Souls she said

This past weekend the artists in the River Arts District of Asheville held their summer edition of Studio Stroll. Studio Stroll is an event where all the artists open the doors of their studios and they let the great unwashed masses in to gawk at, and hopefully buy, their art. This was our third time to this event, we went a few years back and we went to the edition they held last fall.

It's always a treat to see local artists doing their things with paint, ceramics, wood, metal, and what ever else they use. And it's nice to get out of the house when it's sunny and in the mid 80's. We got off our butts and out of the house relatively early for us, we left around 11 AM and we got to our first studio in Asheville about an hour later, we made good time because all the bad drivers were all still in church.
The first studio's we saw were those of a bunch of ceramic artists. But as you can tell from the above picture these folks make more than just ceramic ashtrays, cups, and plates. I really liked the bunny pictures like the ones in the above picture. This artist was into ceramics, painting, and collage work. Her work was very eye catching. I wanted to buy something of hers but she was out of my price range.
This piece by another artist reminded me of a certain Chicago police detective.

We made our way through the growning throng of hipsters, youngsters, old hippies, and posers to the Curve Studios. It was full of more ceramics but one artist's work there really spoke to us. A young woman named Cassie Ryalls makes some really arresting figures in all sizes, textures, and colors. She calls them 'Souls.' Cassie was gracious enough to allow me to take photos of her work:
Like I said, Sparky and I really dug them, so we bought one.
We bought the one on the far left in the above picture. What can I say, we're far left kind of people in art as well as in politics. We made our way outside after making our purchase and we saw these human sized 'Souls.'

They reminded me of the statues on Easter Island, strong silent witnesses to everything that passes before them.

Then just as we made our way around the big 'Souls,' we we're nearly attacked by a giant praying mantis:
I managed to vanquish him using my French foot fighting skills. I knew those lost years I spent with the Foreign Legion would come in handy one day. Flush with victory and sweating up a storm, we decided to have a cool beverage. As luck would have it there is now a brewery in the River Arts District. It's called Wedge and luckily for us they were selling pints of good cold local beer. We both enjoyed a nice Wit beer with a slice of orange. It was quite refreshing. Once we finished we made our way to more studios of artists who work with metals. One artist's studio had two giant metal birds in it. Here's a photo of one of them:
They both were totally awesome sights to behold but you can't tell it from my bad photo. People, especially me and some other kids, were totally transfixed by the huge metal birds. They were hooked up to a series of cables and wires and someone in another room was making them squawk, flap their wings, and bob their big metal heads up and down. It was breathtaking.

Down the street from the big birds was another building that had the studios of painters, fabric artists, and more ceramic artists. We stuck our heads in most all the studios and most of the artists were totally cool and nice to talk to.
This gal painted big pictures of impressionistic farm animals. I really liked her series of goat paintings and I dug her ass too. It took me a bit of coaxing to get her to turn her head around and smile so I could take a picture of her and her magnificent ass.

After doing all the studios in the main area we got in the Sparky mobile and we drove about a half a mile to more studios that are down the road a bit from the main district. Despite being hungry and almost worn out we gamely looked around in the huge building that was full of studios. We met some more nice artists, such as Alicia Chatham, who shares a studio space with a guy named Spencer Herr. He did this way cool painting of some green pigs:
I wanted to buy some of their art so we ended up buying a notecard of Alicia's and one of Spencer's and we're going to frame them. There was a soap maker right down the hall from Spencer and Alicia's studio and we bought a bar of her handmade soap.

By 4:45 Pm we were arted out and hungry. We drove off to find an restaurant and after finding out the one we wanted to eat at was closed for good, we found a Mexican place and had dinner there. All in all it was a great day of art viewing, people watching, and Mexican food eating. All the photos I took from the event will be on Facebook and on my Picassa account later.

If you ever have the chance, I highly recommend you go to the Asheville River Arts District Studio Stroll. Who knows, you may run into us there if you're not careful.