Yes, it has been a hot and dry summer so far, but I’ve always been of the mind that summer can get away with an awful lot and still make me happy to be alive.
Gina Malone, Editor
Read about and gaze upon some gorgeous flowers in this issue: zinnias, virgin’s bower and, at the top of my favorites list, sunflowers. This year my helper gardeners, the birds and chipmunks, surprised me with sunflower plants in all sorts of places I hadn’t intended for them to be, and that’s what makes these tall beauties all the more breathtaking every time I see a bumblebee crawl across their exquisite faces or a goldfinch swoop in for a seed. They were gifts.
Our lovely cover image by Sandra Brugh Moore with the sun low in the sky, a day coming to a dramatic end, seems fitting as we move into August, days shortening, autumn looking on from afar—and there’s a touching story as well behind the painting. Moore says about her paintings: “I am trying to capture fleeting moments in time.”
Art, music, theatre, film, literature and photography—we tried to cover, throughout these pages, most of the pleasurable means of creating. Extraordinary creativity is ours to enjoy in Western North Carolina, and it can be difficult to decide what to experience with all of the other things in life demanding our attention. I like artist Jaime Byrd’s philosophy. “We live in a world that encourages us to move way too fast from one thing to the next,” she says. “I hope art asks us to pause more.”
At Asheville Gallery of Art, see the exhibition of paintings by Martin Pasco, who has paused patiently throughout his years as an artist to capture more than 80 paintings of the French Broad River.
Finally, how could I not give a shout-out to the fun madness of the Western North Carolina Bigfoot Festival? There again, that’s what summer days do best: bring out the kid in all of us, tease us with possibility and, ultimately, offer the consummate setting for memories. Who of us in recalling childhood does not smile at the joy-filled recollections of innocent summers long ago? We didn’t know then that they were “fleeting moments in time.”
We’ll see you in September!
Gina Malone can be reached at gina@thelaurelofasheville.com
