Keeping It So Real Even the Paint is Handmade
Across America, a culture war is raging, says painter John Mac Kah. But he’s not referencing current social movements or political turmoil. “There’s a…
Architect Sets Up House in the “Beginner’s Mind”
In 1995, following a long career as an architect, Werner Haker — born in Germany and raised partly in New York City — moved…
College Football Player Tackles Glassmaking With Characteristic Intensity
Ohio native Samuel Spees was introduced to glassmaking while pursuing a degree in mathematics and playing football at Centre College in Kentucky. He became…
Inventive High Country Sculptor Puts the “Tile” in Reptile
The studio of ceramic, textile, and sculptural artist Shae Bishop is in rural Spruce Pine. But the multimedia artist, who’s also an amateur herpetologist,…
Theriault on Gray
{Legacy Craft Series} Ceramic sculptor Verdelle Gray was born in 1918 and moved to Asheville in 1962, opening her own art studio. She continued…
Glass Artist Answered the Ultimate Casting Call
Alex Gabriel Bernstein’s style is an original fusion of dissimilar elements. He’ll grind steel and let the metallic sparks shower against hot glass, fusing…
Banjo Luthier Picked the Right Time to Make Old-Fashioned Instruments
Pisgah Banjos builds handcrafted bracket-style banjos whose lineage can be traced to America’s Industrial Revolution. Founder Patrick David Sawyer and his crew of four…
From Her Safe Space to Yours, With Love
Mary Farmer dwells deep in encaustic, a layered, two-dimensional (but sculptural) painting medium that uses beeswax and damar resin. Following a stay in rehab…
Her Contemporary Oils Go Back Hundreds of Years
LaKisha Blount, a self-described Affrilachian painter based in Gerton, NC, in Henderson County, focuses on visual documentation and preservation of Black, Southern, and Appalachian…
Furniture Maker Never Took Tradition Sitting Down
During one extraordinarily difficult period in her life, Annie Evelyn lost her stepfather, her father, and got divorced in the span of two years….