Closing Reception: Swannatopia

Join us to celebrate the exhibition “And the green grass grows all around and around and the green grass grows all around” with family-friendly performances and more!

The artists of Swannatopia Experimental Art Club invite you to join us in the archives one last time on TUESDAY, JUNE 10 from 2-7 as we redirect our gaze toward the farms, forests, and legume lagoons of our future.

This is a closing reception for the exhibition “And the green grass grows all around and around and the green grass grows all around” is presented as part of the Carolina Record Shop and the community memory project Come Hell or High Water, documenting the historic impact of Helene on Western North Carolina.

Many of the objects on display were created in response to the prompt “How Do We Mark The Flood?” for an event held on November 23, 2024 at Warren Wilson College; others were included in our recent exhibition “DEER FREAKS…and decoys.” and accompanying puppet fashion show “How Do We Disappear, Yet Still Be Seen?” at Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center.  Works on view are paired with our Special Collections Selections highlighting the histories of agriculture and arboriculture in our region and offering a glimpse into the vision—trees and seeds in anticipation of spring days to come.

This casual, family-friendly closing reception and celebration of agri-cultural cross-pollination will include a multimedia experience in the auditorium and edu-taining activities for all ages and abilities.  

We will have some special seeds to share as we kick off the SUMMER SESSION of Experimental Art Club with prompts aplenty!

Appalachian Seed Growers Collective will be joining us to talk about participatory seed weaving and breeding, and a lovely legume grown right here in Swannanoa!

We will also be hoisting a fountainous flower installation collaboration with Hummingbird Waltz Farm and Dr. John Wilson Community Garden in celebration of their recent grant for a new well and drip irrigation system! Water can cause harm but also heals and brings hope for our future garden beds. 

At 6, we will learn all about GRAFTING with Gigi White, who has been in and around AVL for over a decade tending to a small hobby nursery out of their yard to help create culture, meaning, and connection through hand to hand food. Transforming Bradford pears into Asian pears and preserving the genetics that can withstand the multitude of forces of climate change is all in a day's work of an old grafting nut. 

Friends of the Woods will be tabling letting us know how we can help to protect UNC Asheville’s cherished and ecologically important 45-acre urban forest from development. 

and light refreshments from 6-7 in the reading room- provided by Friends of Buncombe County Special Collections! SEEDS, TREES, WELLS, fountains and Ants Together!