January 19, 2023—The Asheville Art Museum offers a wide range of creative and educational programs for youth and adults throughout the year. Programs and events invite visitors to explore artworks featured in exhibitions and the Museum’s Collection, to discuss current topics as they relate to art, to get creative with hands-on projects, and more.

Sunday Live: Steve Lapointe
Sunday, January 22 • 2–4pm

Sunday, February 19 • 2–4pm

Sunday, February 26 • 2–4pm
Free for Members or included with Museum admission
Steve Lapointe’s nine years of classical piano as a youth grounded him in music theory. Jazz studies while in Ithaca, NY opened his ears to extemporaneous improvisation and the music of Keith Jarrett, Chick Corea, Bill Evans, Michel Petrucciani, and the American songbook. Steve served as musical director of the Unitarian Universalist (UU) Fellowship of Vero Beach, Florida, and occasionally performed for the UU Asheville congregation.

Sunday Traditional Game Day: Perspective Café
Sunday, January 22 • 2–5pm

Free for Members or included with Museum admission

Grab your friends and join us each Sunday in the rooftop Perspective Café and Sculpture Terrace to play an assortment of board and card games. You can even bring your own favorite games to share with new friends. The Café will be offering special snacks and cocktails for Game Day, including $6 local craft beers and ciders and freshly popped, old-fashioned popcorn to enjoy while you play and create a memorable afternoon! Enjoy the galleries and then head up to the rooftop!

Exhibition Opening—Luzene Hill: Revelate
Thursday, January 27 – May 15, 2023

Free for Members or included with Museum admission
An enrolled member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, Luzene Hill advocates for Indigenous sovereignty—linguistically, culturally, and individually. Revelate builds upon Hill’s investigation of pre-contact cultures. This has led Hill to incorporate the idea of Ollin in Aztec cosmology in her work. Before Europeans arrived in North America, Indigenous societies were predominantly matrilineal. Women were considered sacred, involved in the decision-making process, and thrived within communities holding a worldview based on equilibrium. Ollin emphasizes that we are in constant state of motion and discovery. Adopted as an educational framework, particularly in social justice and ethnic studies, Ollin guides individuals through a process of reflection, action, reconciliation, and transformation.

This exhibition combines Hill’s use of mylar safety blankets alongside recent drawings. Capes constructed of mylar burst with energy and rustle with subtlety—the shining material a signifier of care, awareness, displacement, and presence. Though Hill works primarily in sculpture, drawing has increasingly become an essential part of her practice as she seeks to communicate themes of feminine and Indigenous power across her entire body of work. The energy within her drawings extends to the bursts of light reflecting from her capes or the accumulation of materials in other installation works.

Thursday Night Live: Alex Travers
Thursday, January 26 • 6–8pm
Free for Museum Members or included with general admission
Explosive style and technique influenced by years of intense multi-genre gigging are what make Travers’ performances memorable. Raised in the Raleigh area, he grew up performing in regional orchestras as a violinist and also in local metal/rock bands as a guitarist. Travers went on to receive his bachelor degree in performance from Appalachian State University in 2014 with a focus on violin studies. During his time as an undergrad, his passion for baroque music and pedagogy came into focus and would play a large part in his artistic growth for many years.

After spending several years in Nashville, away from his violin and just studying the business side of music, he moved to Asheville in 2017 to reinvent his career approach both as an instrumentalist and artist. Having played professionally with such groups as the Asheville Symphony and Brevard Philharmonic, his career has now turned towards extensive collaboration with many local artists as a soloist, composer, and multi-instrumentalist. These days when he isn’t gigging, teaching at the Asheville Music Academy, or recording at the studio, Travers is probably busking with Bach and drinking coffee somewhere around Wall St.

Public Tour: Sherrill Roland: Sugar, Water, Lemon Squeeze
Thursday, January 26 • 6–7pm
Free for Members or included with Museum admission; registration is not required
Join docents for a guided tour of this solo exhibition featuring the artworks of Asheville-born interdisciplinary artist Sherrill Roland. Roland’s socially driven practice draws upon his experience with wrongful incarceration for a crime he didn't commit and seeks to open conversations about how we care for our communities and one another with compassion and understanding.

Through sculpture, installation, and conceptual art, Roland engages visitors in dialogues around community, social contract, identity, biases, and other deeply human experiences. Comprised of artwork created from 2016 to the present, Sherrill Roland: Sugar, Water, Lemon Squeeze reflects on making something from nothing, lemonade from lemons, the best of a situation. A reference to a simple recipe from the artist’s childhood, the title also speaks to Roland’s employment of materials available to him while incarcerated, such as Kool-Aid and mail from family members.

Exhibition Opening—Too Much Is Just Right: The Legacy of Pattern and Decoration
Friday, February 3 – May 29, 2023
Free for Members or included with Museum admission

The Legacy of Pattern and Decoration features more than 70 artworks in an array of media from both the original time frame of the Pattern and Decoration movement from 1972 to 1985, as well as contemporary artworks created between 1985 and the present. The artworks in this exhibition demonstrate the vibrant and varied approaches to pattern and decoration in art. Sections will explore the history of pattern and decoration’s use in American art during and after the now formally recognized movement was established. Artworks from the 21st century elucidate contemporary perspectives on the employment of pattern to inform visual vocabularies and investigations of diverse themes in the present day.

Artworks drawn from the Asheville Art Museum’s Collection join select major loans and feature Pattern and Decoration artists Valerie Jaudon, Joyce Kozloff, Robert Kushner, and Miriam Schapiro, as well as Anni Albers, Elizabeth Alexander, Sanford Biggers, Tawny Chatmon, Margaret Curtis, Mary Engel, Cathy Fussell, Samantha Hennekke, John Himmelfarb, Anne Lemanski, Rashaad Newsome, Peter Olson, Don Reitz, Sarah Sense, Billie Ruth Sudduth, Mickalene Thomas, Shoku Teruyama, Anna Valdez, Kehinde Wiley, and more.

In Conversation: Guest Curators Tom Butler & Marilyn Laufer
Thursday, February 2 • 6–7pm
Free for Members or included with Museum admission

Join Tom Butler and Marilyn Laufer, guest curators of our new exhibition Too Much Is Just Right: The Legacy of Pattern and Decoration, for a public lecture from 6–7pm. Afterwards, all visitors are welcome to explore the new exhibition and the entire Museum from 7–9pm on the exhibition's opening night.

Public Tour: Intersections in American Art
Sunday, February 12 • 6–7pm
Free for Members or included with Museum admission; registration is not required
Join docents for a guided tour of Intersections in American Art, the major reinstallation and reinterpretation of the Museum’s Collection in a much-enlarged gallery space. A national team of scholars and experts in the field worked with the Museum to develop this new interpretation and exhibition installation. Intersections in American Art and the first catalogue of the Museum’s Collection consider multiple and sometimes intersecting narratives in American art. Both the exhibition and the catalogue focus on key aspects and strengths of the Museum’s holdings and provide a narrative framework within which visitors can interact with and experience works of art. The project is organized to convey the multifaceted historical and contemporary stories of art and culture in WNC and Southern Appalachia, set within the broader context of American aesthetic development. The project tells the story of our area, and explores our sense of place and its relationship to and national impact on the art world.

Artful Adventure
Saturday, February 18 • 2–3pm
Free for Members or included with Museum admission; registration is not required
Come along on an Artful Adventure! Take a whimsical walk with your family through our Museum. Our adventure comes to an end at the Wells Fargo Art PLAYce, where you can play and create! Bring your imagination and the whole family. Visitors of all ages and abilities are welcome; no reservations required just meet at the welcome desk to begin your adventure. To be added to our Family Programs mailing list, click here. For more information, email Sharon McRorie, Youth and Family Programs Manager, or call 828.253.3227 x124.

Behind the Scenes: Douglas D. Ellington and Richard Sharp Smith
Saturday, February 18 • 3:30pm
$10 for Members; $25 for nonmembers; registration is required
The Asheville Art Museum’s architectural drawing collection has more than 4,900 drawings and approximately 2,000 other records and ephemera. Vital components of the collection include drawings, sketches, watercolors, and more by Asheville’s two most prominent architects: Douglas D. Ellington and Richard Sharp Smith and the firm Smith and Carrier.

The Museum is working on this grant-funded architectural drawings to create a fully organized and documented architectural records collection that will be easily accessible for a variety of purposes, including exhibitions, programs, and research.

Join Museum staff for a Behind the Scenes presentation of works from the architectural drawings Collection and learn more about the ongoing project to keep these important historical documents safe, preserved, and accessible to the public.

Space is limited. Registration is required. Attendees receive a 10 percent discount at the Perspective Café, excluding alcohol. Shuttle transportation is provided to and from the Grove Park Inn. Prescheduled in collaboration with the 2023 Arts and Crafts Conference.

In Conversation: Sherrill Roland
Sunday, February 19 • 2–3pm
Free for Members or included with Museum admission. Registration is not required.
Join Sherrill Roland, Asheville-born interdisciplinary artist of our current solo exhibition Sherrill Roland: Sugar, Water, Lemon Squeeze, for a public lecture from 2–3pm.

Public Tour: Too Much Is Just Right
Thursday, February 23 • 6–7pm
Free for Members or included with Museum admission; registration is not required
Join docents for a guided tour of Too Much Is Just Right: The Legacy of Pattern and Decoration and discover more than 70 artworks in an array of media from both the original time frame of the Pattern and Decoration movement from 1972 to 1985, as well as contemporary artworks created between 1985 and the present. The artworks in this exhibition demonstrate the vibrant and varied approaches to pattern and decoration in art. Sections will explore the history of pattern and decoration’s use in American art during and after the now formally recognized movement was established. Artworks from the 21st century elucidate contemporary perspectives on the employment of pattern to inform visual vocabularies and investigations of diverse themes in the present day.

Discussion Bound: Prosperity Gospel—Portraits of the Great Recession Featuring Guest Speaker Keith Flynn
Sunday, February 23 • 6–8pm
Free for Members or included with Museum admission. Registration is not required.
With photography by Charter Weeks and text by Keith Flynn, this book documents the effect of The Great Recession of 2008 on the lives of many working Americans and has been compared to Walker Evans and James Agee’s Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, which chronicled the Great Depression of the 1930s. Flynn and Weeks interviewed and photographed more than 100 people in homeless camps, dirt racetracks, gold stores, homes, churches, and other environments within a 200-mile radius of Asheville. Despite the government’s claim that the recession was over in 2009, it was far from over for millions of American workers and continues unabated today due to the economic collapse from the pandemic. This is an important historical document raising the issues of social collapse, economic inequality, and the disintegration of the financial security that was once the foundation of the American economy.

Keith Flynn is the award-winning author of six books of poetry, most recently The Skin of Meaning, and two books of prose, including The Rhythm Method, Razzmatazz, and Memory. Flynn is also the Founder and Managing Editor of The Asheville Poetry Review.

Charter Weeks has been a documentary photographer for more than 50 years with projects in Asia, Europe, Africa, and the United States. Weeks’ work has been exhibited in museums and galleries across the country and published in the Virginia Quarterly Review, Photographers Forum, South Loop Review, and Guernica Magazine, among others.

This monthly discussion is a place to exchange ideas about readings that relate to artworks and the art world, and to learn from and about each other. Books are available at Malaprop’s Bookstore/Café for a 10 percent discount. To add your name to our Discussion Bound mailing list, click here or call 828.253.3227 x133.

If you would like photographs of any the events for publication, please email [email protected] with your request. We will happily provide them for you!

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Support for Educational Programs and Exhibitions
Educational programs and exhibitions are supported in part by Art Bridges, Windgate Foundation, Robert & Mercedes Eichholz Foundation, North Carolina Arts Council, Midgard Foundation, Appleby Foundation, Institute of Museum and Library Services, Beattie Foundation, and the Chaddick Foundation.

Too Much Is Just Right: The Legacy of Pattern and Decoration is organized by the Asheville Art Museum and guest curated by Marilyn Laufer & Tom Butler.

Luzene Hill: Revelate is organized by the Asheville Art Museum and curated by Hilary Schroeder, assistant curator, in collaboration with the artist.