Media Arts Project and Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center in Asheville, NC, Celebrate Innovation and Collaboration in the Arts – Apr. 6, 2013

The Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center (BMCM+AC) and the Media Arts Project (MAP) announce the 4th Annual {Re}HAPPENING, on Saturday, Apr. 6, 2013, from 6pm to Midnight in the original dining hall of the former Black Mountain College, now Camp Rockmont. Inspired by our imaginings about what a “typical” Saturday night at Black Mountain College might have been like, the {Re}HAPPENING pays tribute to the groundbreaking artistic innovation of Black Mountain College as well as its community tradition of Saturday night parties and performances. The goal of the event is to bring BMC’s dynamic energy into the present day. Many people who have attended a previous {Re}HAPPENING consider it to be one of the very best events of the year.

Photo from the 2012 {Re}HAPPENING by Shawn Hollingsworth

The Apr. 6, 2013, event will begin with a cocktail hour, leading into a seated “family style” dinner. This year’s dinner will feature a guest chef/curator and an expanded focus on the culinary arts. The second part of the evening, will begin at 8:30pm and include an extended evening of music, art and performance along with drinks and food trucks. A limited number of Early Bird tickets for the entire evening including cocktails and dinner are available for $65 ($55 for BMCM+AC members). The second half of the evening begins at 8:30pm at a ticket price of $20 ($15 for members). The overall event will end by midnight. Tickets are available online via the BMC Museum + Arts Center website (www.blackmountaincollege.org), at (www.rehappening.com) or in person at the museum/arts center (56 Broadway, downtown Asheville).

At each year’s {Re}HAPPENING, local restaurants provide flavors, scents and nourishment to both the audience and the artists. The evening brings together more than sixty artists from the region’s diverse creative communities in a beautiful setting that occupies a unique place in history. The opportunity for contemporary artists and performers to collaborate and create new work in the dining hall, the roundhouse, the lodges, the outdoor grounds and waters of Lake Eden on the former Black Mountain College campus makes the {Re}HAPPENING a singular and deeply resonant event.

The 2013 artist lineup will be announced soon, so stay tuned to (www.rehappening.com) for updates.

For further info call the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center at 828/350-8484 or visit (www.blackmountaincollege.org).

Media Arts Project and Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center in Asheville, NC, Host Third Annual {Re}HAPPENING – Apr. 7, 2012

The Media Arts Project (MAP) and the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center (BMCM+AC) in Asheville, NC, announce the third annual {Re}HAPPENING, on Saturday, Apr. 7, 2012, from 6pm to Midnight in the original dining hall of the former Black Mountain College, now Camp Rockmont. In partnership with the MAP, this BMCM+AC event pays tribute to Black Mountain College by bringing its dynamic energy into the present day. The project has developed as an innovative fundraising and community building collaboration between the two non-profits, balancing the history, innovation and experience of BMCM+AC, with the forward-thinking and media-based collective of artists that defines the MAP.

Among the more than fifty artists participating in this year’s event will be two projects supported by the MAP Community Grant, which was completely funded by the proceeds from the events in 2010 and 2011. “The {Re}HAPPENING provides an opportunity for the MAP and BMCM+AC to directly support local artists by helping to develop and showcase their projects, while simultaneously contributing to innovation and culture in Western North Carolina,” says Gene Felice, a member of the MAP Board of Directors and the {Re}HAPPENING’s artistic instigator. “The MAP is thrilled to once again offer the WNC arts community direct funding, after the outpouring of creativity and support that made the first two {Re}HAPPENING events a success.” Two projects were chosen and each funded with $1500 grants in the 2011-2012 grant cycle, supporting work from 3 local artists which will premiere at this year’s {Re}HAPPENING. Profits from this year’s event will enable future grant funding cycles.

The Apr. 7, 2012, event will begin with a cocktail hour, leading into a seated “family style” dinner. The second part of the evening will include drinks, light appetizers and an extended evening of art, performance & dancing. Tickets for the entire event including dinner are $60 ($50 for BMCM+AC and MAP members); dinner begins at 6pm. The second half begins at 8:30pm at a ticket price of $15 ($10 for members).  The overall event will end by midnight.

At each year’s {Re}HAPPENING, local restaurants provide flavors, scents and nourishment to both the audience and the artists. The evening brings together more than fifty artists from the region’s diverse creative communities in a setting that occupies a unique place in history.  The opportunity for contemporary artists and performers to collaborate and create new work in the dining hall, the roundhouse, the lodges, the outdoor grounds and waters of Lake Eden makes the {Re}HAPPENING a singular and deeply resonant event.

Vinnie’s Neighborhood Italian will again provide the main course, and dozens of local restaurants will contribute.  The 2012 artist lineup will be announced soon, so stay tuned visit (www.rehappening.com).

The Media Arts Project (MAP) cultivates innovative arts & technology in western North Carolina. Because the media arts are integral to the vibrant cultural and economic life of the region, the MAP provides ways for media artists to connect with resources, professional opportunities, and one another through events, grant programs, and (www.themap.org), a dynamic portfolio and networking site.

The Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center (BMCM+AC) preserves and continues the unique legacy of educational and artistic innovation of Black Mountain College. We achieve our mission through collection, conservation, and educational activities including exhibitions, publications, and public programs.

For further information call the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center at 828/350-8484 or e-mail to (bmcmac@bellsouth.net).

Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center in Asheville, NC, Offers Two Lecture by Eleanor Heartney in Two Locations – Mar. 5 & 6, 2012

Award-winning arts writer Eleanor Heartney will speak in Cullowhee, NC, and Asheville, NC, about Contemporary Art and Women Artists. Heartney will give two lively presentations about contemporary art on Mar. 5 (Cullowhee) and Mar. 6 (Asheville). Heartney’s talks will include related images and raise philosophical questions about art and the contemporary artist’s role in society.

The first talk, Tales of Plastic Surgery, Genetically Altered Rabbits, and Other Acts of Art, will take place on Monday, Mar. 5, 2012 at 5pm in Western Carolina University’s Bardo Art Center, room 130. The lecture title refers to two of the many artists examined in Heartney’s book Art & Now.

“One of those artists, Eduardo Kac, genetically altered a rabbit to glow green under certain light; the other, French artist Orlan, had parts of her face surgically altered to resemble women in famous art historical paintings,” according to WCU Associate Professor of Art, Marya Roland. “Both Kac and Orlan push the limits of what we consider art, and in her book, Heartney poses the question, ‘should we do things simply because we can?’” The lecture is free and open to the public.

On Tuesday, Mar. 6, 2012, at 7:30pm, Heartney will present Out of the Shadows: the Changing Place of Women Artists in Our Times at the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, 56 Broadway, Asheville, NC. Heartney will discuss the broader topic of women artists’ changing roles and relate it, in particular, to painter Pat Passlof who has concurrent exhibitions at Western Carolina University’s Fine Art Museum and BMCM+AC. Heartney wrote the essay contained in the exhibition catalogue for the exhibitions. Admission is $10 for public and $5 for BMCM+AC members and students w/ID.

Heartney is a contributing editor for Art in America and has written extensively for other publications including Artnews, The New Art Examiner, the Washington Post, and The New York Times. She is author of several noteworthy books about art such as Art and Now, Defending Complexity: Art, Politics and the New World Order, and Critical Condition: American Culture at the Crossroads, and she is co-author of After the Revolution: Women who Transformed Contemporary Art, winner of the Susan Koppelman Award. The recipient of the College Art Association’s Frank Jewett Mather Award for distinction in art criticism, Heartney is also a past President of AICA-USA, the American section of the International Art Critics Association. In 2008 she was honored by the French government as a Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

Heartney’s visit to WNC is supported by a Western Carolina University Visiting Scholar’s Grant, the WCU School of Art and Design, and Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center with support from the North Carolina Arts Council, the Beattie Foundation and The Mary Duke Biddle Foundation.

The Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center preserves and continues the unique legacy of educational and artistic innovation of Black Mountain College for public study and enjoyment. We achieve our mission through collection, conservation, and educational activities including exhibitions, publications, and public programs.

For further information call 828/350-8484 or visit (www.blackmountaincollege.org).

Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center in Asheville, NC, Holds Public Panel Presentation on Photography – Sept. 3, 2011

Robert Frank teaching © Peter Schlessinger

Forty years ago an independent photographic project and study center called Apeiron Workshops opened in rural New York two hours north of Manhattan. Over the course of the next decade, students enrolled there to study with a veritable who’s who of mid-20th century creative photography,* and participated in the center’s programs, including publishing, documentary, teaching and exhibitions projects. This Labor Day weekend, as part of an Apeiron reunion being held in Montreat, NC, a public panel discussion entitled, Photography Then and Now, on the arc of creative photography across the four decades since Apeiron opened will be held in downtown Asheville at the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, at 56 Broadway, on Sept. 3, 2011, beginning at 8pm. Admission will be $5 and seating is limited. Call Benjamin Porter at 828/281-1825 or e-mail to (apeironreunion@gmail.com).

Panel members will include:

A.D. Coleman, photography critic, historian, curator, poet, teacher, lecturer, editor, and publisher. Recipient of numerous international awards for his writings on photography, nominated for a Pushcart Prize for his poetry, Alan Coleman has established a substantial presence on the World Wide Web since his home page made its debut in the spring of 1995. His current projects include Photocritic International, The Photography Criticism CyberArchive, and the electronic magazine The Nearby Café, all of which can be accessed via (www.adcoleman.com). Alan was a frequent guest critic at Apeiron during his tenure as The New York Times’ first photography critic.

Elaine Mayes, prolific Guggenheim-winning photographer and filmmaker, and the first woman to teach both photography and film in an academic curriculum at the college level. Elaine’s teaching posts have included Hampshire College (a founding member of the department), Pratt Institute, Bard College and New York University, from which she retired as Chair of the Photography department at the Tisch School of the Arts in 2000. Elaine was a frequent winter guest artist and summer workshop leader at Apeiron, her work was included in The First Apeiron Portfolio, and she was one of the 12 imagemakers who did commissioned work for Apeiron’s NEA-funded photographic survey, The Long Island Project.

John Rohrbach, Senior Curator of Photographs at the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. As a curator at the museum (where he has worked since 1992) he has assembled exhibitions on the works of Frank Gohlke, Elliot Porter, Richard Avedon, and Robert Adams, among others.  In addition he has done extensive research and writing about Paul Strand, reflecting the fact that earlier in his career he was Director of the Paul Strand Archive for the Aperture Foundation. Before that, he was an Apeiron staff member and manager of Apeiron’s Photographic Archives and Traveling Exhibitions Program. His Ph.D. Dissertation was “Art for Society’s Sake: Paul Strand’s Photographic Visions”.

*Bernice Abbott, Robert Adams, Diane Arbus, Bruce Davidson, Paul Caponigro, Linda Connor, Judy Dater, Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, Ralph Gibson, Emmett Gowin, Robert Heineken, William Klein, Danny Lyon, Elaine Mayes, Duane Michals, Lisette Model, Aaron Siskind, Frederick Sommer, Jerry Uelsmann, Minor White and Gary Winogrand, plus Magnum photographers Charles Harbutt, Mary Ellen Mark, Susan Meiselas, Gilles Peress, and Burk Uzzle… among others.

For more information contact Benjamin Porter at 828/281-1825 or e-mail to (apeironreunion@gmail.com).

UNC Asheville’s Center for Craft, Creativity and Design Announces Karen Karnes Activities in WNC in April 2011

Many community events highlight renowned ceramic artist Karen Karnes, Artist in Residence at the Black Mountain College (1952-54).

If you ask any potter, they will likely know the name “Karen Karnes.” Karnes has had a long career creating some of the most iconic pottery of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. This spring there are many opportunities to learn and experience more about Karen Karnes and her contributions to American studio pottery.

To begin, there are two complementary exhibitions, one exploring a lifetime of work by Karnes at the Asheville Art Museum in Asheville, NC, and a second exploring the legacy and influence of Karnes at the Penland School Art Gallery in Penland, NC. A Chosen Path: The Ceramic Art of Karen Karnes is on view at the Asheville Art Museum through June 26, 2011. The exhibit, Many Paths: A Legacy of Karen Karnes, is on view at the Penland Gallery & Visitors Center through May 8, 2011, and will display works by fourteen artists whose lives and artistic practice has been touched by Karnes.

In support of these two extraordinary exhibitions, there are a number of other opportunities to engage with Karen Karnes and her work, starting with a series of events taking place the second week of April.

Kicking off the week is a lecture at UNC-Asheville on Wednesday, Apr. 6, 2011, at 12:30pm with Mark Shapiro, editor of A Chosen Path: The Ceramic Arts of Karen Karnes. As a potter who is known for his engagement with scholarly research as it relates to his pottery, Shapiro’s lecture is titled, Exquisite Torture: Research, Writing, and Publishing from a Maker’s Perspective. This lecture will take place in UNC-A’s Owen Conference Hall. This event is free and open to the public.

On the evening of Apr. 6, 2011, at 7pm, the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center in Asheville, NC, will host a film screening Don’t Know, We’ll See: The Work of Karen Karnes, by Lucy Phenix. The filmmaker will be in attendance as will Karen Karnes and Mark Shapiro. Admission is $7 for non-members / $5 for BMCM+AC members and students w/ID. For info visit (www.blackmountaincollege.org).

On Thursday, Apr. 7, 2011, from 6-9pm the Asheville Art Museum will host “An Evening with Karen Karnes and special guests” a discussion and reception with Mark Shapiro, Paulus Berensehn, and Mikhail, and moderated by Andrew Glasgow. This event will take place in Diana Wortham Theatre. Admission is $8 for adults, $7 for Students & Seniors (65+). For info visit (www.ashevilleart.org).

On Friday, Apr. 8, 2011, a gallery reception will take place at Penland’s Gallery from 7-8:30pm with Karen Karnes, Mark Shapiro, and Lucy Phenix. During the day on Friday, Apr. 8, 2011, there will be a film screening, Don’t Know, We’ll See: The Work of Karen Karnes, by Lucy Phenix at 4:30pm at Ridgeway Hall at Penland School in Penland, NC.

Ending the week, on Saturday Apr. 9, 2011, you can attend the second annual “{Re}HAPPENING” event at the site of Black Mountain College, where over 50 artists of various disciplines converge for one evening in the spirit of the experimental college that was so important to American cultural history and to Karen Karnes development as a potter. For more information visit (www.rehappening.com).

For further info call 828/890-2050 or e-mail to (klee@craftcreativitydesign.org).