2013 Mountain Sports Festival

May 24th – 26th

The Mountain Sports Festival is a weekend music and sports festival that celebrates community, athletics and local business. The festival showcases the terrain, environment and unique culture of Asheville, NC and the surrounding mountains. The Mountain Sports Festival is organized by a volunteer group of community oriented citizens dedicated to the presenting of a well balanced series of events that encourages participation on all levels.

The Mountain Sports Festival Board of Directors come from all walks of life; from the Financial and Banking industries to Whitewater Rafting and Outdoor Manufacturers. The volunteers who make the festival happen are as diverse as Asheville itself!

Come join us at the festival!

Visit : http://mountainsportsfestival.com

“In the decade I have done burlesque, I have participated and attended many festivals, pageants, and competitions in the artform. I can say with absolute certainty that no other festival has the look or feel of ABSFest. It takes all the beauty of burlesque and spins it into a frenzy of variety and delight, flavors of which will tickle the fancy of any connoisseur.   This is no marathon of pasties and G-Strings: truly, it is a melting pot of the finest underground talent the world has to offer!” Talloolah Love

Seven years into bringing the Vaudeville Revival to Asheville, ABSfest offers a four day immersion that no lover of these arts can afford to miss. Savor our 7th year as we voyage the Seven Seas in a quest for the Seven Sins, with satin-sparkled starlets and fish-eyed zombie boys! Nominated for Best Show in the Mountain Xpress Readers Choice Awards, ABSfest has attracted renowned circus and burlesque artists from across the US, as well as Scotland, Germany, and Japan. Damn right. We search the world for talent, and lure them to Asheville with the promise of YOUR LOVE. Bring it!

In a world now brimming with Burlesque Festivals, from Vegas to Amsterdam, ABSfest embodies the true spirit of Vaudeville, offering driven artists a supportive environment to network, and for a community that nurtures raw, boundary-pushing creativity. The festival is one of several annual productions of Future of Tradition, a seminal force in the underground Asheville arts community since 1999. Producer Lauren ‘Onça’ O’Leary also is the force behind the all-new Virginia Burlesque & Sideshow Festival, in Richmond, VA, May 31-June 2, 2013.

Visit : http://www.absfest.com/

Asheville Art Museum Debuts The Philadelphia Story: Contemporary Figurative Work Drawn from the Academy

Exhibition Opens Saturday, January 26

Opening Reception Sunday, February 3 (2:00 – 4:00 p.m.)

ASHEVILLE, NC— The Philadelphia Story: Contemporary Figurative Work Drawn from the Academy debuts at the Asheville Art Museum on Saturday, January 26, 2013. The exhibition will be celebrated with an Opening Reception on the afternoon of Sunday, February 3, 2013 from 2:00 – 4:00 p.m. (free with membership or regular Museum admission). The Philadelphia Story remains on view in the Museum’s North Wing through Sunday, June 9, 2013. This exhibition celebrates figurative contemporary works produced over the past three decades by alumni of The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

This exhibition will be accompanied by a Lunchtime Art Break with visiting UNCA Artist and Academy-Alumnus, Clarence Morgan, at 12:00 noon on Friday, February 8, 2013. The 1940 film The Philadelphia Story will also be screened in conjunction with the exhibition on Saturday, April 6 and Sunday, April 7, 2013 at 2:00 p.m. daily.

In addition to its fine museums, the city of Philadelphia, PA is home to no less than five major art schools. The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts is the oldest art school and museum in the country, founded 1805. Like the Asheville Art Museum, the Academy’s focus is on American art. The Academy also focuses on teaching traditional methods of working from life, such as classes in cast drawing and the use of live models for classes in drawing. Painting and sculpture dominate the school’s curriculum, both in past and present. Academy faculty were most often Academy students first, affording many artists the ability to trace their artistic lineage back to noteworthy faculty and students such as Thomas Eakins, Mary Cassatt, Cecilia Beaux, Henry O. Tanner, Robert Henri, Alexander Calder and others.

Academy-trained artists have enjoyed a reputation for excellence in portraiture and figurative work in all media. In the past three decades the school has produced many artists whose figurative work, while rooted in tradition, is compositionally and conceptually dynamic. Artists in the exhibition include Bo Bartlett, Christina Bothwell, James Brantley, Joe Brenman, Michael Ciervo, Vincent Desiderio, Beth Foley, Roger Geier, Sidney Goodman, Orit Hofshi, Edgar Jerins, Alex Kanevsky, Daniel Kornrumpf, Jessica Levine, Nancy Bea Miller, Bruce Samuelson, Julia Stratton, Chuck Tisa, Justin Webb and Elizabeth Wilson.

This exhibition was organized and curated by the Asheville Art Museum.

Biltmore Blooms with a Festival of Flowers
March 21–May 31, 2013

Biltmore’s gardens, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, are alive with color as spring arrives. Enjoy special events and the beauty of tulips, azaleas, and countless other flowers during Biltmore Blooms. For the first time, guests will be able to step down into the Winter Garden to enjoy a display of exotic orchids intimately, just as George and Edith Vanderbilt’s guests might have. Some of the plants will be the same species that were planned for the Biltmore Conservatory in 1894. Outdoors, enjoy a beautiful progression of blooms from tulips to pansies, azaleas, and much more.
2013 Biltmore Blooms Activities

Antler Hill Village:

Music on the Bandstand: 4:00 p.m.–8:45 p.m. March 23, 24, 30, 31 and daily in April and May
Grape Stomp at the Winery: 2:00 p.m.–5:00 p.m., March 21–May 31
Exhibition in The Biltmore Legacy—The Vanderbilts at Home and Abroad

Biltmore House:

Floral Displays, daily; Winter Garden orchid display open to guests March 21–April 7
Classical music near the Winter Garden. 30 minute sets beginning at 10:00, 11:00, 12:00, 1:00, 2:00, daily, March 21–May 19

Conservatory

Live 30 minute music sets at 11:00, 12:00, 1:00, 2:00, 3:00 daily, March 21–May 19

Walled Garden

Ask a Gardner Station 11:00a.m.–4:00p.m., Saturdays and Sundays only, March 21–May 19
A Gardener’s Place Seminars, March 21–May 19:
1:00 — Smell Good Plants (plants and foliage)
2:00 — Terrariums, gardening under glass
3:00 — Organic fertilizing

Visit : http://www.biltmore.com/visit/calendar/spring.asp