Horse + Hero

I discovered a great new shop in Asheville yesterday, it's called Horse + Hero.  It's a gallery full of art and prints made by local artists.

The owner was kind enough to let me take some photos.  I bought a small print of some people dancing, it's really retro cool.

 If you're in Asheville, they're at 14 Patton Ave.  When you go in, tell them Dr. Monkey sent you.

Random shots of a Saturday in Asheville

 I loved this all gal bluegrass group of buskers.

 The banana throne for the Monkey King!

This little dude saw me taking a photo of his mom's beauty salon window and he had to come talk to me.  I asked him how he was doing and he told me he was doing fine.  I said I was too and then I said as I walked away, "I'll see you around."  He replied, "I'll see you tomorrow."

 I wanted to eat supper in this place but I could hear my arteries hardening in anticipation, so I didn't.

 Wig store!

 Planet Bollywood.

Stone carving and sculpture amazes me.

Art gallery reviews

I not only make art, I like to go see other art that's been made.  And since there is a dearth of art galleries in my town, we go over to Asheville to check out galleries.  I'll say this for Asheville, there are a shit ton of galleries over there and they show all kinds of art, which is a good thing in the long run.  The only drawback to all those galleries is the fact that most gallery owners and their employees over there size you up the second you walk through the door and if they think you can't afford the art they sell or if you don't look 'cool' enough, they shun you like the plague and they freeze you out by refusing to make eye contact with you and or refusing to speak, even to say 'Hello,' to you.

Thankfully there are some exceptions to those kinds of galleries in Asheville and we happened to go to two of them yesterday.

The first was a charming gallery called Gallery Minerva.  This gallery is on the smallish side but that only enhances it's charm. Because it's on the smallish side they showcase only a few artists and the ones they were showing while we were there were fantastic.  The art, which includes paintings, sculpture, and mixed media works, is varied, eye catching, and provocative.  And the best part of this gallery is that it's owned and operated by an enthusiastic and super nice woman named Anna Parker Barnett.  Ms. Barnett could not have been more charming and engaging to us on our visit.  She was polite, charming, laughed at all my stupid banter and she bent over backwards to make sure we got to see all that we wanted.  She even went to her store room to show us more works that she didn't have room to display yet.  If all gallery owners in Asheville were as nice and engaging as Ms. Barnett, then they'd all sell a lot more art.  And I must add that Ms. Barnett is as beautiful as she is nice.

The other gallery that we visited that is an exception the usual snooty Asheville art gallery was American Folk Art & Framing.  I did not catch the woman's name who was running the place today, I believe she is one of the owners, but she was super nice and engaging as well.  She gushed over her artists, and most of them deserved it, and she took plenty of time to show us around and to make sure we saw all she had to offer.  When I told her I was a Facebook friend of one of her featured artists, a fellow by the name of Spencer Herr, she was overjoyed and she spoke at length to me about his work and what a nice guy he is.  She made the whole time in her gallery pleasant and she was helpful without being a pain in the butt.

One day I'd like to be in both galleries and if that day comes, I know I'll be in two of the finest art galleries in Asheville.

It's official!

I'm showing some of my art at a gallery in Asheville, NC.  It's called ZaPow! Gallery and Studio.  I'll be there through the end of August and I'll be adding stuff as we go, so if you're in the east TN, southwest VA, or northwest NC area, check me out!  The gallery is downtown and they're open every day except Tuesday.

A pair of recent art works

I made these last week.  They'll be in the gallery in Asheville, NC that's going to show my work all summer long.

Art in Asheville

We went to supper over in Asheville, NC with some good friends the other night. After we gorged on Indian food we walked around downtown and I snapped these photos of murals and paintings.

Wardrobe malfunction

Drummers drumming

We went to the Friday night drum circle in downtown Asheville last night. Watching all those different drummers drumming together and seeing all the different types of people dancing and swaying to the beats they were laying down was incredibly cool. For a few hours a few hundred people drummed, danced, and enjoyed being together on a cool summer evening. Color, class, creed, none of that mattered while the drums were going, what mattered was enjoying the moment. It was magical.

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.

Bele Chere, mon amour

The last full weekend in July means one thing in Asheville, NC and that one thing is the street fair/festival called Bele Chere. We've been attending Bele Chere on and off for about 10 to 12 years now and we've grown to really like it, provided the weather is not scorchingly hot and dismally humid. Since the weather recently has been neither, we decided to hook up with our friends Todd and Donna and take in this the 30th edition of Bele Chere. While we waited for Todd and Donna to arrive from Knoxville Sparky perused some of the artists booths and I got to see a fabulous show put on by Baton Woman (I have no idea what her real name is). Baton Woman is a gal who is in her mid to late 30's, she's rail thin, and very energetic. I was innocently snapping photos faster than a Japanese tourist when I heard her loud music coming from her portable tape player. Then I turned and I saw her doing a kick ass baton twirling routine. She was tossing that baton high and catching it, smiling and showing off all the while. It was a treat to see her work her baton magic. By the time she finished she was beaming with joy. She smiled and waved to the five or six of us who watched her and I started applauding because she put on one heck of a performance. I tossed a buck and some change in her tip bucket and I told her she was great. You could have powered a small city with the wattage of her smile when she heard me say that.

Our friends Todd and Donna finally showed up and we all started taking in the artsy/craftsy booths, the public service booths, the hippie vendors booths, and of course we suffered through some bad music: This flute guy was playing some serious screeching shitty stuff. I wanted to ask him if he took requests and if he said he did then I was going to request he stop playing but alas I did not. I settled for making snide remarks about his awful musical stylings with my buddy Todd. Speaking of music, we watched this guy with a drum walk up and start to jam with the three other guys. They smiled and let him sit in for about half a song but when he his drumming started to drown out their playing they ran him off.

We walked around for a good couple of hours taking in all that Bele Chere had to offer before we succumbed to hunger. I was perfectly willing to eat the fare from the street food vendors but my companions wanted to go inside where there was air conditioning and have a sit down meal. Thank goodness I followed them into this restaurant. The food was fantastic, I had shrimp and Cajun sausage with a brown gravy over polenta cakes, and despite the surliness of our waitress the whole experience was nice. I'd definitely go back there but not if that cranky gal was my waitress. As the day wore on the temperature went higher and the ones who suffered the most were little fair skinned white kids. In the above picture the woman in the wheel chair was trying to comfort the squirming kid in the stroller but as you can tell he was hatin' on her efforts.
One of the great things about Bele Chere is how community activist organizations use it to spread their messages. PETA has a booth, the ACLU, various conservation groups, and all kinds of political organizations have booths as well. This year I was glad to see that the Obama campaign had booths all over the place and they were registering voters right and left. They also were not content just to sit there so they'd send out people into the crowds to ask if anyone wanted to get registered. I had about three of their people at various times ask me if I was signed up to vote. I looked for Bush McCain backers and Republicans who wanted to get people registered to vote but I found none. How shocking.

On the fashion front, this look was not as popular this year:But the gals who are still using it are still cute as buttons.Thankfully the "wok hat" look was confined to this one gal.

Most of the artsy types had signs up asking people not to take photos of their art and I complied, with a few exceptions. One of the exceptions was this artist who makes metal fish and mermaids. I love this guy's work. When I hit the lottery jackpot I'm going to buy some of his art.

Since I'm back on artists there were a couple of neat performance artists that we got to see.These two little gals, ages probably in the range of 10 to 12, act was to recite song lyrics in unison and then they'd just suddenly freeze and glare at one another. Then after a moment or two they'd start up again in unison. It was kind of unsettling to see them but after watching for a minute or so their act became kind of cool.This chick is one of a cadre of young people who dress up like statues and beat on a drum. They'll stand stock still and then every three minutes or so they'll beat out a rat-a-tat-tat and then freeze again. If you toss them a tip they'll bow as a way to say thanks for your generosity. Some of them, like this chick, do it well and they have great make up and costumes, but some who do this really suck at it.

Of course no outdoor gathering below the Mason Dixon line would be complete without some Christian kill joy trying to ruin everyone else's good time.These pricks stood on a street corner and tried to make the rest of us frightened enough to join them in their delusional religion that's based on fear, obedience to the patriarchy, and death and dismemberment. And they were joined by a couple of asshole who spread the "good news" about how all of us who do not believe as they do are going to burn in hell because we don't take the metaphor of Jesus as seriously as they do. Oh well, some people are never so happy as when they're ruining it for the rest of us.

On the plus side there were some celebrities at Bele Chere this year. New York Times columnist, bestselling author, and Bush administration apologist Thomas Friedman had a booth where he tried to tell anyone who would listen that we need to give the war in Iraq another six months before we even think of pulling out and he also preached about how much we should all love globalization even though it's ruining our economy, our food system, and our lives. As you can see his booth was not well attended at all.

Douchebag Man was also in attendance at this year's Bele Chere. Never heard of Douchebag Man? Aside from his biggest super power, which is being a huge douche, he also has the ability to bore small children and to cause apathy and indifference in adults. Perhaps he was there on behalf of the McCain campaign.
And finally we spotted a member of the Loyal Order of The Water Buffalo dancing to the strains of a Zydeco band, that's him in the fuzzy blue hat. I tried to get a better shot of him but his dance moves made that impossible.

All in all we had a lot of fun at this years Bele Chere and you can see all the other pictures I took over there by clicking here. I'm already looking forward to going to next year's edition of Bele Chere.

Let's visit Asheville!

We left the rain and yesterday's cool temps behind by the time we blew past the Weaverville exit on our way to Asheville yesterday and it's good thing we did. Usually it's cooler in Asheville than it is in Johnson City but yesterday was not the case. It was actually in the mid 60's in Asheville, compared with low 50's in JC, and while it was a tad overcast there was not a drop of rain in sight, in short it was almost Speedo weather for yours truly.

Artsy Asheville photo #1.

We hit town in that odd hour of Saturday afternoon when lunch service is ending and it's hell to find food before supper service starts. (One time, and this is a true story, we went into a little restaurant at around 1:45 PM and got seated but got no service. Other couples came in and were seated and got service and I finally said something about it to the hostess. She then looked down her nose at me and she said, "I'm sorry sir, we've stopped taking lunch orders. You'll have to come back after 5:30 if you want to eat here." Oddly enough we never set foot back in that joint again.) But yesterday, and this can only be chalked up to a miracle of Zappadan, we found a little bakery/coffee shop open downtown that would serve us something. Sure it was only a cup of coffee, a bottle of root beer, and a danish and a scone, but damn it was good.

Artsy Asheville photo #2.

We poked around in some shops and were poked at in others. I'm not sure which I liked better. Finally we came to one of our main destinations 10,000 Villages. 10,000 Villages is a neat shop that sells fair trade items made in places like Peru, Chile, Bolivia, and many African countries. Certain items were purchased but I have been sworn to secrecy about said items and who or who they won't be given to during this holiday season.


Not too far from 10,000 Villages is Kim's Wig Center. Walking past there is always in adventure in imagination for me because I try to imagine who would buy and wear wigs like this:
For some reason Whiskeymarie came to mind.

Speaking of blog buds, I thought about Kirby and her son when I saw these books:

And then for some reason I felt the urge to "go" myself. I managed to find the only public restroom in all of downtown Asheville before any poo was flung accidentally. On my way out of the public restroom I saw the above sign and it made me happy. It made me happy because now I knew that someone had picked up all those butts I flicked out my truck window all those years when I smoked a pack and a half a day. I ran to catch up with Sparky and I told her about the magical Cigarette Fairy. Then when Sparky explained to me the definition of "mythical" I became sad and I felt guilty for putting my butts all over Mother Earth.

Artsy Asheville photo #3

It must have been "Dress Your Kid Up Cute and Parade Them Around Downtown Day" because everywhere we turned there was some cute kid being escorted by their parent or parents.This little gal loved climbing all over that huge iron. I bet she doesn't feel the same way about irons in 15 years, but I could be wrong.

This cute kid in a hat and his mom were practically running down the street.

I noticed this little girls boots from about two blocks away. By the time we caught up to her she was enthralled with that duck on the table. It quacked to the tune of "Jingle Bells."

Little Helga here we saw in a downtown modern furniture and home accessory store. The store is one of those places where the clerks are too hip to talk to anyone who is not as hip as they think they are or who looks like they make under half a million a year. When they do acknowledge the existence of people like Sparky and I they give us a tortured thin lipped smile that looks like it's actually a grimace caused by constipation.

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After the parade of cute kids stopped for a bit we made our way to Mast General Store. Mast sells mostly clothes and out door gear but the reason I go there is candy. Since I stopped smoking and since I am not allowed to eat chocolate candy bars anymore, I indulge in all manner of hard candy to placate my oral fixation. And the place to find great hard candy in all manner of exotic flavors is in the candy barrels of Mast General Store.More candy than you can shake your monkey maker at.
I ended up buying about two pounds of candy. That should last me until the end of the week. While in Mast I also saw this:
Let me give you a close up of the label on the bottom box:

SNOW NOT INCLUDED, what a freakin' letdown. What good is all that other crap without snow? I was appalled, appalled I tells ya! Luckily for me I was also tired of walking around and we decided to just go to Green Life Grocery and then head back home. We picked up some baby bok choy, some suckling pears, some nice farm raised catfish, and some beer and wine, among other things and we made our way back across the mountain. Night had fallen by the time we hit the road and as we drove past Weaverville, the rain began to fall again as well.

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When we got back I fixed that catfish, the bok choy, and I made a chili releno-esque thingy for supper. I would have taken pictures of it but I was starving, after all the only thing I had to eat the whole afternoon was that scone.