invite all to also share the content with the community.
National Medal winners will be announced in late spring. Representatives from winning institutions will be honored for their extraordinary contributions during a virtual National Medal Ceremony this summer.
To see the full list of finalists and learn more about the National Medal, visit the IMLS website.
Opening the Door to Change presents the history of education in Western North Carolina, with a particular emphasis on Madison County, from the mid-nineteenth century through the late twentieth. Here, learning has taken many forms, from in-home instruction, common, subscription, and religious schools, to colleges of farming and craft. The curriculum of these schools, as well as their very construction, and in some cases closing, was deeply entwined with the changing needs and values of the Western North Carolina Appalachian community.
The exhibition focuses on the dynamic relationship between community values and education, with a special focus on how students and their families navigated the economic, geographic, and racial challenges to education. Trends and changes in curriculum, assessment, and classroom design will also be explored.
The virtual exhibition will feature didactic panels showcasing a survey of schools within Madison County and highlighting the effect community values had on the curriculum, function, and format of these institutions. Online visitors may also get a sneak-peak at an original film, produced by the Museum, presenting the oral histories of several Madison County residents sharing their personal recollections and memories of past school-days.
Additional films will spotlight the Historic Mars Hill Anderson Rosenwald School and Laurel School, with first-hand accounts from former students and teachers.
This virtual exhibition is sponsored by the Madison County Tourism and Development Authority.
Show Us What the River Means to You!
Every spring we host our Voices of the River: Art & Poetry Contest. We ask kids to use the river as a source of inspiration to showcase their creativity. Each year we are so amazed by the talent of these young artists, poets, and performers. Submissions can include 2D and 3D works in various mediums, poems and creative writings, and video compositions of songs, dances, or skits. Winners are selected by a council of judges made up of local artists, writers, and community leaders. Many generous businesses also donate prizes for winners from each age group and category.
This year we want you to show us “How has the river helped you during this time of isolation?”
All entries are due by Thursday April 22nd
The Western Arts Agencies of North Carolina (WNC Arts) was established in 1980s as a peer support group for arts councils and agencies in WNC. This group is now working to expand their advocacy support for the arts in WNC.
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Membership is not limited to Henderson County. Artists and art lovers from elsewhere are welcome to join.
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2021 WNC Regional Scholastic Art Awards
The Museum, with the assistance of its volunteer docents and support from the Asheville Area Section of the American Institute of Architects, is proud to sponsor the WNC Regional Scholastic Art Awards. Students in grades 7–12 from all across our region are invited to submit work for this special juried competition. The Museum works with the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers to facilitate regional judging of student artwork and recognition of our community’s burgeoning artistic talent.
In early spring each year, award winners are featured in an exhibition, and are honored at a ceremony. Regional Gold Key recipients’ work is sent to the National Scholastic Art competition hosted by the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers.
Across the Atlantic
Across the Atlantic
American Impressionism Through the French Lens
This extraordinary exhibition, drawn from the collection of the Reading Public Museum, explores the path to Impressionism through the 19th century in France. The show examines the sometimes complex relationship between French Impressionism of the 1870s and 1880s and the American interpretation of the style in the decades that followed. More than 65 paintings and works on paper help tell the story of the “new style” of painting which developed at the end of the 19th century—one that emphasized light and atmospheric conditions, rapid or loose brushstrokes, and a focus on brightly colored scenes from everyday life, including both urban and rural settings when artists preferred to paint outdoors and capture changing effects of light during different times of day and seasons of the year.
Across the Atlantic: American Impressionism through the French Lens is organized by the Reading Public Museum, Reading, Pennsylvania.
Generous support for this project provided by Art Bridges and The Maurer Family Foundation.
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.
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The Asheville Art Museum presents Fantastical Forms: Ceramics as Sculpture on view at the Museum November 4, 2020 through April 5, 2021. The 25 works in this exhibition—curated by associate curator Whitney Richardson—highlight the Museum’s Collection of sculptural ceramics from the last two decades of the 20th century to the present. Each work illustrates the artist’s ability to push beyond the utilitarian and transition ceramics into the world of sculpture.
North and South Carolina artists featured include Elma McBride Johnson, Neil Noland, Norm Schulman, Virginia Scotchie, Cynthia Bringle, Jane Palmer, Michael Sherrill, and Akira Satake. Works by American artists Don Reitz, Robert Chapman Turner, Karen Karnes, Toshiko Takaezu, Bill Griffith, and Xavier Toubes are also featured in the exhibition.
“Guggisberg and Baldwin have laid a new avenue. By joining Italian coldworking to the Swedish overlay, they have embarked upon an innovative sequence of experimentation and research not only on surfaces, but also on color and the interplay of color and texture through surface treatment. These explorations have increasingly drawn them to probe the expressive fields of textural elements. Initially soft and tactile, with the new strong angles, facets and deep cuts, the surface itself takes on a kind of fourth dimension, something sculptural that moves beyond the limits set by height, width, and volume.”
A quote from Louise Berndt, writing in “Battuto 2002: Philip Baldwin and Monica Guggisberg”
Plein Air Painting Tips
Don Osterberg has illustrated some of his advice on plein air painting with step-by-step stages of his pastel “Looking Glass Falls in Pisgah Forest.”
The watermedia and mixed media paintings, drawings, and monotype prints of Costanza Knight, also known as Connie Knight, are contemporary expressions that explore and celebrate the human form and the landscape. Poetry and narratives are often her creative touchstone, but she also takes inspiration from the landscapes she loves. Her diverse interests are evident in her varied styles.
Diane Dean talks about the process of painting a commission painting
Acrylic Painter, Diane Dean teaches her technique for creating heavily textured acrylic paintings using heavy gesso for surface texture, fluid and heavy body acrylics, brushes and palette knives.
Mary Alice Braukman presented “Free Up: Collage Surprise,” a workshop that was videotaped for viewing on the League’s YouTube channel. Students: Lisa Casperson, JoAnn Jenson and Sharon Richmond participated. Lynn Padgett and Diane Dean video recorded this event for publication on the Art League website for all members to view.
Braukman was the Director of the Kanuga Watercolor Workshops for 17 years, held at the Kanuga Conference Center in Hendersonville, North Carolina. She teaches workshops throughout the United States, in experimental water media painting and collage for intermediate and advanced painters, consults on workshops, lectures, serves as juror in national, state and regional water media exhibitions.
Pat has been teaching workshops for over 20 years and has received several local and regional awards and has had solo shows as well as Kindred Spirit exhibits with her friend and colleague Janet Campbell. She is a signature member of the North East Watercolor Society, Audubon Artists, Inc. and a former elected member of the New Jersey Water Color Society and the Salmagundi Club in NYC.
Diane Dean demonstrates using a palette knife to complete a dogwood painting.
Acrylic Painter, Diane Dean teaches her technique for creating heavily textured acrylic paintings using heavy gesso for surface texture, fluid and heavy body acrylics, brushes and palette knives.