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.

Enjoy an exciting collection of all-new contemporary choreography performed in Wortham’s intimate Tina McGuire Theatre. Seating is limited.

Connect with the artists in a post-show Q&A.

Recommended for grades 6-12. The Student Series is open to school groups, homeschoolers, community groups and families.

Reservations for individuals (10 people or less): $12 each. To reserve, complete the Student Series Reservation Form, call the box office at 828-257-4530 ext. 1, or email [email protected].

Reservations for groups (11 people or more): $11 each. To reserve, complete the Student Series Reservation Form. Please note that all group reservations require a deposit of $1 per ticket. Please contact the box office if you have questions.

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.

In the early 1900s, travel by train and automobile became more accessible in the United States, leading to an increase in tourism and a revitalized interest in landscape painting. The relative ease of transportation, as well as the creation of National Parks, allowed people to experience the breathtaking landscapes of the United States in new ways. Artists traveled along popular routes, recording the terrain they encountered.

This exhibition explores the sublime natural landscapes of the Smokey Mountains of Western North Carolina and Tennessee. While there were several regional schools of painting around this time, this group is largely from the Midwest and many of the artists trained at the Art Institute of Chicago or in New York City. Through their travels, they captured waterfalls, sunsets, thunderstorms, autumn foliage, lush green summers, and snow-covered mountains—elements that were novel for viewers from cities and rural areas. Though some of these paintings include people, they are usually used for scale and painted with little to no detail, highlighting the magnificence of nature.

Rudolph F. Ingerle, Mirrored Mountain, not dated, oil on canvas, 28 × 32 inches. Courtesy of Allen & Barry Huffman, Asheville Art Museum.

Bender Gallery Artists Featured in Asheville Art Museum Exhibition The New Salon: A Contemporary View The Asheville Art Museum will be opening their exhibit, The New Salon: A Contemporary View, on March 8 and it will run until August 19, 2024. The New Salon offers a modern take on the prestigious tradition of the Parisian Salon with the diversity and innovation of today’s art world. Guest-curated by Gabriel Shaffer, the show will include works from Pop Surrealism, Outsider Art, Street Art, and Graffiti genres.   Bender Gallery has been collaborating with the Asheville Art Museum to loan four paintings from three of our artists. The artists are Laine Bachman, Kukula, and Yui Sakamoto. Be sure to check out this special exhibition in downtown Asheville. Learn More Kukula, Impossible Voyage, oil on board, 48 x 24 inches Kukula (b. 1980, Israel) Nataly Abramovitch, better known in the art world as, Kukula, paints imagined worlds filled with elaborately dressed women in fanciful settings. The artist does extensive research on the layouts of paintings from the Renaissance and Rococo periods. Kukula subverts these images by depicting women characters in place of traditionally male positions and settings. Her characters are powerful, commanding, and have an air of indifference. Available Work Yui Sakamoto, Self Portrait, oil on canvas, 63 x 63 inches Yui Sakamoto (b. 1981, Japan) Our surrealist artist, Yui Sakamoto, will have two paintings featured including My Soul and Self Portrait. Self Portrait is still available from his recent solo exhibition at Bender Gallery. Standing in front of Self Portrait, one is immersed in the dual-worlds of Sakamoto’s Japanese and Mexican cultures. There is a sense of calm reflected in the repeating rose pattern, mixed with the uneasy realization that the coral, fungi, and otherworldly forms are what makeup the figure. Available Work Laine Bachman, Night Bloomers, acrylic on canvas, 18 x 24 inches Laine Bachman (b. 1974, USA) Our prolific Magical Realism artist, Laine Bachman, makes a feature in the exhibition with her painting, Night Bloomers. She has been hard at work making 17 new pieces for her solo exhibition at the Canton Art Museum in Canton, Ohio. The Canton show opens on April 28 and continues through to July 28, 2024. Available Work

Directed by Philip Kershaw

CAPTIVATING | HISTORICAL | BIODRAMA

From his landmark victory in Brown v. Board of Education to becoming the first African American to serve on the Supreme Court—Thurgood Marshall devoted his life to the pursuit of a more just world. This captivating one-man play explores his work and life with riveting and inspiring storytelling.

“All bio dramas should be as vivid and entertaining as THURGOOD. A story rich in history, humanity and humor.”

–New York Daily News

Content advisory: strong language, use of racial slurs, and descriptions of violence

Stunning audiences last season with imaginative and impassioned performances, Wortham’s resident dance company returns to share their latest creation, which draws on themes of passion, intimacy and playfulness. With an exciting collection of contemporary choreography that’s as “sensual” (Washington Post) as it is “humorous, elegant and wild” (Seattle Dances), this award-winning company, founded by a husband-and-wife duo, crafts intricate movements that offer a glimpse into the depths of the human spirit.