Ann Lea Fine Art Gallery

The opening of Ann Lea Fine Art Gallery provides a beguiling new showcase for some of the Southeast’s most evocative artists. You owe yourself a careful browse at 976 Hwy. 64 East in Cashiers.

Astunning new gallery recently nestled into Cashiers’ cozy terrain, and Cashiers’ heart beat just a little bit faster.

Art connoisseur Ann Lea, native of Nashville, lived in Black Mountain, North Carolina. With an eye for the exceptional, she ran a unique antique/gift shop on Biltmore Avenue in Asheville.

When it was time to relocate, she bought a home in Cashiers along with a generously-large building (across from Ingles, next to Mountain Dog Spa) in which to launch her new business.

Aside from its perfect size and location, the building houses not one but four showrooms: the Ann Lea Fine Art Gallery, Beezie’s Gallery and Gift Shop, Fine Threads Boutique for Women, and Fine Threads Boutique for Children.

What a delightful village shopping stop. While stocking up on groceries or visiting the pet resort, you’ll want to spend the rest of your afternoon perusing fine art, fine gifts, and fine clothing.

At the gallery, you’ll find your favorite artists, whose work you’ve

seen all over the Southeast: Bill Jameson, Lita Gatlin, Mase Lucas, Scott Boyle, Jack Stern, Leslie Jeffery, and more. They’ll be exhibiting landscapes, impressionist scenery, wildlife, still life, sculpture, and abstract (non-representational) – a variety of genres executed brilliantly in a host of mediums.

The gallery’s spacious rooms and museum-quality lighting create a beautiful setting for incomparable work.

Artist and gallery consultant Peggy Marra shares, “I’ve owned three art galleries over my career. Ann asked me to help as her gallery consultant. I came into an empty space. It presented me with my own blank canvas on which to create a perfect show place.”

Hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 11:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., closed Sunday and Monday. Watch for their website: www. annleafineartgallery.com (currently in-the-works), ongoing events, and more. Or call Barbara Hyde (Beezie), gallery director, at (828) 743-5499. You’ll find the gallery at 976 Hwy. 64 East, in Cashiers.

by Donna Rhodes

Falling Stars Called Her

There’s a bit of the magic of the mountains at the core of Palmer Smith’s new collection of poetry.

Lured by the beauty of their bucolic spaces and untrammeled scenery, the North Carolina mountains have long been a mecca and an inspiration for writers.

Now another skilled young author has emerged with ties to the region. Though a native New Yorker, Palmer Smith spent 15 years at summer camp in Cashiers. The split between the North and South has shaped her perspective and identity.

She recalls, “I was able to truly appreciate the quiet of the mountains, the fog on the lake in the mornings. The first falling star I ever saw was in Cashiers. So, the geography of Western North Carolina has influenced me quite a bit.”

Smith’s debut book of poetry and short stories, The Butterfly Bruises, is a riveting compilation of daily experiences and conversations, grief and joy, childhood and family, nature versus technology, and the imagination of the introvert.

The product of years of writing, the collection is divided into six themed sections of poetry and a final chapter of short stories. Of the six poetry sections, she is most proud of the one titled “Moonshine Boy.” It is here that she deals with her Southern experiences and explores the contrasts of the cultures of South and North.

She is eager to bring the reader’s attention to climate change issues, and in a part entitled “Symbiosis,” Smith underscores conservation concerns – paying careful homage to the layered worlds of animals and ocean – of manatees and butterflies, silverfish and dog.

Her poems confront issues of toxic relationships and miscommunication while all the while addressing issues of death and life. The overarching theme of the book is that of transformation and the inevitability of change, and she hopes that “readers finish my book and think of change in a more positive light.”

In some of the poems, language is stretched and skewed and staggered across the page – a way of representing through style, Smith’s omissions, the things she could not say.

The Butterfly Bruises has received glowing praise from bestselling novelist Mary Morris who noted that Palmer “…takes risks with these poems and stories, experimenting with form, allowing the words on the page to transcend themselves. This is deep, moving work.”

Palmer is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and a current MFA student at Sewanee and MA student at the University of Virginia.

Melodyna Claryssa Serenity

The Angels in Her Garden

A deep dive into French culture and its rich aesthetic sensibilities has given Patty Calderone’s works an undeniable esprit.

Patty Calderone is synonymous with Fine Art in Highlands

She has lived and created art here for nearly 30 years.

In 2017 Patty made a life-changing trip to France. She says, “The French world held me spellbound. I was mesmerized by the architecture, decorative details, daily life, fashion, and style variety, ancient to contemporary. Taking inspiration from the French aesthetic made me want to stretch. I visited many museums but favored the Musee d’Orsay. I fell in love with Francoise de Felice, a figurative artist whose work I found in Galerie Calderone (no relation) in Northern France. My French experience had a profound influence on my process. It was not only the art that influenced me but also the lush countryside, gardens, and meadows. There were flowers everywhere. And they were very wild and free as if they had been planted by angels so many centuries ago.”

“Many of those influences related to the way figures are perceived

and adorned in France. their dress is not trendy or vogue but imaginative and unique. Visually on the streets, instead of one dominant figure, several images interact as if staged. Others distanced to create intriguing negative space. Imaginative It was not only the art costuming, surfaces turned into transparthat influenced me but also the lush countryside, ent washes and colors, the introduction of animals, and textural surfaces like canvas grain peeking through all contributed to a gardens, and meadows. more complex way of imagining composition. That is what I experienced there, and it is what I am striving to achieve.” Patty is sharing these first paintings that came out of that trip to France and started after her return in August 2017, not publicly seen before. “Les anges de mon jardin,” a three-piece 90”x30“ triptych pictured to left is available at Calderone Gallery at 3608 Highway 246 in Dillard, Georgia. Patty can be reached by calling (828) 371-0376.

Back to the Future in Film

Those old cameras that rely on film and exposure time and a bit of artistic discernment are finding new life thanks to an Asheville nonprofit.

Daniel Abide

All those stuck-in-a-back-corner-of-the-closet, single-lens-reflex (SLR), film cameras can be pulled out and dusted off and used again – thanks to technology and the ability to achieve scans and high-res digital prints from negatives. The Asheville Darkroom is a 2010-founded, 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization offering education, programming, and facilities available for public use. And it’s through this organization, and others springing up in locales nationwide, that film cameras are getting a second life.

“There’s certainly been a slight resurgence [in film camera use], from older people coming back to it to young people discovering it,” said Daniel Abide, TAD director. “The digitization of film is great looking.”

He explained that photography is all about preferences, convenience, cost, etc. While digital cameras hit the mark positively for many users, film cameras provides “image quality often described as having more depth, much like the sound of a record.” Other benefits of film include: • White and black details as well as subtle details captured; • And minor focusing issues and exposure problems sometimes not as noticeable.

Some photographers using film also note a “natural warmth.”

To achieve digital from film requires only that the “photographer,” upon having the film processed professionally, simply ask for digital scans. Depending on the quality needed, costs vary. High-resolution scans, suitable quality for magazine publishing, for example, requires a bit of an upcharge.

However, processing and scanning at The Asheville Darkroom typically costs less than $20 for a 24-image film roll, for example.

The Asheville Darkroom, which also enables members access to darkrooms to hand process film and make prints, encourages people to enjoy experimentation with photography, stating, “We value lifelong education, accessibility to all who wish to learn technical processes and artistic practices, and forums for individuals to learn and share their expressions and experiences.”

Abide pointed out that one of the purposes of the organization is “to foster a community of individuals that use photography as an art form through group critiques, artist presentations, topic discussions, and film screenings as well as classes, workshops, and community printing access.”

by Deena Bouknight

photo by Greg Clarkson