Call for Artists for a New Art Deco Masterpiece –
Part of the Urban Trail

Issue Date: Tuesday, April 16, 2024
Deadline: Monday, May 13, 2024 by 5:00 p.m. 

Call Summary:

• The City of Asheville and Public Art and Culture Commission (PACC) seek a qualified artist(s) or designer(s) to submit their qualifications for a piece of public artwork that reimagines and replaces Station #7, the Art Deco Masterpiece, part of Asheville’s Urban Trail.
• Responses to this Call for Artists (CFA) will be reviewed by an Artist Selection Panel and up to three semi-finalists will be asked to submit proposals. Semi-finalists will be paid a $500 honorarium.
• Artwork will be integrated into the existing Outdoor Dining Area in front of the historic S&W Building, located at 56 Patton Avenue, Asheville, NC.
• The budget is $80,000 to engage with community stakeholders, design, fabricate and install the piece.

To Apply:

• More information and the Call for Artists can be found on the City of Asheville’s Bid page at ashevillenc.gov/bids under “Other”.
  • Project Number: 298-CFA-ArtDecoRedesign-24

Baker Exhibit Center

In an age of complex environmental challenges, why not look to the ingenuity of nature for solutions? The forms, patterns, and processes found in the natural world—refined by 3.8 billion years of evolution—can inspire our design of everything from clothing to skyscrapers. This approach to innovation, called biomimicry, is becoming increasingly popular.

Nature’s Blueprints is supported in part by The North Carolina Arboretum Society, The Laurel of Asheville, RomanticAsheville.com Travel Guide, and Smoky Mountain Living Magazine.

Located within the wildly-popular and botanically beautiful Southern Appalachian Mountains, The North Carolina Arboretum offers more than 10 miles of hiking trails that connect to many other area attractions such as Lake Powhatan, the Pisgah National Forest and the Blue Ridge Parkway. Visitors of all ages and abilities can enjoy their hiking experience at the Arboretum as trail options include easy, moderate, and difficult challenge levels. All trails are dog-friendly and visitors are asked to adhere to the proper waste disposing procedures for pets.

Part of a running group that would like to use the Arboretum as a starting point or parking location? Please review our Running Group Guidance and email [email protected] with any questions.

The Village Potters Clay Center (TVPCC), announces the opening of “Nurtured by Nature”, a special exhibit featuring new works by each of the six resident potters of TVPCC.

When you have six wildly talented, skilled, and creative artists working together, it can be a challenge to pick a singular theme for a show. But it didn’t take long before the resident potters at TVPCC realized that they each had a connection to nature, and it expressed itself in different ways in their lives and work.

Sarah Wells Rolland grew up in Florida near the water and life that grew in and around it. For this exhibit, she has created singular pieces using broad strokes through slip to emulate Water Grass, and her deliciously beautiful glazes invite you to touch. You can almost feel a soft Florida breeze!

Judi Harwood has her work already rooted deeply in nature, using corn husks, bamboo leaves, and other organic materials in her sagger fired vessels. On a recent trip to the beach, she noticed an amazing pattern in the sand from the ebb and flow of the tide dragging shells across the sand. She knew instantly that she needed to carve a similar design in her pieces for Raku and other alternate firing processes, and you will find those pieces in this exhibit.

Caroline Renée Woolard has always had a deep love for nature, in particular the forest and the element of water and the rhythm of waves. You will find these things in the movement of her slip application, and in her carved mushrooms that invite a child-like sense of wonder and joy.

Katie Meili Messersmith is a self-proclaimed math nerd, and she loves the beauty of sequencing and patterning that she achieves in her slip dot applications on her pots. She also sees this beauty of math sequencing in nature, like in the petals of flowers, and has explored this in her work in a stunning series of bowls.

Julia Mann’s work has always been inspired by her love of nature and love of season, as well as her love of women and love of Goddess. Venus of Willendorf remains a guiding influence on her work more than twenty years after carving her first form. Julia has created new Venus pieces as well as pieces inscribed with other symbols of nature that inspire her, from spider webs to trees and mountains.

Lori Theriault grew up on the edge of the woods in central Vermont, and spent many afternoons hiking in the trees, touching each bark to feel what she saw. She also spent many nights star gazing with her father, waiting for an Apollo rocket to fly overhead. Lori represents her love of trees and flowers in functional work with her wax resist designs, and she is exploring more sculptural work in her “Vincent Series” that celebrates her love of a star-filled sky and her love and admiration for Van Gogh’s impasto technique in ‘Starry Night’.

Nurtured by Nature will be on exhibit through the end of June at The Village Potters Clay Center. The gallery is open daily, 10am-5pm.

The Village Potters are Sarah Wells Rolland, Judi Harwood, Lori Theriault, Julia Mann, Katie Meili Messersmith, and Caroline Renée Woolard, along with Director of Operations, Keira Peterson. They comprise an intentional Collective of potters who share a commitment to nurture creative exploration through education, experience, and community. The Village Potters includes a fine craft gallery, a Teaching Center offering ongoing classes in wheel, hand building, and sculpture for adults, an Advanced Ceramic Studies Program, and online demonstrations and workshops. The Village Potters Clay Center is an educational member of The Craft Guild of the Southern Highlands, and is an official distributor for Laguna Clays.

Historians estimate that skilled Black artisans outnumbered their white counterparts in the antebellum South by a margin of five to one. However, despite their presence and prevalence in all corners of the pre-industrial trade and craft fields, the stories of these skilled workers go largely unacknowledged.

Borrowing its title from a Black culture and politics magazine of the same name, Hammer and Hope celebrates the life and labor of Black chairmakers in early America. Featuring the work of two contemporary furniture makers – Robell Awake and Charlie Ryland – the pieces in this exhibition are based on the artists’ research into ladderback chairs created by the Poynors, a multigenerational family of free and enslaved craftspeople working in central Tennessee between the early nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Through the objects featured in Hammer and Hope, Awake and Ryland explore, reinterpret, and reimagine what the field of furniture-making today would look like had the history and legacy of the Poynors – and countless others that have been subject to a similar pattern of erasure – been celebrated rather than hidden. Hammer and Hope represents Awake and Ryland’s attempts, in their own words,  “at fighting erasure by making objects that engage with these long-suppressed stories.”‍

Robell Awake and Charlie Ryland are recipients of the Center for Craft’s 2022 Craft Research Fund Artist Fellowship. This substantial mid-career grant is awarded to two artists to support research projects that advance, expand, and support the creation of new research and knowledge through craft practice.

These early literacy programs for kids and their caregivers are designed to develop a joy for learning through books, songs, and activities.

Story time takes place in our library community room. This is not a ticketed event.

May 3 – June 26, 2024 MON – SAT 11 – 6SUN 11 – 5

Artists: Caleb Clark, Bryant Holsenbeck, Bill Killebrew, Inigo Navarro, Isaac Payne, Amy Putansu, Daniel Robbins, Peggy Root, and Deborah Squier.

This group exhibition features paintings, collages, and sculptures that embody the alluring ambiance between sunrise and sunset. Plein air paintings capture the scattered, sleepy light of Dawn; Collaged drawings depict sidewalks blanketed by moonlight; Mixed-media sculptures portray nocturnal animals. Each artist reminds us of the recurrent and striking period of time when the atmosphere is neither totally dark, nor completely lit.