News

App State’s Turchin Center for the Visual Arts creates Little Free Art Pantry

Tuesday, March 31, 2020 - 4:18pm

Appalachian State University’s Turchin Center for the Visual Arts (TCVA) recently created a Little Free Art Pantry with free art supply bundles for the community. The art pantry is located near TCVA’s front entrance, in a large metal cabinet. To date, 30 bundles have been taken and another 50 bundles are ready to be placed in the pantry. Each bundle is themed and includes instructions. Themes include “Paint Night,” “Watercolor,” “Visual Journaling” and “Collage.”
Asheville Art Museum Acquires 15 Works from Appalachia Now! Artists

Tuesday, February 25, 2020 - 9:35pm

The Asheville Art Museum is pleased to share that seven artists from the opening exhibition “Appalachia Now! An Interdisciplinary Survey of Contemporary Art in Southern Appalachia” have entered the Museum’s Collection. The exhibiting artists include Corn Wagon Thunder, collections manager for the Turchin Center for the Visual Arts.
Turchin Center for the Visual Arts: Summer Palette

Thursday, July 11, 2019 - 2:07pm

Graduation caps have been tossed towards the sky and Appalachian State University in Boone has settled into summer. The majority of campus buildings are quiet as they take a break before the return of students and professors in the fall. The galleries of the Turchin Center for the Visual Arts, however, are undergoing a transformation to present a compelling palette of art just in time for the start of An Appalachian Summer Festival, featuring an eclectic array of visual arts, music, dance, theatre and films.
33rd Rosen Outdoor Sculpture Competition & Exhibition prospectus now available

Saturday, December 1, 2018 - 11:53am

The 33rd Rosen Outdoor Sculpture Competition & Exhibition prospectus is now available. The Rosen Sculpture Competition and Exhibition is an annual national juried competition presented by An Appalachian Summer Festival and the Turchin Center for the Visual Arts. Since its establishment by Martin and Doris Rosen in 1987, the Rosen competition continues a tradition of showcasing contemporary American sculpture in outdoor settings across the campus of Appalachian State University. This year, twelve sculptures have been selected. Cash prizes are awarded to three artists whose work is chosen by the juror and will be announced at the annual sculpture walk - a highlight of every summer festival season.
Ukrainian city remembers Jews on Holocaust anniversary

Monday, September 10, 2018 - 6:37pm

The Ukrainian city of Lviv, once a major center of Jewish life in Eastern Europe, commemorated on Sunday the 75th anniversary of the annihilation of the city’s Jewish population by Nazi Germany and honored those working today to preserve what they can of that vanished world. City authorities presented the honored recipients with 75 glass keys — replicas of a metal key that once belonged to a Jewish synagogue and which an American artist found at a street market in Lviv. The glass keys were the work of New Mexico-based artist Rachel Stevens, who found the rusted synagogue key on which they were based in February while seeking remnants of Jewish culture in eastern Galicia as part of a research project.
Art: Bringing the World to Boone

Thursday, July 19, 2018 - 2:49pm

Since opening in 2003, the Turchin Center for the Visual Arts has showcased international art from Mexico, China, Poland, South Africa and Brazil. This summer, three of the galleries will feature art from Australia, New Zealand, China and North America, while another exhibition will highlight challenges of the elephant species in Africa and Thailand.
Ahead of its time: Exhibition in Boone celebrates Black Mountain College’s diverse creative legacy

Friday, May 18, 2018 - 11:15am

More than 60 years after it went bankrupt, sold off its campus near Asheville and formally dissolved, Black Mountain College exerts an enduring influence on art and education in the U.S. and abroad. Appalachian State University is celebrating that legacy this spring with a series of events and programs centering on Black Mountain’s history and some of the people who taught, studied and made art there.
Art that provides understanding can promote conversation

Monday, September 18, 2017 - 10:42am

Turchin Center assistant director and curator Mary Anne Redding discusses the work "Flat Twist on a Remnant of Idyllic Days" which is part of the exhibit "Entanglements" by Sonya Clark. The exhibit, for which Redding is a co-curator, is now displaying at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, N.C.
The other festival: Last week at Appalachian Summer

Saturday, July 29, 2017 - 8:30pm

I motored up last weekend for a taste of the arts in cooler weather and took in two concerts and the 31st Rosen Outdoor Sculpture Competition & Exhibition. With 12 pieces from all over the country, it’s an object lesson in what a town — or campus — full of outdoor art can look like. Juror Gregory Elliott led about 30 people through the work on the morning on July 22. Chair of the Department of Art & Art History at the University of Texas, San Antonio, Elliott judged the sculpture from photos submitted by the artists.
Mary Anne Redding curates "Landscapes of Life & Death" at 516 Arts in Albuquerque

Monday, May 22, 2017 - 10:38am

Landscapes of Life & Death is a group photography exhibition in the upstairs gallery guest curated by Mary Anne Redding for PhotoSummer 2017 and in conjunction with the downstairs exhibition Fires of Change. Landscapes of Life & Death examines how photography poses a unique opportunity to look at loss, extinction, death and renewal, spanning emotional landscapes of human death as well as environmental landscapes of destruction.
Mary Anne Redding is assistant director and curator of the Turchin Center for the Visual Arts.
The New River, A New Perspective

Tuesday, May 9, 2017 - 2:47pm

By Lynn Rees-Jones; appearing in Carolina Mountain Life.
Art is often beautiful, sometimes controversial and hopefully enlightening. While some would not consider artfully arranged trash to be insightful, the Turchin Center for the Visual Arts at Appalachian State University has an exhibition that will likely surprise you, intrigue you and provide new perspective of the threats to the health and well-being of the water, land and people living along the New River.
Mary Anne Redding featured in All About Women

Thursday, March 23, 2017 - 11:06am

Turchin Center's assistant director and curator Mary Anne Redding has been featured in All About Women as one of the magazine's Remarkable Women of the High Country. Says AAW, "Since joining as curator in 2014, Mary Anne has brought exhibitions to Boone that are both relevant and awakening to the High Country community — from a collaboration of regional artists to showcase the headwaters of the New River, to a video sharing the experience of a woman of color working in a corporate office, to installations examining the influence of corporate agribusiness and biotech companies on the food supply."
Nile Project’s April 4 performance at Appalachian inspires a slew of residency activities over a 3-day period, benefitting programs from sustainability to the arts

Monday, March 13, 2017 - 1:48pm

On April 4, the Nile Project—a collective of 35 musicians from 11 Nile countries—will make sounds reflecting a remarkable synthesis of highly diverse rhythms and tonal systems, lyrics sung in numerous languages and instruments ranging from Kenyan kettledrums to Egyptian flutes. But that is not all. The Nile Project will hold a related residency at Appalachian State University, which will include 11 activities over three days beginning April 2, affecting not only various arts programs but also initiatives related to sustainability, of which Appalachian is a leader.
Hidden Talents - Emerging Artists: February art exhibit features works from Junaluska community

Wednesday, February 8, 2017 - 4:17pm

Although the artistic talents referred to in the show’s name belong to a tight-knit group of friends that attend Boone Mennonite Brethren Church, the Turchin Center’s Community Outreach Coordinator Pegge Laine can be credited with stoking their creative fires.
Turchin Center Unveils Four New Exhibitions

Monday, January 30, 2017 - 11:40am

The chilly days of winter have finally arrived and the Turchin Center for the Visual Arts at Appalachian State University invites the community to come in from the cold.

Video

Jessie and Katey at TCVA: An inside look at the creation of a sizzling staircase mural!

We are SO thrilled to share a behind-the-scenes look at the incredible mural @jessieandKatey created at the Turchin Center! Enjoy this "splash of happy" on the grand staircase outside the Turchin Center for the Visual Arts.

Walk with the Curator

Turchin Center Curator and Creative Director Mary Anne Redding provides a walking tour through the six Turchin Center galleries, highlighting four new exhibitions of contemporary work by nationally and internationally renowned artists that tell stories and provide a voice to often unheard perspectives on current and historical issues.

TCVA Walkthrough Lesia Maruschak

There are few places around the globe that have escaped the scars of genocide, of repression, of fear. Lesia Maruschak’s installations reclaim individual memory and, in claiming for herself a personal, familial history, transcends the self to articulate our collective history; her tears become our tears causing the oceans to rise at first imperceptibly and then in a torrent of “inconvenient truths.”

TCVA Walkthrough 17th Annual Appalachian Mountain Photography Competition (AMPC)

This competition provides both amateur and professional photographers the opportunity to showcase their interpretation of the unique character, people, places, and pursuits that distinguish the Southern Appalachians.

TCVA Walkthrough Expressive Arts

The expressive arts use imagery, storytelling, movement, music, drama, poetry, dreamwork and visual arts, in an integrated way, to foster human growth, development and healing.

TCVA Walkthrough Faculty Biennial

The Smith Gallery and the Turchin Center for the Visual Arts collaborate on biennial exhibitions of new work from the faculty in the Department of Art.

Hui Chi Lee, Lian 連 Lian 鏈 Gallery Walk-Through

Artist Hui Chi Lee's site-specific Installation, Lian 連 Lian 鏈, on view now at the Turchin Center for the Visual Arts, Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina - now extended through September 5, 2020.

Hui Chi Lee: Lian 連 Lian 鏈 Installation

Some behind-the-scenes content of the installation process for artist Hui Chi Lee's installation, Lian 連 Lian 鏈, on view now at the Turchin Center for the Visual Arts until June 6, 2020.

Hui Chi Lee

People are by nature social beings. People need other people to survive, and as such they tend to perpetually seek social interactions. However, human relationships are inherently complex and multi-faceted. The ideology of Hui Chi Lee’s series, Lián 連 and Liàn 鏈 begins with a pair of Chinese homophones “Lián 連 and Liàn 鏈” that, depending on the context, mean either “to connect” or “to enchain.”

Frank Hursh: Lifetime artist and educator

Frank Hursh has led a fascinating life dedicated to the arts and arts education. In recounting his first aesthetical experience in painting: “I don't know what it was that took me back to that little room where (Rufino) Tamayo’s exhibit was, but I went back a little bit later and sat for about four hours in that room viewing Tamayo’s paintings. I absolutely left with tears in my eyes and that was the very first time that I had ever had really an aesthetic feeling of what paintings could do.”

Kelsey Merreck Wagner: The Elephantine in the Anthropocene

The exhibition “The Elephantine in the Anthropocene” by Kelsey Merreck Wagner — on display July 6, 2018 through Jan. 12, 2019 at the Turchin Center for the Visual Arts at Appalachian State University — explores historic hunting practices in African countries as linked to the ivory trade in Asia, and how modern conservation is working to save the species.

Ben Butler, artist

Ben Butler is interested in the natural world. "I look at the natural sciences as one example of how we interact with our world and understand it," he says. "And really at the root, my work is about understanding the world."

Lowell Hayes, artist

As Appalachian State University's Turchin Center for the Visual Arts celebrates its 10th anniversary, we also celebrate the value art adds to our lives. This video is one of a three-part series of conversations with contemporary artists produced in 2013. Here, artist Lowell Hayes talks about his art, his creative process and what inspires him to make art.

Turchin 10 year anniversary

To celebrate the 10 year anniversary of the opening of Appalachian State University's Turchin Center for the Visual Arts, this video was created in may 2013 to commemorate Bob and Lillian Turchin, who helped the university realize the dream of sharing an active and engaging visual arts center with our students, faculty, staff and community.

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