North Carolina will fool you. Gauge it by the urban areas of Charlotte and Raleigh/Durham and you’re not getting the whole picture. Throw in coastal Carolina and the scenario is still incomplete. To understand the breadth and the sheer beauty, the place you’ve got to see Asheville.
There, in the westernmost reaches of the state, where the Appalachians dictate the weather and the wine, is one of the country’s finest art colonies.
Start with the Folk Art Center, home to the Southern Highland Craft Guild. Some call this the epicenter of southern folk art. Explore the collection. See crafts demonstrations as southern hands mold wood, and mud, and fabric into elemental art.
Open your ears to the sounds coming from Brevard Music Center, one of the country’s most exciting and diverse music enclaves. Brevard puts on 80 concerts a year – classics, pops, grand opera, jazz, chamber music and rock. Make this the soundtrack for our Asheville stay.
From the ‘architecture as art department’ be sure to visit the Biltmore Estate. Once home to the Vanderbilts, it’s now yours – for the price of admission. It’s America’s largest home, a crenelated, French château of a bastion built by old world craftsmen. Tour the demi-palace, gape-jawed as you enter the bounteous maze that once was the cradle of American industrial royalty. You’ll need a drink after drinking in the grandeur of it all. We know just the place, the nearby Biltmore Estate Winery.
Story by Jerry Chandler
(Images: Brevardmusic.org, jimbowen0306)
