The Grand Reopenings

Alumni and faculty gathered in the downtown Asheville spotlight. A STEAM Studio sculpture gleamed and New Media creations shimmered. Even drain pipes – glass ones from Owen Hall – were repurposed as part of living art.

The occasion – actually two occasions – were the post-renovation grand reopenings of two of downtown Asheville’s anchoring arts institutions – the Asheville Art Museum and the Center for Craft – and UNC Asheville, through its artists, was prominently represented.

First, on Nov. 14, came the Asheville Art Museum in Pack Square, which featured the work of Professor of New Media Lei Han and five alumni, in the new exhibition, Appalachia Now! Describing the work chosen for the show, Han said, “Our video explores the tension between form and formless, it aims to make connections between the seen and unseen forces at play in nature. The work is a product of collaboration, and collaboration is becoming the norm in the field of New Media. It creates opportunity for experimentation and risk. I was lucky to have the opportunity to work with two incredibly innovative musicians: Wayne Kirby, founding director of UNC Asheville’s Bob Moog Electronic Music Studio and Roy ‘Futureman’ Wooten, Grammy Award-winning musician/inventor. Their music completed my vision for this three-channel audio-visual installation in the show. Asheville Art Museum’s inaugural show Appalachia Now! clearly shows the museum’s commitment to fostering creativity and innovation in a community that is full of talented individuals that deserve a world class place to showcase their work.”

Some 700 artists were considered for the exhibition, and 50 were chosen, including Han, Melissa Pace ’09, Josh Copus ’07, Hayden Wilson ’07, Sean “Jinx” Pace ’04 and Constance Humphreys ’94. The show remains on view through Feb. 3, 2020. Wilson, once a security guard at the museum, now manages the Asheville Glass Center, and was the subject of a WLOS-TV feature when the exhibit opened. The work of Josh Copus was the focus of coverage by the Asheville Citizen-Times.

Then, two days later and a few blocks north, the Center for Craft held its boisterous reopening party, unveiling the Making Meaning exhibition that featured works of 14 alumni artists in the new John Cram Partner Gallery.

“This is my first foray into a kind of a nice, fancy gallery,” said Chas Llewellyn ’11, an artist/machinist who is a fellow at UNC Asheville’s STEAM Studio. Known for his work in the River Arts District with the late sculptor John Payne and his industrial dinosaurs in The Wedge, Llewelyn said, “My general work is oily, filthy, rusty, but here I challenged myself to make something shiny.” His sculpture, which included precise cuts and smooth waves of metal, was crafted on a specialized mill at STEAM Studio – it took months to master the machine’s operation, which seems fine with Llewellyn. “I’m happy with the piece, the way it turned out, but the process was way more cool than the piece itself,” he said in between talking with curious museum-goers at the opening.

A ceramic sculpture by Hunter Stamps ’02, now a university research professor and associate professor of studio art at the University of Kentucky, was placed near the entrance to the new Cram Gallery. Stamps, who was at the opening with his wife, ceramist Amelia Stamps ’02 and their two daughters, said he felt honored to have work selected for a show in downtown Asheville, especially at the Center for Craft. “Especially now in contemporary art, a lot of times, craft can be subjugated to a different arena, but for me, even in sculptural work that deals with ideals of beauty or the body and identification, it all spawns from the idea of working with material, working through craft,” he said.

Almost two decades ago, Stamps and Matt West ’00 were leaders in designing and building the anagama kiln outside of Owen Hall, and the two were reunited in this show. West, who sculpted UNC Asheville’s iconic statue of the mascot Rocky, now is lecturer in art at UNC Asheville and was a collaborative co-founder of STEAM Studio. His piece that was selected for the Center for Craft reopening was a bit different. West incorporated discarded Owen Hall glass drain pipes – once installed instead of PVC to handle caustic chemicals used in printmaking – as part of a sculpture featuring living, flourishing tree saplings.

“To see an exhibit like this downtown shows how well the University has produced artists for I don’t know how many years,” said West. “It’s phenomenal for a small university to be able to put together this much incredible work, and for us all to keep doing it after we graduated. There are so many who move on to a totally different kind of career but we’re all still doing it because we love it.”

The Center for Craft exhibition also featured works by Bobby Emrick ’19, Forest Gamble ’19, George Etheredge ’16, Leslie Frempong ’16, Kevin Watson ’16, Kate Averett ’15, Carley Brandau ’13, Sally Garner ’13, Tatiana Potts ’12, Lillian Bayley Hoover ’02, and Jason Watson ’97. The show remains on view through Jan. 7, 2020. Read more about the Center for Craft reopening in Mountain Xpress.