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.
Pieces made from nylon fabric ripstop, which keeps tears from spreading, invite viewers into created, fantastical worlds, only to highlight the complex—even impossible—architectures of their construction. Before the pandemic, Adrian primarily focused on personal experiences and interrogations of queerness, identity, and sexuality. Since then, the work has zoomed out in its scope, still centering identity but placed in larger infrastructure and surveillance systems that mediate, manipulate, and control desire.
Adrian counts queer fiber art, BDSM and kink culture, theatre, camp horror, puppetry, and drag among his many influences. Works in RIPSTOP, like the modernist bounce house sculpture A Fallible Complex (2021), evoke spaces for play, beckoning visitors in through their alluring aesthetic and then blocking their entrance or revealing structural instabilities, like missing floors. Others, like The Sensational Inflatable Furry Divines (2017-19), use sensual materials, like faux fur, spandex, and pleather, which connect to theatrical performance and counterculture. The materials “play on people’s initial associations and serve as a gateway into greater conversations about identity construction, performance, desire, and technology,” he shares.Pieces also nod to the history of quilting, including the AIDS Memorial Quilt, another influence on Adrian’s work. “Even when pieces aren’t explicitly making quilt references, I want the history of quilting and sewing-based craft to be part of the conversation of the work,” he says. “Craft is so much about the processes and histories behind materials. It’s about connecting with communities of people who practice those techniques. It’s about material and technique being a doorway into a greater relationship with an object.”
Themes of transformation—of structures, identities, and bodies—run throughout the show. “What I love about drag and puppetry is the sense of transformation and play, specifically with bodies,” Adrian says. “Within these art forms, a body can become mutable and capable of performing and becoming in unexpected states.” The sculptures also transform throughout viewers’ experiences, going through stages of inflation and deflation and existing in many different states.
RIPSTOP’s constant interplay between surface and depth, assumption and reality, are all a part of what Adrian describes as “looking behind the curtain,” which they trace back to the theatre. “When I’m thinking about systems, and the systems desire fits into, I’m thinking of stage construction, the backstage, the things that go on behind the show, and performance of our desires,” they explain.
As a craft artist, Adrian’s philosophy “comes down to having an intentional relationship with material, process, and technique,” he says. “Those aspects of art making are just as – if not more – important than an intellectualized concept being illustrated by an artwork.”
“Broadened definitions of craft that highlight communities of practice are foundational for the Center for Craft’s new strategic direction,” explains Executive Director Stephanie Moore. “Max Adrian’s work in RIPSTOP exemplifies the expansive and meaningful forms craft can take.” The Center for Craft is an institution Adrian credits for their professional growth. “The Center for Craft has felt like such a supporting institution for me specifically and for so many other craft artists I know,” they note. “To be able to bring this amount of work to Asheville is pretty cool.”
See Max Adrian: RIPSTOP at the Center for Craft Beginning July 26. A reception will be held on August 15. RIPSTOP is organized by Houston Center for Contemporary Craft and curated by Sarah Darro.
Saturdays from 10:30 AM – 12 PM
Join us for a North Carolina winery tour and celebrate a date night, bachelorette party, retirement, family, or a weekend away while sampling our favorite local beverages along the way. Our standard tour includes visits to three Asheville area vineyards. With safe and reliable transportation provided, you can sit back, relax and just have fun.
Included:
- Round trip transportation*
- Three vineyard visits
- Tastings at two of your three stops. Let’s just say that the pours at the first couple of locations are generous so we like to leave the third-stop beverage choice up to you.
- Time commitment = up to 5 hours
Want to include specific vineyards on your Asheville wine tours? If you have “must-see” wineries in mind or want to craft a full day catered to your group’s interests, we’re always happy to create a custom experience. Reach out any time!
American Made: Paintings and Sculpture from the DeMell Jacobsen Collection features more than 100 works of art by renowned American artists. The exhibition beautifully illustrates distinctive styles and thought-provoking art explored by American artists over the past two centuries. Though many objects from the DeMell Jacobsen Collection have been on view at other museums, ranging from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum to the Amon Carter Museum of American Art and Saint Louis Art Museum, this exhibition features the best of the collection brought together in one location. The exhibition begins with Colonial-era portraits by masters, such as Benjamin West, Thomas Sully, and Sarah Miriam Peale, and then moves on to highlight the development of mid-19th-century landscape painting. Viewers will discover works depicting the United States from coast to coast by artists, including Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, Jasper Francis Copsey, and even a monumental arctic scene by William Bradford.
Bill Viola’s Moving Stillness: Mount Rainier, 1979 on loan from Art Bridges is an immersive experience that explores the ideas of death and regeneration in nature. In a darkened room, sounds from nature envelop the viewer, as a placid pool of water reflects a projected image of Mount Rainier onto a screen. The water is periodically disturbed, causing the image to dissolve and slowly recompose as the pool settles. As an active volcano at rest, Mount Rainier embodies both quiet beauty and dramatic violence. Using time as both a tool and a theme in his work, Viola visualizes the dualities of nature’s rhythms of renewal, which include moments of both fragility and strength.
Tracey Morgan Gallery is pleased to present “The Boys Will Get Hungry if They See Fruit,” an exhibition of new paintings and soft sculptures by multidisciplinary artist Carly Owens Weiss. This is Weiss’ first solo exhibition with the gallery. A reception for the artist will be held Friday, November 15 from 6-8PM.
Regular gallery hours are Wed- Sat 11am-5pm
Ceramic artists throughout history have become masters of all four elements—creating clay from a mixture of earth and water to shape their work, drying it in air, and hardening it in fire. Throughout this process, the artist decides which aspects of the work will be tightly controlled, and when the elements can step in to leave nature’s mark. This exhibition traces the historical, stylistic, and conceptual origins of work that either embraces or refuses the element of chance in ceramics, looking at modern and contemporary work made in Western North Carolina.
The Asheville Art Museum is pleased to present Ginny Ruffner’s Reforestation of the Imagination, organized and toured by the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The exhibition imagines an apocalyptic landscape of withered plant forms that come to life when activated with augmented reality. In collaboration with animator and media artist Grant Kirkpatrick, Ruffner illuminates the delicate balance between nature and the artificial human-built world around us, putting forth an optimistic hope for the future: that technology can be a means to understand and help save the earth from environmental devastation. Visitors can download the free app “Reforestation” on their phones or use the iPads in the gallery to bring this second reality to life. When the tree rings of a stump are viewed through a device’s camera lens, a hologram of a fictional plant appears to sprout from the sculpture. These imagined fruits and flowers have evolved from existing flora, developing dramatic appendages and skills necessary to flourish in this radically different environment. In Ruffner’s fantastical reality, tulips develop stem flexibility, pears contain windows to the outside world, and flowers take on the form of birds. The installation includes Ruffner’s tongue-in-cheek descriptions of her surreal flora and their remarkable, sometimes humorous adaptations. Used as inspiration for the AR images, 19 original drawings by the artist will also be on view.
Come enjoy our most popular Asheville tour!
Duration
1 hour and 30 minutes
About
Bachelorette/Bachelor Parties are not permitted on this tour. The Fender Bender Bus is bachelorette/bachelor friendly!
Historical and hysterical, The Hey Asheville tour features outrageously entertaining tour guides, outlandish comedy skits complete with special appearances and loads of Asheville information. You’ll get to see the best of downtown Asheville and the rarely seen but stunningly beautiful Montford neighborhood, not to mention the burgeoning River Arts District! You’ve never had a ride like this. It’s like a vaudeville show on wheels!
Find out what makes Asheville so unique on LaZoom’s City Comedy Tour. It’s the perfect mix of history, comedy, and entertainment. Our guides are trained professional actors working with an original script. It’s like a theatre on wheels! The tour highlights downtown Asheville, historic neighborhoods, the South Slope, and the River Arts District.
Age Restrictions
13 and up. No exceptions.
Stops
10 minute beer & bathroom break at Green Man Brewery
What’s Included
Guided tour of Asheville on a Purple Bus
Funny actors, fun bits
Actual History about Asheville
Green Man Brewery Stop
What’s Not Included
Beer/Wine (Must be purchased from LaZoom or the Brewery Stop)
Cash! You’ll want to tip the guides for changing your life for the better.
Find the perfect gift this holiday season for everyone on your list at the 10th annual 𝗛𝗼𝗹𝗶𝗱𝗮𝘆 𝗣𝗼𝗽 𝗨𝗽 𝗦𝗵𝗼𝗽! Shop local, shop small and support local artists, makers, and vintage collectors.
We’ve decked the halls of the Ideation Lab inside the Center for Craft in Downtown Asheville. Shop over 100 vendors; housewares, handmade jewelry, ceramics, apparel, vintage clothes, ornaments, candles, gifts for our furry friends and more.
WHEN:
Open Nov 29 through Dec 24
10am-8pm daily
WHERE:
The Ideation Lab inside the Center for Craft
67 Broadway St, Asheville, NC 28801
The artists of the Kenilworth Artists Association have rescheduled their Fall Open Studio Tour & Sale for the weekend of Nov. 30-Dec. 1, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day.
“We’ve taken a tumble with Hurricane Helene arriving a week prior to our originally scheduled event, but we have dusted ourselves off, taken stock of our good fortune and hope to welcome our neighbors, our friends, and our community into our studios,” said Angela Maddix, a long-time participating artist.
The Kenilworth neighborhood, located south of downtown Asheville near Biltmore Village, is the setting for the tour. The inspiring work of artists who create their art in the midst of this historic neighborhood they call home will be available for purchase.
This year’s participating artists will showcase a wide range of media: works in oil, watercolor, acrylic, gouache, encaustic, jewelry, pottery, ceramics, glass, fiber, woodcraft, mixed-media, illustration, photography, paper and collage. Visitors will find unique local, hand-made art for holiday gift-giving, and special occasions. The tour is free, and is self-guided.
Each artist will donate a portion of sales to Loving Food Resources, a pantry serving western North Carolina hospice and HIV/AIDS clients.
A brochure with a map of studio locations, as well as more information about the participating artist, may be found at https://www.kenilworthartists.org/
American Made: Paintings and Sculpture from the DeMell Jacobsen Collection features more than 100 works of art by renowned American artists. The exhibition beautifully illustrates distinctive styles and thought-provoking art explored by American artists over the past two centuries. Though many objects from the DeMell Jacobsen Collection have been on view at other museums, ranging from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum to the Amon Carter Museum of American Art and Saint Louis Art Museum, this exhibition features the best of the collection brought together in one location. The exhibition begins with Colonial-era portraits by masters, such as Benjamin West, Thomas Sully, and Sarah Miriam Peale, and then moves on to highlight the development of mid-19th-century landscape painting. Viewers will discover works depicting the United States from coast to coast by artists, including Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, Jasper Francis Copsey, and even a monumental arctic scene by William Bradford.
Bill Viola’s Moving Stillness: Mount Rainier, 1979 on loan from Art Bridges is an immersive experience that explores the ideas of death and regeneration in nature. In a darkened room, sounds from nature envelop the viewer, as a placid pool of water reflects a projected image of Mount Rainier onto a screen. The water is periodically disturbed, causing the image to dissolve and slowly recompose as the pool settles. As an active volcano at rest, Mount Rainier embodies both quiet beauty and dramatic violence. Using time as both a tool and a theme in his work, Viola visualizes the dualities of nature’s rhythms of renewal, which include moments of both fragility and strength.
Ceramic artists throughout history have become masters of all four elements—creating clay from a mixture of earth and water to shape their work, drying it in air, and hardening it in fire. Throughout this process, the artist decides which aspects of the work will be tightly controlled, and when the elements can step in to leave nature’s mark. This exhibition traces the historical, stylistic, and conceptual origins of work that either embraces or refuses the element of chance in ceramics, looking at modern and contemporary work made in Western North Carolina.
The Asheville Art Museum is pleased to present Ginny Ruffner’s Reforestation of the Imagination, organized and toured by the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The exhibition imagines an apocalyptic landscape of withered plant forms that come to life when activated with augmented reality. In collaboration with animator and media artist Grant Kirkpatrick, Ruffner illuminates the delicate balance between nature and the artificial human-built world around us, putting forth an optimistic hope for the future: that technology can be a means to understand and help save the earth from environmental devastation. Visitors can download the free app “Reforestation” on their phones or use the iPads in the gallery to bring this second reality to life. When the tree rings of a stump are viewed through a device’s camera lens, a hologram of a fictional plant appears to sprout from the sculpture. These imagined fruits and flowers have evolved from existing flora, developing dramatic appendages and skills necessary to flourish in this radically different environment. In Ruffner’s fantastical reality, tulips develop stem flexibility, pears contain windows to the outside world, and flowers take on the form of birds. The installation includes Ruffner’s tongue-in-cheek descriptions of her surreal flora and their remarkable, sometimes humorous adaptations. Used as inspiration for the AR images, 19 original drawings by the artist will also be on view.
Come enjoy our most popular Asheville tour!
Duration
1 hour and 30 minutes
About
Bachelorette/Bachelor Parties are not permitted on this tour. The Fender Bender Bus is bachelorette/bachelor friendly!
Historical and hysterical, The Hey Asheville tour features outrageously entertaining tour guides, outlandish comedy skits complete with special appearances and loads of Asheville information. You’ll get to see the best of downtown Asheville and the rarely seen but stunningly beautiful Montford neighborhood, not to mention the burgeoning River Arts District! You’ve never had a ride like this. It’s like a vaudeville show on wheels!
Find out what makes Asheville so unique on LaZoom’s City Comedy Tour. It’s the perfect mix of history, comedy, and entertainment. Our guides are trained professional actors working with an original script. It’s like a theatre on wheels! The tour highlights downtown Asheville, historic neighborhoods, the South Slope, and the River Arts District.
Age Restrictions
13 and up. No exceptions.
Stops
10 minute beer & bathroom break at Green Man Brewery
What’s Included
Guided tour of Asheville on a Purple Bus
Funny actors, fun bits
Actual History about Asheville
Green Man Brewery Stop
What’s Not Included
Beer/Wine (Must be purchased from LaZoom or the Brewery Stop)
Cash! You’ll want to tip the guides for changing your life for the better.
Find the perfect gift this holiday season for everyone on your list at the 10th annual 𝗛𝗼𝗹𝗶𝗱𝗮𝘆 𝗣𝗼𝗽 𝗨𝗽 𝗦𝗵𝗼𝗽! Shop local, shop small and support local artists, makers, and vintage collectors.
We’ve decked the halls of the Ideation Lab inside the Center for Craft in Downtown Asheville. Shop over 100 vendors; housewares, handmade jewelry, ceramics, apparel, vintage clothes, ornaments, candles, gifts for our furry friends and more.
WHEN:
Open Nov 29 through Dec 24
10am-8pm daily
WHERE:
The Ideation Lab inside the Center for Craft
67 Broadway St, Asheville, NC 28801
Pieces made from nylon fabric ripstop, which keeps tears from spreading, invite viewers into created, fantastical worlds, only to highlight the complex—even impossible—architectures of their construction. Before the pandemic, Adrian primarily focused on personal experiences and interrogations of queerness, identity, and sexuality. Since then, the work has zoomed out in its scope, still centering identity but placed in larger infrastructure and surveillance systems that mediate, manipulate, and control desire.
Adrian counts queer fiber art, BDSM and kink culture, theatre, camp horror, puppetry, and drag among his many influences. Works in RIPSTOP, like the modernist bounce house sculpture A Fallible Complex (2021), evoke spaces for play, beckoning visitors in through their alluring aesthetic and then blocking their entrance or revealing structural instabilities, like missing floors. Others, like The Sensational Inflatable Furry Divines (2017-19), use sensual materials, like faux fur, spandex, and pleather, which connect to theatrical performance and counterculture. The materials “play on people’s initial associations and serve as a gateway into greater conversations about identity construction, performance, desire, and technology,” he shares.Pieces also nod to the history of quilting, including the AIDS Memorial Quilt, another influence on Adrian’s work. “Even when pieces aren’t explicitly making quilt references, I want the history of quilting and sewing-based craft to be part of the conversation of the work,” he says. “Craft is so much about the processes and histories behind materials. It’s about connecting with communities of people who practice those techniques. It’s about material and technique being a doorway into a greater relationship with an object.”
Themes of transformation—of structures, identities, and bodies—run throughout the show. “What I love about drag and puppetry is the sense of transformation and play, specifically with bodies,” Adrian says. “Within these art forms, a body can become mutable and capable of performing and becoming in unexpected states.” The sculptures also transform throughout viewers’ experiences, going through stages of inflation and deflation and existing in many different states.
RIPSTOP’s constant interplay between surface and depth, assumption and reality, are all a part of what Adrian describes as “looking behind the curtain,” which they trace back to the theatre. “When I’m thinking about systems, and the systems desire fits into, I’m thinking of stage construction, the backstage, the things that go on behind the show, and performance of our desires,” they explain.
As a craft artist, Adrian’s philosophy “comes down to having an intentional relationship with material, process, and technique,” he says. “Those aspects of art making are just as – if not more – important than an intellectualized concept being illustrated by an artwork.”
“Broadened definitions of craft that highlight communities of practice are foundational for the Center for Craft’s new strategic direction,” explains Executive Director Stephanie Moore. “Max Adrian’s work in RIPSTOP exemplifies the expansive and meaningful forms craft can take.” The Center for Craft is an institution Adrian credits for their professional growth. “The Center for Craft has felt like such a supporting institution for me specifically and for so many other craft artists I know,” they note. “To be able to bring this amount of work to Asheville is pretty cool.”
See Max Adrian: RIPSTOP at the Center for Craft Beginning July 26. A reception will be held on August 15. RIPSTOP is organized by Houston Center for Contemporary Craft and curated by Sarah Darro.
Come enjoy our most popular Asheville tour!
Duration
1 hour and 30 minutes
About
Bachelorette/Bachelor Parties are not permitted on this tour. The Fender Bender Bus is bachelorette/bachelor friendly!
Historical and hysterical, The Hey Asheville tour features outrageously entertaining tour guides, outlandish comedy skits complete with special appearances and loads of Asheville information. You’ll get to see the best of downtown Asheville and the rarely seen but stunningly beautiful Montford neighborhood, not to mention the burgeoning River Arts District! You’ve never had a ride like this. It’s like a vaudeville show on wheels!
Find out what makes Asheville so unique on LaZoom’s City Comedy Tour. It’s the perfect mix of history, comedy, and entertainment. Our guides are trained professional actors working with an original script. It’s like a theatre on wheels! The tour highlights downtown Asheville, historic neighborhoods, the South Slope, and the River Arts District.
Age Restrictions
13 and up. No exceptions.
Stops
10 minute beer & bathroom break at Green Man Brewery
What’s Included
Guided tour of Asheville on a Purple Bus
Funny actors, fun bits
Actual History about Asheville
Green Man Brewery Stop
What’s Not Included
Beer/Wine (Must be purchased from LaZoom or the Brewery Stop)
Cash! You’ll want to tip the guides for changing your life for the better.
Find the perfect gift this holiday season for everyone on your list at the 10th annual 𝗛𝗼𝗹𝗶𝗱𝗮𝘆 𝗣𝗼𝗽 𝗨𝗽 𝗦𝗵𝗼𝗽! Shop local, shop small and support local artists, makers, and vintage collectors.
We’ve decked the halls of the Ideation Lab inside the Center for Craft in Downtown Asheville. Shop over 100 vendors; housewares, handmade jewelry, ceramics, apparel, vintage clothes, ornaments, candles, gifts for our furry friends and more.
WHEN:
Open Nov 29 through Dec 24
10am-8pm daily
WHERE:
The Ideation Lab inside the Center for Craft
67 Broadway St, Asheville, NC 28801
Pieces made from nylon fabric ripstop, which keeps tears from spreading, invite viewers into created, fantastical worlds, only to highlight the complex—even impossible—architectures of their construction. Before the pandemic, Adrian primarily focused on personal experiences and interrogations of queerness, identity, and sexuality. Since then, the work has zoomed out in its scope, still centering identity but placed in larger infrastructure and surveillance systems that mediate, manipulate, and control desire.
Adrian counts queer fiber art, BDSM and kink culture, theatre, camp horror, puppetry, and drag among his many influences. Works in RIPSTOP, like the modernist bounce house sculpture A Fallible Complex (2021), evoke spaces for play, beckoning visitors in through their alluring aesthetic and then blocking their entrance or revealing structural instabilities, like missing floors. Others, like The Sensational Inflatable Furry Divines (2017-19), use sensual materials, like faux fur, spandex, and pleather, which connect to theatrical performance and counterculture. The materials “play on people’s initial associations and serve as a gateway into greater conversations about identity construction, performance, desire, and technology,” he shares.Pieces also nod to the history of quilting, including the AIDS Memorial Quilt, another influence on Adrian’s work. “Even when pieces aren’t explicitly making quilt references, I want the history of quilting and sewing-based craft to be part of the conversation of the work,” he says. “Craft is so much about the processes and histories behind materials. It’s about connecting with communities of people who practice those techniques. It’s about material and technique being a doorway into a greater relationship with an object.”
Themes of transformation—of structures, identities, and bodies—run throughout the show. “What I love about drag and puppetry is the sense of transformation and play, specifically with bodies,” Adrian says. “Within these art forms, a body can become mutable and capable of performing and becoming in unexpected states.” The sculptures also transform throughout viewers’ experiences, going through stages of inflation and deflation and existing in many different states.
RIPSTOP’s constant interplay between surface and depth, assumption and reality, are all a part of what Adrian describes as “looking behind the curtain,” which they trace back to the theatre. “When I’m thinking about systems, and the systems desire fits into, I’m thinking of stage construction, the backstage, the things that go on behind the show, and performance of our desires,” they explain.
As a craft artist, Adrian’s philosophy “comes down to having an intentional relationship with material, process, and technique,” he says. “Those aspects of art making are just as – if not more – important than an intellectualized concept being illustrated by an artwork.”
“Broadened definitions of craft that highlight communities of practice are foundational for the Center for Craft’s new strategic direction,” explains Executive Director Stephanie Moore. “Max Adrian’s work in RIPSTOP exemplifies the expansive and meaningful forms craft can take.” The Center for Craft is an institution Adrian credits for their professional growth. “The Center for Craft has felt like such a supporting institution for me specifically and for so many other craft artists I know,” they note. “To be able to bring this amount of work to Asheville is pretty cool.”
See Max Adrian: RIPSTOP at the Center for Craft Beginning July 26. A reception will be held on August 15. RIPSTOP is organized by Houston Center for Contemporary Craft and curated by Sarah Darro.
Come enjoy our most popular Asheville tour!
Duration
1 hour and 30 minutes
About
Bachelorette/Bachelor Parties are not permitted on this tour. The Fender Bender Bus is bachelorette/bachelor friendly!
Historical and hysterical, The Hey Asheville tour features outrageously entertaining tour guides, outlandish comedy skits complete with special appearances and loads of Asheville information. You’ll get to see the best of downtown Asheville and the rarely seen but stunningly beautiful Montford neighborhood, not to mention the burgeoning River Arts District! You’ve never had a ride like this. It’s like a vaudeville show on wheels!
Find out what makes Asheville so unique on LaZoom’s City Comedy Tour. It’s the perfect mix of history, comedy, and entertainment. Our guides are trained professional actors working with an original script. It’s like a theatre on wheels! The tour highlights downtown Asheville, historic neighborhoods, the South Slope, and the River Arts District.
Age Restrictions
13 and up. No exceptions.
Stops
10 minute beer & bathroom break at Green Man Brewery
What’s Included
Guided tour of Asheville on a Purple Bus
Funny actors, fun bits
Actual History about Asheville
Green Man Brewery Stop
What’s Not Included
Beer/Wine (Must be purchased from LaZoom or the Brewery Stop)
Cash! You’ll want to tip the guides for changing your life for the better.
Find the perfect gift this holiday season for everyone on your list at the 10th annual 𝗛𝗼𝗹𝗶𝗱𝗮𝘆 𝗣𝗼𝗽 𝗨𝗽 𝗦𝗵𝗼𝗽! Shop local, shop small and support local artists, makers, and vintage collectors.
We’ve decked the halls of the Ideation Lab inside the Center for Craft in Downtown Asheville. Shop over 100 vendors; housewares, handmade jewelry, ceramics, apparel, vintage clothes, ornaments, candles, gifts for our furry friends and more.
WHEN:
Open Nov 29 through Dec 24
10am-8pm daily
WHERE:
The Ideation Lab inside the Center for Craft
67 Broadway St, Asheville, NC 28801
Pieces made from nylon fabric ripstop, which keeps tears from spreading, invite viewers into created, fantastical worlds, only to highlight the complex—even impossible—architectures of their construction. Before the pandemic, Adrian primarily focused on personal experiences and interrogations of queerness, identity, and sexuality. Since then, the work has zoomed out in its scope, still centering identity but placed in larger infrastructure and surveillance systems that mediate, manipulate, and control desire.
Adrian counts queer fiber art, BDSM and kink culture, theatre, camp horror, puppetry, and drag among his many influences. Works in RIPSTOP, like the modernist bounce house sculpture A Fallible Complex (2021), evoke spaces for play, beckoning visitors in through their alluring aesthetic and then blocking their entrance or revealing structural instabilities, like missing floors. Others, like The Sensational Inflatable Furry Divines (2017-19), use sensual materials, like faux fur, spandex, and pleather, which connect to theatrical performance and counterculture. The materials “play on people’s initial associations and serve as a gateway into greater conversations about identity construction, performance, desire, and technology,” he shares.Pieces also nod to the history of quilting, including the AIDS Memorial Quilt, another influence on Adrian’s work. “Even when pieces aren’t explicitly making quilt references, I want the history of quilting and sewing-based craft to be part of the conversation of the work,” he says. “Craft is so much about the processes and histories behind materials. It’s about connecting with communities of people who practice those techniques. It’s about material and technique being a doorway into a greater relationship with an object.”
Themes of transformation—of structures, identities, and bodies—run throughout the show. “What I love about drag and puppetry is the sense of transformation and play, specifically with bodies,” Adrian says. “Within these art forms, a body can become mutable and capable of performing and becoming in unexpected states.” The sculptures also transform throughout viewers’ experiences, going through stages of inflation and deflation and existing in many different states.
RIPSTOP’s constant interplay between surface and depth, assumption and reality, are all a part of what Adrian describes as “looking behind the curtain,” which they trace back to the theatre. “When I’m thinking about systems, and the systems desire fits into, I’m thinking of stage construction, the backstage, the things that go on behind the show, and performance of our desires,” they explain.
As a craft artist, Adrian’s philosophy “comes down to having an intentional relationship with material, process, and technique,” he says. “Those aspects of art making are just as – if not more – important than an intellectualized concept being illustrated by an artwork.”
“Broadened definitions of craft that highlight communities of practice are foundational for the Center for Craft’s new strategic direction,” explains Executive Director Stephanie Moore. “Max Adrian’s work in RIPSTOP exemplifies the expansive and meaningful forms craft can take.” The Center for Craft is an institution Adrian credits for their professional growth. “The Center for Craft has felt like such a supporting institution for me specifically and for so many other craft artists I know,” they note. “To be able to bring this amount of work to Asheville is pretty cool.”
See Max Adrian: RIPSTOP at the Center for Craft Beginning July 26. A reception will be held on August 15. RIPSTOP is organized by Houston Center for Contemporary Craft and curated by Sarah Darro.
American Made: Paintings and Sculpture from the DeMell Jacobsen Collection features more than 100 works of art by renowned American artists. The exhibition beautifully illustrates distinctive styles and thought-provoking art explored by American artists over the past two centuries. Though many objects from the DeMell Jacobsen Collection have been on view at other museums, ranging from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum to the Amon Carter Museum of American Art and Saint Louis Art Museum, this exhibition features the best of the collection brought together in one location. The exhibition begins with Colonial-era portraits by masters, such as Benjamin West, Thomas Sully, and Sarah Miriam Peale, and then moves on to highlight the development of mid-19th-century landscape painting. Viewers will discover works depicting the United States from coast to coast by artists, including Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, Jasper Francis Copsey, and even a monumental arctic scene by William Bradford.
Bill Viola’s Moving Stillness: Mount Rainier, 1979 on loan from Art Bridges is an immersive experience that explores the ideas of death and regeneration in nature. In a darkened room, sounds from nature envelop the viewer, as a placid pool of water reflects a projected image of Mount Rainier onto a screen. The water is periodically disturbed, causing the image to dissolve and slowly recompose as the pool settles. As an active volcano at rest, Mount Rainier embodies both quiet beauty and dramatic violence. Using time as both a tool and a theme in his work, Viola visualizes the dualities of nature’s rhythms of renewal, which include moments of both fragility and strength.
Tracey Morgan Gallery is pleased to present “The Boys Will Get Hungry if They See Fruit,” an exhibition of new paintings and soft sculptures by multidisciplinary artist Carly Owens Weiss. This is Weiss’ first solo exhibition with the gallery. A reception for the artist will be held Friday, November 15 from 6-8PM.
Regular gallery hours are Wed- Sat 11am-5pm
Ceramic artists throughout history have become masters of all four elements—creating clay from a mixture of earth and water to shape their work, drying it in air, and hardening it in fire. Throughout this process, the artist decides which aspects of the work will be tightly controlled, and when the elements can step in to leave nature’s mark. This exhibition traces the historical, stylistic, and conceptual origins of work that either embraces or refuses the element of chance in ceramics, looking at modern and contemporary work made in Western North Carolina.
The Asheville Art Museum is pleased to present Ginny Ruffner’s Reforestation of the Imagination, organized and toured by the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The exhibition imagines an apocalyptic landscape of withered plant forms that come to life when activated with augmented reality. In collaboration with animator and media artist Grant Kirkpatrick, Ruffner illuminates the delicate balance between nature and the artificial human-built world around us, putting forth an optimistic hope for the future: that technology can be a means to understand and help save the earth from environmental devastation. Visitors can download the free app “Reforestation” on their phones or use the iPads in the gallery to bring this second reality to life. When the tree rings of a stump are viewed through a device’s camera lens, a hologram of a fictional plant appears to sprout from the sculpture. These imagined fruits and flowers have evolved from existing flora, developing dramatic appendages and skills necessary to flourish in this radically different environment. In Ruffner’s fantastical reality, tulips develop stem flexibility, pears contain windows to the outside world, and flowers take on the form of birds. The installation includes Ruffner’s tongue-in-cheek descriptions of her surreal flora and their remarkable, sometimes humorous adaptations. Used as inspiration for the AR images, 19 original drawings by the artist will also be on view.
We are delighted to host a series of workshops with Ashley English, author of books on topics ranging from raising chickens to canning & preserving, and from hosting potlucks to homemade health & wellness products. Get a jump start on holiday gifting. FREE! Refreshments will be served.