Halperin & Christ

we love asheville!!!!! finally somewhere that reminds us of all the good things we miss in california……art, culture, interesting, enthusiastic and friendly people…..dreadlocks, piercings, tattoos and wild hair….weird is celebrated.

we started our day at the river arts district, an area down by the river and railroad tracks that has transformed over the past few years from¬† derelict old brick warehouses to studios and galleries showing a variety of local arts and crafts. today was not a “studio stroll”day and many of the buildings were closed but we were fortunate to first stop into the clayspace studio (see link). a young potter by the name of josh copus invited us into his studio and gallery. his enthusiasm and passion for his art was wonderful to see. he spent quite awhile describing to us, and showing pictures, the process by which he constructed his own wood fired kiln.¬† the structure was a series of catenary arches made of fire brick. he is a self described “brick afficionado”. the kiln looked pretty cool. his pottery is earthy, sublime and absolutely gorgeous!

he gave us a lunch steer towards 12 bones a local smokehouse that was fantastic and heavily populated. for $6 you got a huge plate full of food with the “best darn” corn pudding in the world. the guy who does the smoking also builds sandcastles. we ate our lunch next to a creation in process.

after lunch we continued our tour of studios and spoke with many friendly artists intent on their work. several were bay area transplants. (no surprise)

following the river arts district we went back to downtown for the official walking tour which was created in 1989 and finished in 2001. it highlights the various periods of development of the town from the thomas wolfe era, through the gilded age, the frontier period and the era of civic pride. each era has sculptures and plaques commemorating aspects of that time. the side walks have granite markers and crosswalks with markings of the symbols of each period. it is a very well organized and fun walking tour to take…..unfortunately we didn’t complete the tour as we got waylaid by a coffee stop and several artist galleries….we’ll have to finish it tomorrow.¬† we did also pick up tickets for tomorrow’s showing of david sedaris’s “santaland” which has sold out in asheville for the last 6 years in a row….an asheville tradition.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 12th, 2007 at 9:52 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.