Category Archives: Asheville Attractions

Painter’s first solo gallery show brings quirky characters to life

 

The curious characters that populate Julie Armbruster‘s paintings don’t start as gestating seeds — they sprout from her mind fully formed. Potato Boy, the WoodChucks, Elmore, the Golden Unicorn and Professor Wunderbar “just came out of the surface of the painting,” said Armbruster in her Wedge studio in the River Arts District.

Her adventurous, intuitive approach to drawing and painting accounts for Armbruster’s signature far-out, fairytale style. “It is such a dynamic way of painting because I don’t have a plan that I am following the whole time,” said the 34-year-old full-time artist. “It is fun.”

For her solo show, opening Sept. 6 at The Satellite Gallery, this cast of characters on canvas, so to speak, is more than lively. They come to life.

With the help of longtime collaborator and friend designer R. Brooke Priddy, Armbruster created a massive window installation featuring sculptural rendering of her characters. “The technical aspect of (the nine panels in the show) is to the point that you feel like you can pull the characters out of the painting,” she said. “And I just thought that I would love for that to happen, so I’ve been

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I hope all the skunks, otters and wolves are warm today. They have quite an adoring public waiting to see them when it warms up a bit.

Otters are a popular exhibit at the WNC Nature Center.

The WNC Nature Center, aka Asheville’s own little natural habitat zoo, again reached record-breaking attendance in 2013. According to the Friends of the WNC Nature Center , the Nature Center off Gashes Creek Road in East Asheville  finished out the year with 107,949 visitors.

2013 by the numbers:

•              Eight out of 12 months in 2013 had the highest attendance numbers in five years.

•              July 2013 was the second-highest single month for attendance in five years (the first-highest was July 2009)

•              In 2013, the Center had 29 days with 600 or more guests, up from 15 such days in 2012 and 7 in 2010.

•              Since 2010, the Center has experienced a 20 percent increase in guest attendance. In 2013, 20,342 more people visited the Center than in 2010.  

Last year saw the completion of several projects and developments at the Nature Center, including a new Red Wolf boardwalk

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It’s a good day when six to eight people pull up the gravel driveway to the Elvis Museum.

The tiny treasury, a transformed rental cabin, is nestled among one-story homes and a campground on U.S. 19 in Cherokee.

Dee Smith’s museum houses hundreds of Elvis Presley collectibles, from playing cards to pendants. No money exchanges hands; Smith will offer guests a free handmade Elvis magnet or quote bookmark, and ask for, in return, for people to sign her guest book.

This personal collection is, at most, artifacts of affection. Elvis didn’t touch anything sitting on the shelves or hanging on the walls. Instead, the objects, from fan art to well-worn, thick scrapbooks of clippings reporting his military service and love affairs, are evidence of how deeply the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll touched his dedicated fans.

It is almost literally in the shadow of Harrah’s Cherokee Casino Resort, which since 1997 has towered over nearby diners and gift shops with its more than a thousand rooms. The Elvis Museum is modest; there’s one room and is smaller than a typical mobile home.

“When people come, I ask them where they are from, where they are going,” said Smith, 77, who’s collected Elvis

Article source: http://blogs2.citizen-times.com/carol/2014/01/06/celebrate-elvis-with-hawaii-themed-birthday-bash-at-bens-tune-up-jan-8/ If you need a cheap air ticket, hotel or rental car please visit http://www.airticket.com

DURHAM, N.C. —  Former Duke standout Randy Denton along with eight others were announced as 2014 inductees into the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame Monday. Denton, a 1971 All-America selection, is joined in the class by Eddie Biedenbach, A. J. Carr, Bob Colvin, Randy Denton, Lee Gliarmis, Marshall Happer, Rodney Rogers, Bob Waters (posthumously), and Frank Weedon (posthumously).

They will be enshrined at the 51st annual induction banquet on the evening of Friday, May 9, at the Raleigh Convention Center. An afternoon news conference will be held Thursday, May 8, at 4 p.m. at the N.C. Museum of History, home of the exhibit N.C. Sports Hall of Fame, located at 5 East Edenton Street in Raleigh.

“The achievements of this year’s class of inductees enrich North Carolina’s remarkable sports heritage, and they certainly earned the honor of joining the 300 men and women who have been previously enshrined,” said Fredrick Reese, president of the Hall. “This is our 51st class and we will have a program to celebrate this special time in our state’s sports history.”

Banquet ticket information is available at www.ncsportshalloffame.org or by calling (919) 845-3455.

The N.C. Sports Hall of Fame was established in 1963. The permanent exhibit N.C.

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Yes, the Blue Ridge Parkway is for the most part closed today for icy conditions. But, the Visitor Center, at Milepost 384 near the U.S. 74 entrance in Asheville, and the Folk Art Center, at MP 382 near the U.S. 70/Tunnel Road entrance, are both open usual hours today.

There is enough of the parkway road open to allow access to these areas, although the road in between them, as well as north and south, are all closed today.

Even if you’re not interested in going shopping at the Folk Art Center or browsing exhibits and watching the movie at the visitor center, the fact these two buildings are open comes in handy. You can park safely at both places and use them as jumping off points to the Mountains-to-Sea Trail, which scoots  past both buildings, and have yourself a nice, frosty, winter hike. The MTS is marked with a white circle on trees and posts.

Also, both these buildings operated by the National Park Service, have public bathrooms, also nice when you’re out hiking.

If you want to go a little further afoot, you can drive up to the gated sections of the parkway,

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Here we are, just a few days into 2014. It’s the dead of winter, and spring seems a lifetime away. But you can bet that some serious live music will chase away at least some of the winter blues.

Consider these 12 concert picks — a selection that takes us from the mountains to Mali to Martini time — as a survival guide of sorts, a gateway to some musical warmth as the season gets serious.

Jan. 17: Luke Bryan, Lee Brice and Cole Swindell. Country music continues its hold on concert bookings at Rupp Arena with the venue’s first headlining performance by Georgia-born Bryan (of Crash My Party fame). Don’t expect that hold to give way anytime soon: The performance is sold out. (7:30 p.m. Rupp Arena, 430 West Vine Street. Sold out, but last-minute tickets might become available: (859) 233-3565 or Ticketmaster, 1-800-745-3000 or Ticketmaster.com.)

Jan. 22: Yonder Mountain String Band and Travelin’ McCourys. Here’s something different. With Yonder mandolinist Jeff Austin on a brief hiatus after becoming a new dad, the band’s Lexington show will boast Ronnie McCoury and Jason Carter from the

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“Up until the past few days, we had only seen a handful of flu cases,” said Kirsten Cutler, communications manager at Park Ridge.

Though Cutler said it’s too soon to tell how this year’s flu season compares with 2012, she did say, “In North Carolina, it seems to have had a slower start this year.”

But if the flu was off to a slow start, it was also steady. Centers for Disease Control reported the flu was widespread in all parts of North Carolina for the week ending Dec. 28. Earlier this week, the state health department confirmed the total number of flu-related deaths had risen to 13.

“We can say the flu is definitely in Henderson County,” said Henderson County Health Department Communications Specialist Kim Horton.

Making preparations

Hospitals throughout the region have been preparing for the coming wave. Earlier this week, Mission Health implemented visitor limitations since the flu virus is highly contagious.

“Our patients are our first priority, and their health and safety is paramount,” said Dr. Dale Fell, senior vice president and system chief medical officer of Mission Health.

The restriction urges children younger than 12 and people who do not feel well to visit with patients by phone rather

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