Roots + Wings School of Art is truly a rich resource for our community.  On top of all they provide, they are raising money for a scholarship fund.  You guys are awesome!

The Share Love event will be held on Sunday, February 12^th from 2-5pm at Pink Dog Creative in the River Arts District.  All proceeds from the Share Love event will help support the Roots + Wings School of Art general scholarship fund, the visiting artist fund, and the Asheville Community Design Lab program.  The Share Love event is just one example of Roots + Wings School of Art’s ongoing commitment to making the arts more visible and accessible to the greater Asheville community.

There will be a live dance performance, and a silent art auction of works from a number of talented local artists.  Additionally, all studio artists of Pink Dog Creative will have their doors open!  A number of hands-on art making opportunities for all ages will be scattered throughout the Pink Dog Buildings during the event:

• Unique card-making and letter writing for upcoming Valentine’s Day – stamps provided
• Scrap t-shirt art site – artists using sewing machines to help piece the works together
• Collage and mixed media site
• Watercolor and oil pastel site
• Live, Interactive Painting site – anyone will be able to make their mark on a series of five canvases – all of which will be auctioned off at the end of the event.
• Dance Performance!

There is a suggested donation of $10.  Can’t make it but want to donate?

Questions? 828.545.4827 or email info@rootsandwingsarts.com for more information

More about Roots + Wings School of Art

In just a few short years, Roots + Wings School of Art has had an enormous impact in the community through their unique and engaging visual art education programs in Asheville.  Their work with children, teens and adults, is helping to unlock the inner, creative voice, grow self-confidence, and provide teaching opportunities and visibility for local and regional artists.  The Visual Arts Preschool works with children age three to six, weaving creative problem solving and visual art methods into a preschool curriculum.  The Visual Arts After-school program offers a safe, yet creative, after-school option for Elementary school children.  The Monthly Art Sessions and Off-site After-school Art Sessions provide an extra-curricular visual art option. They have also established the Asheville Community Design Lab, an affiliate program for teens, which provides a bridge between visual art, design and architecture.

The Center for Craft, Creativity and Design hosts Torqued & Twisted, an exhibition exploring the work of nine furniture makers and sculptors who use the technique of bending wood in innovative, unusual and eloquent ways.  Feb. 10 – June 29, 2012

Wood bending is typically accomplished through one of three approaches—steaming, laminating or greenwood bending. Steaming requires the application of heat and moisture to allow the wood fibers to bend and slide against each other. The bent part is clamped to a form and allowed to cool and dry into a new configuration. Laminating involves using layers of wood cut thin enough to become flexible. The flexible strips are clamped against a form with adhesive between each layer, until the adhesive cures, locking the laminations into the new configuration. Greenwood bending uses freshly cut smaller diameter saplings, often willow, which are inherently flexible due to the high moisture content in the freshly cut wood.

Bentwood came to symbolize the modern movement in furniture design, but it still offers a tempting territory for a range of aesthetic and formal explorations. The artists/designers in this exhibition push the limits of wood bending to create extraordinary functional and sculptural works of art that are conceptually challenging and expand our understanding and expectations of wood as a material.

LEAF: CALL FOR ARTISTS!

The Lake Eden Arts Festival (LEAF) is calling all handcraft artists to apply for our 2012 Festivals!

55 exhibitors/festival will be chosen by jury, open to all media.
Booth Fee: $360

Spring Festival Dates – May 10-13
Fall Festival Dates – Oct 18-21

LEAF is an award-winning non-profit Music and Arts Festival located in the beautiful mountains of Western North Carolina.
ATTENDANCE: 6,500/day.

APPLICATION DEADLINE for SPRING: January 30th
APPLICATION DEADLINE for FALL: June 15th

Visit them online for our Juried Fair Exhibitor Prospectus and to apply:
http://theleaf.org/index.php/thefestival/arts/handcrafts-a-folk-arts

Email for more info: Margaret@theLEAF.org

Bids for Kids is worth putting on the calendar: 5:30-7:30 on Dec. 14.  It’s free to attend and has a live and silent auction, as well as wine and appetizers.  This is the first annual Bids for Kids and supports five regional child-based nonprofits. 

WHAT: First annual Bids for Kids auction all proceeds going to 5 area child-based non-profits:

Mountain Area Child and Family Center, Helpmate, Caring For Children, Elida Homes, Inc., and Children First

WHEN: Wed. Dec 14 5:30-7:30, free to attend with Wine & Holiday Hors D’oeuvres

WHO and WHERE: Asheville Area Auctioneers is hosting this event at Brunk Auctions Gallery

AUCTION ITEMS: There are some really awesome and unique items from local businesses in the live and silent auction, such as:

Restaurant gift certificates, vacation get aways and events (Lake House Retreat, Britton Family Lodge, private concerts with local musicians), Chop Shop is offering butchering lessons, Town Mountain Garden Party, an afternoon of bee keeping with Laurey Masterton, a live Christmas tree, jewelry, original artwork…I mean honestly, the list is awesome.  I can’t wait to go and I’ve been to a lot of auctions!  And, I really believe in these non-profits!

Asheville Glass Center Hosts CNN for a Glassblowing Workshop

CNN Spent Time at Asheville Glass Center

Hot off a llama trekking expedition in Tennessee (they said the llamas were very sweet), CNN’s HLN network crew stopped in to Asheville Glass Center in the Asheville River Arts District to film a segment about glassblowing workshops and hands-on arts workshops in Asheville on Friday, December 2, 2011.

Alex Greenwood, glass artist and teaching artist at Asheville Glassworks, spent about 2 hours guiding HLN network reporter Joe Carter through the process of making a glass.  Logan MacSporran, glass artist and teaching artist at Asheville Glassworks, guided Carter through the process of flame working by making a glass icicle as well.  The segment will air on HLN in mid-January.  Here’s a sneak video peak!

In addition to a gallery retail space with locally made gifts for all budgets, Asheville Glass Center provides hands-on glassblowing workshops for visitors and locals are a specialty at Asheville Glass Studio and start at $50.  They offer gift certificates as well. Sign up for a workshop!

Stop in or call for information: (828) 505-7110 or Roberts Street Studios–140C Roberts Street, Asheville, NC 28801.

This weekend, self-described “global Americana” band The Billy Sea heads into The Altamont Theatre to play a show and record their new album.  The performance is on Friday, November 18th, the second night of recording, and will also be video taped as part of the studio experience.  With an all-star lineup of musicians, the Asheville band has come out of the starting gate strong, with summer performances at Bele Chere and LEAF this fall, this is a group not to miss.

About the Billy Sea: “Founded by slide guitar revolutionary Billy Cardine, the sound is firmly planted in American roots music, but also pulls influence from all corners of the world. Cardine, a classically trained pianist in his youth, eventually fell in love with the sound of the slide guitar and plays Dobro, Chaturangui, Weissenborn and Electric Steel guitars. River Guerguerian commands a wide range of musical styles on his unique blend of percussion instruments, combining elements and experience from all over the world, and resulting in a powerful rhythmic perspective that is both familiar and otherworldly. Bassist Jake Wolf adds his intricate and original mix of musical elements, as a powerful melodic voice and a driving rhythmic force on the 6 string bass.”

Show info:

November 18, 2011

8:00 pm

Altamont Theatre

18 Church Street, Asheville

Tickets

“I like art that is magic.  I don’t like art that is just clever.” -Brian Eno

Brian Eno’s multi-media installation 77 Million Paintings in the YMI Cultural Center on Eagle St in Downtown Asheville is an atmospheric  experience, combining a visual collage of digital imagery and light with a layered  “ambient” soundtrack.

Eno has long been known as a master of the technologies he chooses, and has worked in a variety of capacities as artist and recording engineer.  He points out that technology is all around us, and is not limited to that which is simply “new, or just doesn’t work right yet.”   Despite his defense of the Grand Piano as a piece of “technology” that made entirely new styles and forms of music possible, Eno composes his work predominantly on machines; computers, synthesizers,  samplers, and sound generators.  Though he wryly refers to himself an “ex-Moog user,”  he acknowledges the portal Bob Moog’s invention opened for the possibilities of music and sound, and his installation is right at home as a component of Moogfest 2011.

The formal properties of 77 Million Paintings incorporate a geometric arrangement of flatscreen monitors, each of which call upon a series of layered images which are constantly changing.  The arrangement hangs on the wall as a sort of devotional mandala, while the darkened room becomes a ritual space populated with identical couches , tree trunk columns, and plaster cones illuminated by LCD lights.  The soundtrack , like the imagery, is actually six different soundtracks layered over one another, also called upon at random.

A visitor’s first impression may be to chuckle himself into the back room of the Octopus’ Garden Smoke Shop. However, like much of Eno’s work, the illumination comes not with the simplicity of the first impression, but with the experiential effect of the passage of time.

“I’m interested in working with Time and people’s Attention Span…  The Uneventful.” he says.

As the visitor becomes aware of the changes slowly taking place within the space, his experience and understanding of his surroundings  shifts and he becomes a participant in that change.  Visitors come, stay (for an extended period of time in some cases), and go at random, reflecting the behavior of the images and sounds.  Eno claims that he is “more gardener than architect,” delighting in the quantitative process of “planting seeds” and then surrendering to the course of nature.

The installation illuminates a universal notion found in the natural world – the world that produces trees from seeds – the same world that produces urban festivals devoted to electronic music : that each moment is uniquely different, beautiful, and will never happen the same way again.  Therein lies the magic.

____________________

What: 77 Million Paintings by Brian Eno

Where: YMI Cultural Center – 39 S Market Street,  Asheville, NC 28801

When: November 2, 2011 – November 30, 2011

Hours: 11:00 AM to 6 PM Wed – Sat / 1:00 PM – 6:00 PM Sun (closed Mon and Tues)

Cost:  $10

___________________

Pollinate Asheville Arts + Life Synthesizer Smith McAulay is a musician, writer, painter, carpenter, contractor, craftsman and owner of WSM Craft.    He builds sacred spaces with words and wood, intention and innovation.  He welcomes input or inquiry: wsmcraft@gmail.com

More on Moog Fest.  Podcasts from Alli Marshall, Arts Writer for the Mountain Xpress’  from Eno’s press talk 10/26/11

The City of Asheville invites the public to the grand opening of the Dr. Wesley Grant Sr. Southside Center, Asheville’s newest community center, at the former site of Livingston Street Park.  Mayor Terry Bellamy will officiate the event at 5:30 p.m. Oct. 13 at the center, located at 285 Livingston St. at the corner of Livingston and Depot streets. The dedication ceremony begins at 5:30 followed by an open house until 7:30.

The new center is named after the late pastor, Dr. Wesley Grant, Sr. who founded the Worldwide Missionary Baptist Tabernacle Church in 1959 and served for nearly 50 years. He was a prominent leader in Asheville’s African American community during the time of the Civil Rights movement and the period of Asheville’s urban renewal in the 1960s and 1970s.

The center name also recognizes the Southside community, a large geographic area that once surrounded the new center. Southside was a predominately African American community of businesses, churches and neighborhoods that were for the most part demolished during Asheville’s urban renewal.

The center is designed to be constructed in phases. The first phase, known as the Cultural Art phase, opens in October. This phase is 7,897 square-feet and features an auditorium, three classrooms, office space, storage, and parking.

The Dr. Wesley Grant, Sr. Southside Center is the first facility constructed by the City of Asheville to be LEED certified (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design). LEED is an internationally recognized green building certification system to provide building owners with a framework for identifying and implementing practical and measurable green building design, construction, operations and maintenance solutions. Some of the LEED features include a green roof, geo-thermal heating and cooling, storm water runoff management, and natural interior lighting. During construction, more than 75% of all construction waste was diverted from the landfill and recycled.

For more information, contact Amy Rickman at 828-251-4080 or arickman@ashevillenc.gov.