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Today’s Email Announcements

What’s Happening at Mountain City’s Heritage Hall

Friday, Nov. 30 and Saturday, Dec. 1 at 7 p.m. and Sunday, Dec. 2 at 3 p.m.; JC Community Theatre & JCHS Players present Annie, the popular musical in which an orphaned child finds comfort and support in the home of NYC millionaire Daddy Warbucks who sets out on an epic mission to find Annie’s parents. Meanwhile, Miss Hannigan, in partnership with her brother Rooster and his girlfriend Lily, attempt to make some money out of this unique situation. The stories become intertwined as the lovable Annie’s story hits the national spotlight. This great show for the entire family provides a wonderful holiday outing and a perfect way to support the arts. Advanced seats $10/Door $12.

For tickets, reservations, group or youth pricing, call 423-727-7444 and leave a message. The Box Office opens on Tuesday – Friday, 12 – 2 pm, 126 College Street. For more information: heritagehalltheatre.org.

Watauga County Library’s 8-Word Mystery Competition Concludes with Reception and Awards 

Amy Millette winner, Mary Tucker 2nd runner up, Susan Poorman 1st runner up
Amy Millette winner, Mary Tucker 2nd runner up, Susan Poorman 1st runner up

The first annual 8-Word Mystery Contest fundraiser for the Watauga County Public Library in Boone concluded Tuesday evening, November 13th, with a community-wide reception and announcement of winners.  Many of the competitors were in attendance. 

The winner of the $25 prize was Amy Millette with the submission “African American Junaluska Graves.  65 named, 99 nameless.”  The 1st runner up was Susan Poorman with “She cried out.  He answered.  He shouldn’t have.” Two entries tied for 2nd runner up:  Mary Tucker’s  “Rain revealed three gold teeth on the mound” and Claudia Thomas’s  “The séance and ensuring horror were my fault.” 

A “mystery cake” was served at the reception with the recipient of a special piece receiving a certificate for next year’s contest.

The 8-Word Mystery Contest was sponsored by the Cook the Books, the library’s mystery & crime fiction book club and members of the Friends of the Watauga County Public Library.  The competition had 36 entries, raising $288 for the library. The entrance fee was $1 per word.

The library has a display of all the entries so please stop by to read them.  The book club plans to make this competition an annual fundraising event for the library.  Look for the next competition to begin in September of 2019.

Amy Millett winner, Barbara Perry-Sheldon who acted as MC for the presentation, Barbara is also a member of the Friends and a member of Cook The Books.

Turchin Center Hosts Winter Exhibition Celebration During Festive First Friday

The Turchin Center for the Visual Arts at Appalachian State University invites the community to a Winter Exhibition Celebration on Friday, December 7, 6-10 p.m. Downton Boone will be twinkling for the holidays as this event is being held in conjunction with the annual Festive First Friday with special events happening throughout downtown. The public is invited to engage, discover and connect through the arts at the Turchin Center where the festivities will include live music from Nate Harris and the Spice Creek Ramblers, savory refreshments, holiday cookies, hot cider and a cash bar. During this celebration, the Turchin Center will celebrate three new exhibitions and the artists will be on-hand to meet visitors and provide insight into their intriguing work. This event is free and open to the public.

New Exhibitions

FULL CIRCLE: 2018 CENTER AWARD WINNERS

December 7, 2018 – April 27, 2019, Gallery A

CENTER is a not-for-profit photographic arts and time-based media organization headquartered in Santa Fe, New Mexico, that has honored, supported, and provided opportunities to gifted and talented photographers since 1994. Each year, the Choice Awards recognize outstanding photographers who investigate current social, environmental, and political issues of critical global importance. Awards of significant financial support occur in four categories: Curator’s Choice, Editor’s Choice, Director’s Choice and the Producer’s Choice. The 2018 winners traveled to Santa Fe to present their artwork at the Review Santa Fe Photo Festival. Select images from the competition have traveled to the Turchin Center–the sole venue for the display of images from this awards competition.

Featured Artists:

Jerry Takigawa, Monterey, CA; Balancing Cultures

Jeffrey Heyne, Boston, MA; To Hunt a Moon

Vivien Allender, New York, NY; Global T(w)eens

Fatemeh Baigmoradi, Albuquerque, NM; It’s Hard to Kill
Marcus DeSieno, Ellensburg, WA; No Man’s Land: Views From a Surveillance State
Zoe Perry-Wood, Lexington, MA; Hanging in the Balance, Portraits from the BAGLY Prom

Adair Freeman Rutledge, Seattle, WA; Azalea Trail Maids
Amber Shields, Austin, TX; Visions of Johanne – The Aging Female Body
Jodie Hulden, San Diego, CA; Left Behind

Tomas van Houtryve, Paris, France; Divided
Muriel Hasbun, Silver Springs, MD; barquitos de papel Collective Archive
Dirk Anschütz, Brooklyn, NY; Fathers and Sons

Vikesh Kapoor, Los Angeles, CA; See You At Home

Tamara Reynolds, Nashville, TN; The Drake

About the Jurors:

Lisa Hostetler, PhD, Curator-in-Charge, George Eastman Museum
Naomi Cass, Director, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Australia

Bridget Watson Payne, Senior Editor, Chronicle Books
Keith Jenkins, Director of Visual Journalism, NPR

Leslie Ureña, Associate Curator of Photographs, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian

Sarah Hermanson Meister, Curator, Department of Photography, The Museum of Modern Art

ArtTALK: Photography and Social Justice Panel Presentation Wednesday February 13, 6 – 7:30 pm

Terraria Gigantica: The World Under Glass, Dana Fritz

December 7, 2018 – April 27, 2019, Gallery B

The photographs in the series Terraria Gigantica: The World Under Glass, frame the world’s largest enclosed landscape environments as possible impossibilities. Plants, animals and an ocean exist within three man-made biospheres and Fritz’s photographs capture the juxtaposition of nature and the human controls required to maintain these ‘natural conditions.’

Biosphere 2, in Arizona, was designed and built as an airtight replica of the Earth’s environment, to research possible space colonization. This glass and metal-framed structure contains a tropical rain forest, mangrove wetlands, a fog desert, savannah grassland, and an ocean with a coral reef. No longer airtight, Biosphere 2 has been repurposed for research to study water, climate, and energy and how best to sustain planet Earth, ‘Biosphere 1.’

Henry Doorly Zoo in the Great Plains of Nebraska, provides both education and research on a campus with the largest indoor jungle in the United States and the largest indoor desert in the world. The illusionism of these immersive environments also incorporates the display of the animals that live there.

Eden Project in notoriously gray and cool Cornwall, England, currently houses over one million plants in the world’s largest conservatory and models sustainable practices in construction, waste reduction, and resource management.

While these venues are open to the public and are visited by tourists, their primary purpose is to support scientific observation and research on the plants and animals housed under these ‘natural conditions’ that require human control of temperature, humidity, irrigation, insects, and weeds to cultivate otherwise impossible environments and species. Taken together, these architectural and engineering marvels stand as working symbols of our current and complex relationship with the non-human world.

About the Artist:

Dana Fritz is a Professor in the School of Art, Art History & Design at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She holds a BFA from Kansas City Art Institute and an MFA from Arizona State University. Her honors include an Arizona Commission on the Arts Fellowship, a Rotary Foundation Group Study Exchange to Japan, a Society for Photographic Education Imagemaker Award and Juror’s Awards in national exhibitions. Fritz’s work has been exhibited in over 80 venues in the United States and internationally in countries including The Netherlands, France, China and Japan.

ArtTALK and booksigning with Dana Fritz: Wednesday, March 20, 6 – 7:30 pm.

The Broken Fragments of My Heart: Rachel Stevens

September 7, 2018 – February 2, 2019, Mayer Gallery

Rachel Stevens’ installation, The Broken Fragments of My Heart, features forest sculptures of fragments of leaves, branches and words that reflect the relatively unknown tragedy, “Holocaust by Bullets” in western Ukraine.  When Stevens originally conceived of this series of sculptures, she imagined the forest as a sanctuary. However, she soon learned that the Ukrainian landscape’s deep ravines and plush earth were the site of countless mass graves_ more than a million people were shot in these otherwise bucolic landscapes. During this time, Stevens’ cousin, Lorenz Kleiner, fought the Nazis as a partisan in the forest. His Polish comrades did not know that he was Jewish and he hid his identity so as not to be killed by the men he served with.  

The ceramic letters in Steven’s sculptures come directly from translations of words and quotes of Holocaust survivors, many of whom found grim safety in dense forests. Their testimonies and prayers are revealed as ceramic letters emerging from wood, steel, and the earth itself. Stevens’ exhibition’s title comes from a quote by Rabbi Yehuda Hechasid, a pious, medieval-era rabbi, which states: “I will build an altar from the broken fragments of my heart.”  This life-affirming quote suggests renewal in the face of destruction, echoing the emotion that Stevens seeks to convey in this very powerful and personal work.

About the Artist:

Rachel Stevens is a Professor of Art at New Mexico State University where she has taught sculpture since 1994. In 2006 Stevens received her first Fulbright to study in Nepal where she collaborated with Newari Buddhist icon makers to learn the art of ancient copper casting. She spent time in 2017-18 on a Fulbright Scholarship in Ukraine where she completed a new exhibition, A Key to the City: Three Ways of Visualizing Jewish Heritage in Lviv. The exhibition was sponsored by Fulbright Ukraine, the Council for International Exchange of Scholars and the Center for Urban History of East Central Europe. Stevens exhibits her sculpture internationally and is the recipient of numerous grants and awards including a Pollack-Krasner Foundation grant, several artist-in-residences through the Ucross Foundation and the Santa Fe Art Institute.

 Continuing Exhibitions at the Turchin:

  • Art from Down Under: Australia to New Zealand (through December 8, 2018)
  • The Persistence of Weeds: Hannah Cole (through January 12, 2019)
  • The Elephantine in the Anthropocene: Kelsey Merreck Wagner (through January 26, 2019)

For more information visit tcva.org/exhibitions

About the Turchin Center for the Visual Arts

The Turchin Center for the Visual Arts, named for university benefactors Robert and Lillian Turchin, fulfills Appalachian State University’s long-held mission of providing a home for world-class visual arts programming.  The largest facility of its kind in the region, the center presents exhibition, education and collection programs that support the university’s role as a key educational, cultural and service resource. The center presents multi-dimensional exhibits and programs and is a dynamic presence in the community, creating opportunities for people of all ages and backgrounds to experience the power and excitement of the visual arts. Its seven galleries host changing exhibitions featuring local, regional, national and international artists.

The Turchin Center is located at 423 West King St., in Boone. Hours are 10 a.m. – 6 p.m., Tues. – Thurs. and Saturday, and Noon – 8 p.m., Friday. The Center is closed Sunday and Monday, and observes all university holidays. Admission is always free, although donations are gratefully accepted. For general inquiries, to be added to the mailing or e-news list, to obtain donor program details or to schedule a tour, call 828-262-3017, e-mail turchincenter@appstate.edu or visit tcva.org. The Turchin Center can also be followed on Facebook and Twitter @TurchinCenter.

Sponsors

The Turchin Center receives critical support from a group of outstanding media sponsors that are dedicated to promoting the arts in our region, including: High Country 365, High Country Radio, WFDD 88.5, WDAV 89.9 and WASU 90.5FM.

Thanksgiving Pottery Event Featuring Tim Turner Happening November 23-24

The Art Cellar Gallery in Banner Elk is hosting a special Thanksgiving pottery event with Tim Turner as well as an Open House November 23-24.

The Tim Turner Thanksgiving Pottery Take Over will be having an Open House with the artist both days from 3-5 p.m.

Come out to the gallery and bring the family!

The Walker Center Presents ‘Deep in the Heart of Christmas’ With the Texas Tenors on December 6

The Walker Center, on the campus of Wilkes Community College, will present Deep in the Heart of Christmas with The Texas Tenors on Thursday, December 6, at 7:30 p.m. This performance is sponsored by the Hampton Inn of Wilkesboro, Holiday Inn Express of Wilkesboro, and visitwilkesboronc.com.

Since their whirlwind debut on NBC’s America’s Got Talent, The Texas Tenors have accumulated a long list of awards, accolades and an enthusiastic fan base, including three Emmy Awards for the PBS special You Should Dream. They have performed more than 1000 concerts around the world, including a 24-city tour of the United Kingdom and China, and collaborations with some of the most prestigious symphonies in the United States, including the Cleveland Pops, Houston Symphony and the Pittsburgh Symphony.

People are clearly enjoying their talent, as they were recently named the #10 Classical Artist in the world according to Billboard magazine. In 2018, The Texas Tenors will make their Canadian debut at the world-renowned Toronto Royal Conservatory of Music.

A limited number of tickets are available for this performance. For more information, or to purchase tickets, contact the Walker Center Box Office at 336-838-6260 orwalker.boxoffice@wilkescc.edu. Visit the Walker Center online at www.walkercenteronline.org or on Facebook.

The John A. Walker Community Center is dedicated to being this region’s primary venue for cultural experience and to serving as the preferred gathering place for meetings, receptions, conventions, banquets and parties for our community.

The Walker Center and Wilkes Community College are 100% Tobacco Free.

Wilkes Community College, a member of the North Carolina Community College System, is a public, two-year, open-door institution serving the people of Wilkes, Ashe and Alleghany counties and beyond.  Established in 1965, WCC continues to build on a strong history of meeting the educational needs and cultural interests of our students, community, and workforce. WCC prepares learners for success in a dynamic world.