How to Wear the Great Realization
In 2021, 47.4 million American workers quit their jobs. Sala Menaya-Merritt was one of them. The Great Resignation wave followed the 2020 “Great Realization”…
Embracing the Chaos
Edwin Knies says his mind is like “a hand grenade that just keeps exploding.” Once he pulls the pin, he can’t stop thinking. Though…
Making (Negative) Space for Contemporary Quilting
This year, the Western North Carolina Quilters Guild will celebrate its 40th birthday. And, like anyone blowing out the candles on their “Big Four-O,”…
Pink Flamingos, Barbie Arms, and Other Upcycled Destinies
Ray Fawley doesn’t subscribe to “normal.” That’s why, one morning in 2017, he staged a robed mannequin in slippers in his Asheville front yard. …
Putting the Factory Back on Factory Hill
One summer during college, Leigh Anne Hilbert worked the graveyard shift at a Hanes factory in Galax, Virginia. From seven at night to seven…
When the Bubble Won’t Burst, You Get Creative
According to Zumper, an online rental platform, you can expect to fork out $1,453 per month for a one-bedroom apartment in Asheville. That’s a…
The Makers of Main Street
When Judith Kolva says 2022 will be a “banner year,” she doesn’t mean it idiomatically. Kolva is chair of ArtScape Hendersonville, an annual public-art…
How One Sculptor Rose to the Occasion
Sometime in the early 1990s, Larry Paul King was driving home from his night shift as a postal carrier in Chicago when a radio…
Spinnin’ That Curious Sense of His Own
Two years ago, Joshua Marc Levy’s wife, Amy Kalyn Sims, went to a psychic with hopes of reaching her late father. But the medium…
Finding the Light in Black and White
In 1967, during his senior year at the University of North Carolina, John Dickson took a physics elective. But the class wasn’t about extragalactic…