If you’re not a fan of the current U.S. president and are looking for a little cathartic relief, you might want to stop by George Terry’s studio in Asheville’s Ramp building. There, hanging or leaning against walls or stacked against one another are large, bright, cartoonish paintings of President Trump pictured in one humiliating scene after another. Here he is getting rebuffed by an elegant Meryl Streep. And there he is getting sandwich-tackled by a couple of NFL players. In one series, Uncle

Andrew Fletcher earned his credibility as a musician by doubling as a piano mover. “I’ve never claimed to be the best piano player in town, but I will claim to be the hardest working,” he said. “And when people watch you unload a piano from a truck and wheel it into a venue, they’ll believe that claim.”

Ten local musicians are performing at the Grey Eagle in a talent competition called Hidden Voices, organized by the nonprofit Asheville Poverty Initiative . Their common thread: All live below the federal poverty line, which is about $30,000 a year.

Leadership is changing with the annual Asheville Fringe Festival . Longtime Asheville theater artists and married couple Jim Julien and Jocelyn Reese say they’re moving this summer to Philadelphia, and they’ve already groomed their replacements as festival co-directors.

As you roll up to the five acres Leanna Sain and her husband, Randy, have in Zirconia, you pass a sign at the foot of the long gravel driveway up to the house reading Miracle Hill Farm. “Because I think it’s a miracle we got the house back,” Sain said of the name. The couple were able to buy back the house at auction six years after first selling it. “And if you look at the little arrow. There’s a cross in the middle, because we’re Christians,” Sain explained. “The arrow comes back to us. Anyway

Ask any of the 50 artists invited into Asheville Art Museum’s “Appalachia Now!” exhibition and, to a person, they’ll tell you they were honored and elated. Many were motivated to stretch themselves artistically to create what they regard as their most ambitious works. For good reason. “Appalachia Now!” is the flagship exhibition that reopened the Asheville Art Museum last November and few of the artists had ever experienced exposure on this level. The exhibition closes Feb. 3. But here’s another

If you’re a proud multitasker, you might want to make plans for the night of Jan. 22 to go to LT Laundry in West Asheville. “We’ll be doing laundry. People can bring their laundry if they like,” said A. Eithne Hamilton, an Asheville dance and film artist behind an immersive performance called “Solidago.” “Solidago” is among nearly three dozen shows wrapped into the Asheville Fringe Festival , home to this region’s most inventive, experimental and hard-to-define performers. Performances run Jan.

Shane Parish says he’s a self-taught musician, which isn’t a typical credential for someone earning a living as a guitar instructor. “I’m not coming at it from this woo-woo perspective,” he said of his teaching practice. “We can get very specific and technical and advanced, theoretically, but I realized most of it is being present with that person in our time together. I look at it as a conversation about something we are mutually interested in.” This is an evolved and expanded view for someone,

Molly Sawyer used to sculpt stylized horses and human figures from clay. That changed after her battle with breast cancer. “The work became a response to my own direct experience with life, death,” she said. “I guess the issue of mortality has always been present in my deeper thought process.” Today, Sawyer’s work is a mashup of found objects such as driftwood, stone and metal rods with braided or balled-up wool, twine, ash and fur. She usually works large, with some installations at once

Asheville’s Tongues of Fire are still a young band, but vocalist, guitarist and songwriter Lowell Hobbs has already absorbed some time-worn lessons. For instance, twice now, the band has invested many months, untold amounts of money and healthy doses of hope to perform at the South By Southwest Festival in Austin, Tex. “We’ve never been accepted officially, but that has not stopped us,” Hobbs said. “It’s interesting being one of the bigger bands in Asheville, like our shows are usually packed,