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Arts and Crafts at Pack Square Park

Above: artist, Vadim Kishko

Pack Square Park Hosts The Big Crafty July 17

Inspired by the vibrant street festivals of Taiwan, the Big Crafty will be held Sunday, July 17, from noon to 6 p.m. outdoors in Pack Square Park in downtown Asheville. This free twice-yearly event, which showcases 150 carefully selected regional artists and crafters, celebrates handmade ingenuity and promotes innovative microbusiness.

The Big Crafty has incubated dozens of successful creative businesses. Cofounders and organizers Brandy Bourne and Justin Rabuck own one such entrepreneurial endeavor, Horse and Hero, a neo-Appalachian art and design shop at 14 Patton Avenue. “This is our ninth year and 17th event,” says Brandy. “We started it out in 2008 at the Grey Eagle, after which the Asheville Art Museum offered us the use of their venue and we have held our event there every July and December since. With the museum’s renovation now underway, we will be temporarily holding our events elsewhere.”

Some artists new to the event this year are husband-and-wife team Melina LaVecchia and Jacob Daniels, who own and operate Overflow Studios in Boone. Melina produces modern tableware using locally sourced stoneware and a variety of surface techniques—including precious metal decals, china painting, underglaze watercolor, and hand drawn, silk-screen decal appliqué—while Jacob creates fine art oil paintings and giclée reproductions inspired by the Appalachian region.

Arts and Crafts at Pack Square Park

Artist, Melina LaVecchia

Also new to The Big Crafty are Erina Schultz of Boone, whose work focuses on prints made through the process of relief, lithography and screenprinting; Jocelyn Mathewes of Johnson City, Tennessee, whose botanically-themed work is two-dimensional mixed media, with a focus on the cyanotype process; Chadwick Tolley of Evans, Georgia, who creates screen prints, woodcuts, and etchings; and Vadim Kishko of Asheville, producing paintings, color pencil drawings, and prints and originals in ball point pen.

Brandy says The Big Crafty’s slogan—Shop handmade. Shop indie. Shop fun—reflects the importance of maker skills and small-scale entrepreneurship to the health of the community. “We believe that local commerce should be an opportunity to reinforce social bonds,” she says. “Buying handmade from friends and neighbors is an opportunity to build community, and to have a good time doing so.”

See the full list of this year’s featured artists and learn more at thebigcrafty.com.

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