Designer shopping bags on display at The Bascom

Historical shopping bag samples from well-known department stores and merchants will be on display Nov. 14-Dec.18 as “The Shopping Bag: Exemplary Art and Design” opens at The Bascom in Highlands.

The shopping bag exhibition opens with a free public reception from 5 to 7 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 14, featuring wine and hors d’oeuvres. It is the last Bascom opening reception of the year.

“Shopping bags are an integral part of contemporary society and provide visual artifacts of our environment and popular culture,” said Kaye Gorecki, Bascom artistic director. “These icons produced by department and chain stores in the 20th century reflect the changing trends in art, design and marketing. In 1961, Bloomingdale’s department store made retail history by introducing the first designer shopping bag. Artist Joseph Kinigstein was commissioned to create a bag for promotional purposes. Since then, both famous and fledgling artists, architects, fashion illustrators and ad designers have created bags for various institutions, and almost overnight, they came into their own as design objects.”

Shopping bags have been featured in art museums all over the world and are a part of many public and private collections including the Smithsonian’s Cooper Hewitt Museum in New York and the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. The Bascom exhibition is on loan from the Newark Public Library, N.J., and curated by William Dane.

The exhibition is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays. Admission is free.

For more information about the shopping bag exhibition or other Bascom offerings, visit www.thebascom.org or call 828.526.4949.

Music jam at Marianna Black is Nov. 5

The next community music jam at the Marianna Black Library in Bryson City will be held from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 5, in the library auditorium.

Anyone with a guitar, banjo, mandolin, fiddle, dulcimer — anything unplugged — is invited to join. Singers are also welcome. Larry Barnett of Grampa’s Music in Bryson City facilitates the jam. The community jams offer a chance for musicians of all ages and levels of ability to share music they have learned over the years or learn the old-time mountain songs.

The music jams are offered to the public each first and third Thursday of the month year round.

For more information, call the library at 828.488.3030. This program received support from the North Carolina Arts Council, a division of the Department of Cultural Resources, through the Swain County Center for the Arts.

Goforth headlines WCU bluegrass series

Western Carolina University’s newly christened “First Thursday Old-Time and Bluegrass Jam Session Series” for 2009-10 will get underway Thursday, Nov. 5, with a concert by versatile musician Josh Goforth, followed by a jam session in which local musicians are invited to participate.

Goforth, a Madison County native best known for his fiddling abilities, will get the music started at 7 p.m. in the auditorium of WCU’s Mountain Heritage Center. Performers of old-time and bluegrass music are invited to bring their instruments and take part in the jam session that will follow Goforth’s performance.

Formerly a part of East Tennessee State University’s bluegrass and country music program, Goforth has toured extensively and has shared the stage with artists such as Ricky Skaggs, the Yonder Mountain String Band and the Steep Canyon Rangers. Goforth also provided fiddle music for the movie “Songcatcher” in 2000.

The concerts and jam sessions will continue at the Mountain Heritage Center on the first Thursday of each month through May, with all programs held from 7 to 9 p.m. Other performers scheduled to present shows are Danielle Bishop, Wayne Seymour, the Frogtown Four and Laura Boosinger.

The events are free and open to everyone. Pickers and singers of all ages and experience levels are invited to take part in the jam sessions, and the events also are open to those who just want to listen.

The Mountain Heritage Center is located on the ground floor of WCU’s H.F. Robinson Administration Building. For more information call the museum at 828.227.7129.