In his debut collection, titled “Jesus in the Trailer,” Andrew Clark’s poetry reads like connected but fragmented short stories. Clark, who lives in Candler, sees this work as a sort of roadmap of hurt, turmoil and hope in the American Southeast. “There’s some darker moments in the book. Addiction is a topic that comes up, violence comes up. I try to talk about race relations in the South,” Clark said. “I try to talk about the beauty of what we have as southerners but also try not to mask the

It’s just before noon on a Wednesday, and Bill Thompson is behind his desk inside an otherwise empty Satellite Gallery. He had just scrolled through the hundreds of comments and likes on his Facebook post from the day before, announcing he’s about to close his gallery after 13 years in downtown Asheville. “The outpouring of love and support comes through when you close the doors, and you’re almost like, where was everybody when we were open?” Thompson said. “If you’re going to be supportive of

This isn’t another top-10 list. But in the spirit of looking back on 2019, we’ve cobbled together this sampler platter from among more than 60 stories Blue Ridge Public Radio produced in 2019 about regional artists and arts happenings.

When Ashley Heath sings of trying her best, in her new song “I Remember,” she might as well be crooning about her career. Certainly nobody in the local music scene works harder than Heath at living and working full time as a musician. “I just did some intention journaling and, making small steps to get to the bigger picture,” she said. “It sucked a lot and still does sometimes, but I just decided I don’t want to just be in the bar playing for a hundred bucks, these three-hour solo shows in the

There are violinists who make music, and then there are artists such as Meg Mulhearn , who use the violin as sort of a paintbrush . “A lot of times when people find out I’m a violinist or a fiddler, they’ll ask if I play bluegrass or old-time or something like that and I have in the past,” Mulhearn said. “I think I wanted to do something more experimental or unexpected with the violin.”

There are 18 short films on Kira Bursky’s YouTube channel , and after each title are short descriptions such as: “psychologically creepy short film,” “artistic teen depression short film” and “surreal and dreamy cult fantasy short film.” “A common thread that’s in a lot of my work is diving into the mind—mental health, depression, perspective, fantasies,” Bursky said. “I have an obsession and a passion for diving deeper and deeper into the psyche and how we define and interact with reality.”

Meagan Lucas came to writing just four years ago through her postpartum depression and the ready outlet of personal blogging. But when people actually began reading her writing, Lucas experienced a different kind of trauma. “When you write personal essays or creative nonfiction, it’s very naked,” Lucas said. “People end up knowing things about you personally that it was starting to make me uncomfortable. I wanted to try something different that would explore some of those same ideas, but

Mission Health is a hospital, not a contemporary art center. But you wouldn’t know that from browsing the public areas—and, if circumstances bring you there, to the patient and waiting rooms—of Mission’s new North Tower . There, you’ll find sculpture, etchings, woodcuts, photographs and one-of-a-kind paintings—some 659 artworks in all, from more than 150 Western North Carolina artists. All of it created on commission, and purchased, by Mission Health.

Saturday’s reopening of the Center for Craft felt far more like a festival than a ribbon-cutting. There were performances by the UNC-Asheville Afro Music and Dance Ensemble, a DJ, hands-on artmaking stations and performance-art installations. Hundreds of people streamed through the doors Saturday afternoon and, wherever they strolled along the Center’s three floors, there were things to do, see, nibble on or experience.

“Come on in, welcome to the museum.” And with that, at 11am Thursday morning, the Asheville Art Museum reopened to the general public. David and Olivia Franklin, in town from Atlanta on their honeymoon, stepped in from the cold to become the museum’s first general-admission patrons. “We always make it a point to go to the art museum wherever we go, and we felt like we needed to be able to be a part of history,” David Franklin said. “It seemed like a wonderful little bit of serendipity.”