Lurphy DePalma Larry Halstead is a tech nerd with an affinity for arts & sports. Reppin' the hard streets of South Asheville for almost 15 years. He's made this city home and has vowed to never stop fighting to keep it as weird & unique as possible.







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Via loyal reader Clark Mackey, a heads-up about a series of Craiglist posts about Asheville’s art scene.

Artists of Asheville, do you agree with the comments by and in support of the anonymous poster behind “Are you in on the joke?”?

Here’s the post, followed by select responses:

Did you hear that Asheville is a great arts & artist destination? HA! The joke is on you. Not only is there no real performance art center (the Civic Center – I mean the U.S. Cellular Center is a travesty & an eyesore – totally mismanaged by the City); nor is there any sort reasonable cultural museum (the Asheville Art Museum? Black Mountain College? are you kidding me??); nor is there hardly a non-profit worth shaking a stick at – does anyone even understand what being on a non-profit board actually means?? And you call this an Arts Council? Please. Get serious. (they aren’t even sanctioned as one by the state arts council by what I’ve heard). They serve themselves & their burner agendas, not the arts community. The best local gallery isn’t even a real gallery – word on the street is it’s a front. The second best gallery is the back of a skate-shop. Seriously. This is all you have to offer? Oh but wait, I forgot, very few people actually collect art in this town, and if they do decide to purchase something they expect it for >$100. Whoopdey-dooo, the same 6-8 local artists get displayed over and over again. No real outsider artists get shows here. Very few real artists make a living here – the ones that do make a living do so outside of this piddly town that dares to call itself a city. Not a single non-profit organizations here even know how to even manage themselves… well maybe Handmade in America & NC Stage Co… but the rest of them seem to be a complete joke. Don’t expect a real critique or review on anything, because all you’ll get is fluff from your local independent news sources. And don’t even get me started on gentrification & crazy studio owners. Seriously Asheville. Either play the fool in name and in action and let’s just trade in the artists for beer drinkers and bicyclist hipsters and call it a day. Or else get wise, get serious and step up your f-cking game. This shit is getting ridiculous and I can assure you that a decade from now there won’t even be an arts scene worth a bean in this town unless some tides start to change and soon.

Select responses, also from Asheville Craigslist:

Are you in on the Joke is right on (RAD)

That post was dead on. This town has a ‘Good Ol’ Boys Artists’ clique and if you can’t break into it, you won’t get anywhere no matter how good you are. We are just two of many dedicated artists who moved here several years ago, to keep our art going and growing, only to be dead-ended time after time by people in the RADA who don’t want any competition. If you weren’t here ten years ago, you don’t count and you aren’t allowed in – pay your dues and shut the hell up. We volunteered time and time again, tried to arrange forward-thinking, inclusive projects only to be ignored by those who control the arts here. So don’t say that ‘if you can’t make it, you aren’t trying hard enough’. There’s a shitload of us – with decades of experience between us – who have tried, and after trying for years, we’re going back to a town where there is a real arts scene. You know, where new and old artists don’t have to fight their way past one elite clique who think they own the entire arts agenda. Bye, good luck to those who still think they can break the glass ceiling here. We know better. The RADA leaders need to reconsider their exclusivity of anyone but themselves, or this place will become even more stale, boring and slow than it is now.

Sorry to bust your bubble but it is a joke

Honey, we didn’t write the first Joke post, but it’s what a large group of us have been saying for a while now. We did add our voices to it and we’d love to hear from the rest – post what you think anonymously if you don’t want hate mail. If you’ve resorted to slurs, rather than addressing the issue, my thought is that you must be one of the ‘elite’ who don’t want to fall from their lofty perch, up there in the high clouds on top of the world – and you’ve already lost the argument. But please, keep on thinking that this is just one disgruntled person. You’d be amazed at the amount of people who feel the way we do, but are afraid of the Arts Hierarchy. When it all falls to shit here, remember our words. When – not if – because for a lot of us, after being in this town for years and struggling to break that glass ceiling after having no problem in any other city, it’s ‘when’. We’ll be elsewhere, in places where artists are appreciated for what they do, not who they are sleeping with, or who their friends may be. Until the Art Clique is broken so that new artists are allowed to compete on an even field, this town’s art will be stale, boring, and pedestrian with nobody making money, period. All the cute, carefully worded blurbs in all the visitors pamphlets in all the world won’t change that.

Let’s Be Honest – Art Here is a Souvenir

I have been following the discussion in this catagory about the validity of our art community here in Asheville, and as a former gallery owner with a studio in the River District I can confirm people are being misled about the art opportunities here. Most of the thriving artisans in our city are ‘crafts oriented’ or people who have compromised their artistic expression by catering to the tourist market with low end artistic ‘trinkets’ or assembly line artwork. The last art stroll was a major disaster with large crowds but few purchases over $100. Anyone who says differently is being dishonest concerning the norm here which prevents us from improving the situation.

Asheville is the Paris of mediocrity

I came from San Francisco to Asheville for family reasons. My fiance’s family is aging and they needed help with some properties and San Francisco was getting very expensive. I am an artist and also do ad agency work for extra money. I have sold my paintings in San Francisco, and LA in galleries and have work in the permanent collection of museums in several states and Canada. I was hoping to enjoy a thriving community here. That was not the case. The artist here do not critic or strive or aim for anything greater. There is no sense of community. This is true about food and culture and everything else. The economy is so dependent on tourists that it is sacrilegious to say anything is not good. No one loses the best of WNC they just add new categories so everything is the best. In art and culture not everything is the best. This is not a t-ball game where everyone gets a trophy. It would be great to set the bar higher than what sells to tourists. It would be great to have some real discussions and challenges. Instead of treating everything like it is fragile and precious, question, challenge and be bold. Perhaps a salon regarding the truth would be in order. If sounds like there are several disappointed people who want more.

What’s going on here? Backlash? Sour grapes?

Are there issues here unique to Asheville’s art scene that need to be addressed?