All is not well at the Uptown Gallery in Franklin.

“It’s pretty bad,” said Sue Weathers. “We’re losing money, and keeping the gallery open is getting pretty hard.”

Co-director of the gallery and a member of the Macon County Art Association, which runs the gallery, Weathers is putting an open call out to the local residents, visitors and greater Western North Carolina that help is needed to ensure the longevity and survival of the 52-year-old nonprofit business.

Nearly 30 years after Bill Eleazer put the finishing touches on “Chasing Tadpoles,” a multi-piece bronze sculpture of three children playing in a pond, the former Tuscola High School art teacher’s work has come home to Waynesville. The only question is, where in town should it go? 

From blockbuster Broadway musicals to the obscure art of throat singing to politically-charged documentaries on Iranian oppression, Western Carolina University is filling the stage and screen with an impressive line-up of shows, acts and film screenings over the coming year.

Entertaining, thought-provoking and cultural enlightening, WCU has three different performance series plus a film series. Act now to get season tickets to any of the series, or clip and save the line-up for upcoming shows you won’t want to miss.

Well, hello there Western North Carolina.

As the arts and entertainment writer at The Smoky Mountain News, I spend my days wandering between art gallery openings, craft beer releases and front porch pickin’ sessions. Each week, I invite you along on the ride as I bring to life all the creative people, places and things that make Southern Appalachia so unique.

For Norma Hendrix, it’s all about connecting the dots.

“I love working in a community of artists,” she said. “I really like pulling all of those dots together, where you create a sense of community with the energy of people working side-by-side.”

With her hands fluttering like a hummingbird, Dana Claire loops skeins of colored yarn around a large pegboard.

Claire has been interested in fiber crafts her entire life and now, in her retirement years, has she decided to pursue her true passion of working with her hands by going back to school. Offering a nationally recognized professional crafts program, she found herself at Haywood Community College in Clyde. This semester, she’s learning and engaging in the new Creative Arts facility constructed on campus.

At first glance toward her work, you think Sara Alexander is a great photographer.

At second glance, you realize that’s not a picture, but a painting. The detailed, vibrant canvas is straight from the talented hands of a rising star in the Western North Carolina art scene.

Alexander lived in Florida until her family moved to Western North Carolina when she was 11. She knew from a very young age that she not only could create art, but also that she wanted to pursue something within the field.

Artists from around the Southeast will set up their easels and ready their colors in an outdoor painting spree around Cashiers for the weeklong Arts on the Green, a plein air art festival held from July 15-21.

Two new art galleries are opening in Bryson City this May only about a street’s width away from each other.

Blue Mountain Studios and Studio 19 both are gathering artists from various mediums to work in a studio setting and show their work in a storefront studio. The studios plan to have a collaborative relationship with the common goal of promoting the arts in Swain County.

Studio 19

Studio 19 is the collaboration of Debra Mills, a basket weaver; Joan Glover, who makes gourd art; Lori Anderson, a cornhusk artist; and Julie Bottorf, a jewelry maker.

“This is a studio primarily,” Mills said. “It’s all about the work and the learning and passing it on.”

The four women will consume most of 19 Everett St. with their workspace and a small teaching area. The remaining front portion of the store, formerly a yoga studio, will showcase art they have created.

“Working all by yourself, it puts you in a vacuum,” Mills said. By all working within a small space, “We can feed off each other, our excitement level.”

Mills previously owned The Cottage Craftsman, which is also in Bryson City, but said the venture became more about paperwork than art for her.

“All I did was paperwork. There was just too much administration,” Mills said.

So, Mills sold the Cottage Craftsman more than a year ago and began searching for a new place where she could focus more on weaving a basket than through mounds of paper work. She also roped in Anderson, whose work had immediately impressed her.

Anderson works with cornhusks — a skill she learned from area legend Annie Lee Bryson. Although she makes Bryson-esque cornhusk dolls, Anderson, a volunteer with the Great Smoky Mountain National Park, found her own niche. She has a deep fondness for Western North Carolina’s native wildflowers, which shows when examining her meticulously crafted cornhusk flowers.

“Rather than stealing her (Bryson’s) joy, I found my own,” Anderson said.

Anderson takes a camera and ruler on every hike. So, when she sees a particular flower that she loves, she can replicate it to scale and incorporate even the tiniest of details.

When Mills saw Anderson’s work for the first time, she was in awe.

“I went bonkers,” Mills said. “Her work was beautiful and pure and honest.”

In addition to working out of the backroom studio, the four artists plan to teach regular classes for children and adults. The tutorials will be anything from a simple cornhusk doll that can be crafted in 30 minutes to a more complex basket pattern that takes all day.

Construction on the studio/classroom portion of the business will be complete later this month. And, Mills hopes the gallery will open soon after.

Blue Mountain Studios

Blue Mountain Studios is a place “where artists can get a start,” said owner Brona Winchester.

The gallery/studio, which is located on Main Street in the heart of downtown Bryson City, officially opened for business a few days ago and is hoping to soon fill up its six separate studio spaces with working artists. Anyone can rent a work area that sits behind the storefront gallery or a larger room to host a variety of art classes.

Winchester said she plans to keep her prices reasonable so that new and young artists can afford to create there.

“I am trying to keep them very, very reasonable,” said Winchester, who charges a 30 percent commission for art sold out of the gallery.

Winchester also rents the neighboring storefront on Main Street. And, eventually, pending funds, Winchester hopes to sublease the other storefront and turn the space behind it into expanded studio space and a small venue for live music.

Winchester herself only dabbles in drawing and painting, but she wants to devote more of her time to her own artwork particularly since creative energy will be flowing throughout the building.

“There is going to be a lot of creative energy,” Winchester said.

But, the main impetus for the studio was to promote art in Bryson City, particularly up-and-coming artists.

“We can work together and really service the community more,” Winchester said. “We have so many talented people. We have to pull them out of the sheds and the barns (that they currently work out of).”

Among the artists currently featured in the gallery are painter Kathryn Hicks Tsonas, surrealist Daniel Murch, watercolorist Lenny Gemski and quilter Maddy Haughn. Blue Mountain Studios will remain open until at least 8 p.m. during the fall and summer months, Winchester said.

“For so long at 5 o’clock, it’s a ghost town,” Winchester said. “We want it to be a place where people feel welcome.”

Finnegans Wake took James Joyce 17 years to write, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel consumed four years of Michelangelo’s time and Beethoven needed about five years to complete his Fifth Symphony.

But artists participating in one of Waynesville’s most popular art events, Quick Draw, will get just an hour to create and complete their works of art.

Now in its 11th year, Quick Draw challenges regional artists to create a finished piece, ready for sale, in under one hour. Some 40 artists say they are up to the challenge, though it’s just the two-dimensional artists who are actually under the time gun. Metal, fiber and clay artists bring a pre-completed work to be auctioned off, in addition to  the timed works, at the end of Quick Draw to support arts education in Haywood County.

“Every year I say, ‘Never again,’” said oil painter Sarah Sneedon who travels to Waynesville to participate each year from the Caesars Head area in Upstate South Carolina. “It’s a lot of pressure. You sweat it, and you worry about it, and you try to plan down to the brush strokes and colors.”

Sneedon said she grew up in a family that was not artistic, one in which her father regarded those who were artists “as bums.” That background has made Sneedon all the more eager to support art education in the schools.

“I don’t have a lot of money to give, but I can torture myself once each year,” she said.

Some artists prepare for the competition racing the clock using kitchen timers. The practice — seeing how long their envisioned works will take them — can stave off the unfortunate problem of not quite being done when the bell goes off. That doesn’t always work, however. Real life can throw some real curves even at the most prepared of artists.

Last year, Sneedon remembered, she made the mistake of picking a technically challenging composition — two girls building a sand castle by the ocean.

“We got to five minutes to go and I didn’t have an arm on one of the girls,” she said, adding that she was forced to simply paint an arm in “fast.”

This year, Sneedon plans to paint sunflowers in the mountains. She’s yet to paint a trial run of the composition in the hour slotted for Quick Draw, but Sneedon expressed confidence that when the adrenaline kicks in she’d be able to complete the painting in the time required.

Artistic travails aside, QuickDraw has gotten so popular among area artists that the event — it’s not technically a competition — is now invitation only, said organizer Faye Wagoner.

“We have been blessed in that now we have such a following among artists and attendees we have more artists who are interested than who can actually participate,” Wagoner said.

This is the only event of its kind in the region, Wagoner said. There is a Quick Draw in the Highlands area, but that one allows artists a three-hour window instead of just 60 minutes.

Wagoner described Quick Draw in Waynesville as “an exhilarating evening. It’s just a terrific evening of fun.”

Some artists, like watercolorist Ann Vasilick, enjoys the challenge and competition of working beside other artists. She has selected a landscape in the Waynesville area to paint, which is out of this well-known artist’s bailiwick. Vasilick’s is best known for her buildings and street scenes, including those of Waynesville, and they are considered highly collectible.

She said she drove around the town until finding the particular view that attracted her, used photographic elements and did thumbnail sketches on the spot. Vasilick then returned to the studio to render a full-sized sketch of the painting. When this artist is unable to sleep, she would mentally paint the scene dozens of times.

Vasilick might be painting a landscape that is a little different than her best-known works but she plans on using the techniques that got her to the party: the meticulous and loving use of light and dark, volume and texture.

“I’ll use all the same elements I always use,” Vasilick said.

Complicating the task for Vasilick is the medium, watercolors, that she works in. She must be aware of the wetness of the painting and the necessity for it to dry within the required time. Many artists have blow-driers at the ready to hasten the process.

Oil artist Joyce Schlapkohl of Waynesville is looking forward to the competition with, perhaps, a bit of dread, too.

“I love it,” Schlapkohl said. “It’s stressful but exciting. When it’s over, it is nice.”

Schlapkohl, who has participated every year in Quick Draw, said she keeps trying to prepare a bit more each time.

“That hour really zips by,” she said in explanation, adding that she no longer says “hello” to spectators or friends milling past during the event. “I just try to stay focused.”

Schlapkohl said she believes all the artists involved are painting increasingly difficult paintings for Quick Draw. When the event started, she said, it was so new and unfamiliar everyone simply ensured they had a composition that could be completed within the required hour.

Schlapkohl’s technique is to break her anticipated painting down to basics.

“And I try to pick something I’m familiar with and that I feel that I can do in an hour,” she said.

Schlapkohl said she’s had people tell her before they actually enjoy her Quick Draw paintings more than her standard work, because it’s fresher. The artist also believes there is a value, beyond the important goal of supporting arts education, to the competition: “Anytime you push yourself as an artist that’s probably useful,” Schlapkohl said.

Art comes to life at annual Quick Draw in the Mountains

WHEN: 4:30-9:30 p.m. Saturday, April 28  

WHERE: Laurel Ridge Country Club, 788 Eagle Nest Rd., Waynesville

HOW MUCH: $50 in advance

MORE INFO: www.wncquickdraw.com