An artistic marriage of fine gardens and fine art is on display now at Haywood County Arts Council’s Gallery 86, with “Gardens, Mountains and Streams: An Artist’s View of the Haywood County Garden Tour” showing through April 28.

This intertwining of what constitutes two of life’s great passions for many people is the brainchild of Susan Greb, a master gardener in Haywood County, and is the work of the Haywood County Arts Council and the Haywood County Master Gardener Volunteer Association. The two organizations spearheaded the effort to create this unique show.

“The call went out to different artists — in all different mediums — and it all came together,” said Greb, who serves as one of the event coordinators. “It’s a really fun kind of exhibit.”

The Haywood County Master Gardener Volunteer Association selected the 12 exhibiting artists through a competitive process. Artists’ subject matter was focused on six private gardens to be featured on a June 23 garden tour in the county. The artists, working from photographs, were challenged to incorporate gardens, mountains and streams into their works.

“We were wondering how we could promote the garden tour,” said Cynthia Morris of the Haywood County Master Gardener Volunteer Association, explaining that artists were asked “to pick some facet of the gardens they really wanted to represent.”

Last year alone, more than 500 people participated in the Haywood County garden tour.

The art and gardens partnership includes a rain barrel project with the Haywood Waterways Association. That group is supplying rain barrels and the Blue Ridge Water Media Society and local high school students are painting them. Former arts council board member and volunteer Mary Alice Lodico is spearheading the rain barrel project.

This aspect of the show emphasizes the environmental component to gardening; the painted rain barrels will be available for purchase at $150 each during the Gallery 86 show and on the day of the garden tour. Sales benefit the Haywood Waterways Association and the Arts Council. Custom orders are also available.

The multi-partnership exhibition grew organically from a simple idea to the work of many people and groups.

“We’ve always looked for opportunities to partner with other organizations,” said Kay Miller, executive director of the Haywood County Arts Council. “And I thought this was a great idea.”

Miller described the exhibit as a true showcase of artists.

“We have a wide range of skills of the folks involved in the show,” Miller said. “And everybody has done a great job.”

Hearing from the artists

For the artists, the project brought some special challenges. Metalworker Teresa Sizemore created an 18-inch tall exquisitely designed and rendered butterfly resting on black-eyed susans.

Sizemore is mainly self-taught but has taken a number of courses at John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown.

The photograph she worked from did not include the blue butterfly — that she envisioned herself and added to complete the metal sculpture “and make more of a scene,” she said.

Sizemore hand-painted the butterfly’s body; the metal is recycled from a scrap metal shop in Asheville.

“I try to use as much recycled material as I can,” Sizemore said.

She first sketched out a blueprint of sorts and then used either metal shears or a plasma cutter to complete her work.

Sizemore described metal as “forgiving.”

“I really like working in metal because you can do anything you want,” she said, adding that you can cut out, grind out or add to metal as needed.

Susan Livengood, who studied art in college but took a bit of a detour for a time raising a family, worked in acrylics. She’s more used to working in oils, but time constraints solidified her decision to work in a slightly different medium. The artists picked their photographs in December. That didn’t leave a lot of time for the artists to actually compose and paint or work in whatever medium they are accustomed to working in.

“There just really wasn’t time for oils,” said Livengood, who has studio and gallery space in the old Fines Creek School.

Livengood, who has painted many flowers and botanical works, was lucky enough to have first choice of the photographs because she happened to be in town visiting on the day they were made available. One of her pieces is a close up of red flowers, the other is a more abstract composition of a stream with a Hindu-like statue at the top.

“I was more trying to catch the peacefulness of the water,” Livengood said. “It was kind of a Zen spot.”

Livengood’s pieces underscore her devotion to working in color: both pieces are vibrant expressions of garden scenes and are distinctly personal.

The artists involved

Nancy Blevins, silk dye painting, watercolor, mixed media; Scott Bradley, painting; Barbara Brook, painting; Rebecca Hellman, fused glass; Ansie Holman, clay; Suzanne Leclaire, painting; Susan Livengood, painting; Cheryl Megivern, painting; Lycia Murray, painting; Teresa Sizemore, metalwork; Mary Elizabeth Stith, painting; Kaaren Stoner, clay.

Want to go?

Who: Haywood County Arts Council

What: Gallery 86 exhibit entitled “Gardens, Mountains & Streams: An Artist’s View of the Haywood County Garden Tour.”

When: Wednesday, April 4 through Saturday, April 28. An artist’s reception will be held Friday, April 13 from 6-8 p.m.

Where: Haywood County Arts Council’s Gallery 86 at 86 North Main Street in Waynesville.

Admission: Free

For more information about the garden tour call the N.C. Cooperative Extension Service center at 828.456.3575. Garden tour tickets are available at the Arts Council’s Gallery 86 and other outlets.

Hearing The Bascom being called a world-class facility might seem a stretch until you pay a firsthand visit to the six building, six-acre campus in Highlands. Then, however, the words seem entirely appropriate and scaled to reality.

The Bascom is a center for the visual arts created in 2009. The nonprofit doesn’t have a large private collection of works; the center instead focuses on providing top-notch exhibitions primarily garnered from across the Southeast. Six exhibitions were held last year. These included shows featuring glass artist Richard Ritter, painter and printmaker Frank Stella and ceramics maker Ben Owen.

The advantage to artists showing in this well-heeled, upscale Highlands market is huge: The Owen’s show, featuring the Seagrove potter’s signature pieces, almost completely sold out, The Bascom’s Ezra Gardiner said.

That kind of track record helps The Bascom lure a caliber of artists few other similar-sized facilities can boast of attracting.

Some of the highlights this year include an exhibition of paintings by Art Rosenbaum and the large-scale, kinetic sculpture of suspended ceramic discs that are mounted and hung from the ceiling by artist Tim Curtis. There also will be an exhibit titled “Her Impressions” featuring paintings by women during the Impressionism movement using works on loan from a number of Southeast museums and institutions.

There’s one important point about The Bascom that people working at the center are eager to make. The center takes great pride in putting what Executive Director Jane Jerry calls “The Bascom twist” on exhibits while they are displayed here.

“You can only do that with a small institution like this,” said Jerry, who has led The Bascom for about a year.

What does “The Bascom twist” entail? For his part, Gardiner described the twist as “putting a spin on it” by showing artists’ pieces in a manner that is unique and design rich — from the manner in which the pieces are placed and lighted for viewing to drawing on the attributes of the facility itself. Most of the shows are curated in-house by staff, and during the summertime are displayed for eight-week periods at a time. Big exhibitions are in the main gallery, smaller ones in a loft gallery upstairs from the primary viewing area.

Much of “The Bascom twist” is truly the setting of the facility itself: you enter the center through an 87-foot by 14-foot, 53-ton covered bridge transplanted to WNC from New Hampshire.

Once on campus, the main building is 27,500 square feet of museum-quality space made of hand-hewn, post-and-beam barn pieces accentuated with modern stone and glass. Even the floors are unstained white pine re-purposed from several historic barns. There also is a studio barn, a rebuilt rough-hewn barn complete with studio spaces for pottery and three-dimensional arts instruction.

So much of “the twist” is the fact that the paintings, ceramics, metal work and glass pieces are shown in a backdrop that is truly unique.

Understanding the community

Setting up and running The Bascom probably wouldn’t be possible in WNC outside of a venue such as Highlands, where the residents are affluent and visibly supportive of the arts. In addition to The Bascom, this is a community that can boast of the Highlands Playhouse, the Highlands Cashiers Chamber Music concerts, the American Museum of Cut and Engraved Glass and the Instant Theater Company, featuring improvisation.

“Highlands and the whole plateau area is different from other communities,” Jerry said. “I’m so new, it has taken me a while to understand the profile of donors and funding sources here.”

The Bascom, in becoming The Bascom, has successfully tapped more than 800 sources — corporations and foundations but mainly individual — in paying about $9 million of the $13 million in its construction campaign. Fundraising continues for this new facility, and for a separate educational and exhibitions program endowment.

Jerry said The Bascom, in comparison to most galleries and art centers featuring the caliber of artist being exhibited here, is so small “we just haven’t had a lot of government support — mainly individual.”

The Bascom has a mortgage on the property that the nonprofit is in process of paying off. And with a board of directors totally committed to offering free admission to the arts, fundraising is key to the facility’s current and future wellbeing.

“I don’t want to sugarcoat the idea that this isn’t an ongoing challenge. We are raising money all of the time,” said Jerry, adding that fundraising “is the job” for any manager of a nonprofit.

Jerry was most recently the project-planning director for Exploration Station, the Republic of Ireland’s first interactive science center. Prior to her stint in Ireland, Jerry was the president and CEO of Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art in Nashville, Tenn. She’s no stranger to fundraising challenges: During her tenure at Cheekwood, Jerry led a capital campaign that resulted in an $18.5 million investment in the garden and facilities, and the Cheekwood Museum of Art attained accreditation by the American Association of Museums.

The Bascom has three main benefit events: a wine festival in May; a garden festival in July; and an art, design and craft show in October. It also has an extensive membership of 946 people, plus 300 or so volunteers who provide a veritable army of help to the 10 paid staff members.

Jerry said that she has spent this first year trying to be “a really good listener, and to understand The Bascom and its place in this community. And to work as hard as I can to begin to define a vision for the future that is a reflection of what this community wants.”

One thing the community clearly wants is a tangible connection with The Bascom. Outreach programs make that connection, plus appeal to donors, Jerry said. Among the upcoming programs this spring is a partnership with the Highlands Literacy Council’s after-school art program. This focuses on sea life and will result in an “Underwater” exhibit being installed in the fall.

The Bascom also partners with the local food pantry and with other groups as part of its outreach programs, plus provides scholarship money and free family memberships to the facility.

The Bascom history

The Bascom exists because of artist Watson Barratt, a part-time Highlands resident who died in 1962, who wanted to establish a permanent gallery in his seasonal home to display works by regional artists. His bequest made exhibition space at the Hudson Library in Highlands possible starting in 1983. The then Hudson Library building incorporated proceeds from the estate and included a dedicated space for the Bascom-Louise Gallery.

In 1999 the two entities separated. The art center attained nonprofit status, formed a board of directors, wrote bylaws and hired staff. In 2009, The Bascom moved to its new campus.

Source: The Bascom

At The Bascom

• “Chick’s: It’s All Gone to the Birds,” March 31-June 17.

• Alex Matisse: “Ometto,” May 12-Oct. 1.

• “Green Art:” May 17-July 8.

• “Her Impressions:” June 23-Sept. 16.

• “Bascom Members Challenge, Couples:” Aug. 18-Oct. 14.

• Art Rosenbaum: “Voices,” Sept. 1-Nov. 10.

• American Craft Today: Sept. 22-Dec. 29.

• “Giving Trees:” Nov. 17-Jan. 1.

www.thebascom.org for additional details. Admission is free.

When the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians took over the Cherokee Indian Hospital from the Indian Health Service in 2002, the hospital’s administrators faced a challenge.

They wanted the hospital to feel like it belonged to the community, but they inherited a building that was far from welcoming.

“People wanted to be surrounded by Cherokee things,” said Jody Adams, the hospital’s director of community relations.

The hospital’s motto “Ni-hi tsa-tse-li” means “It belongs to you,” but there was nothing Cherokee about the white walls and clinical feel inside the hospital.

Adams formed a culture committee comprised of hospital staff and community elders and turned to the Cherokee Preservation Foundation for grant funding. Susan Jenkins, executive director of the Foundation, said the hospital’s makeover mission was exactly the kind of project the organization wants to fund.

“When they came to us, we thought it was a great fit, because they would have to work with the elders and the community and reach out to the local artists,” Jenkins said.

The Foundation has contributed $20,000 per year to the hospital’s cultural makeover. Adams has overseen the projects, which partner with local artists to transform the interior spaces of the building into venues for displaying Cherokee art and culture.

When you walk in the main entrance, you can see the impact right away. A large mural in the waiting area combines Cherokee words written in the syllabary and their English translations. The television monitors in the waiting rooms show cultural documentaries instead of Fox News or CNN.

Look deeper in the hospital and you’ll see walls filled with the portraits of elders, or hand-painted with animal tracks.

Jenkins has been impressed with the hospital’s transformation. An enrolled member of the Choctaw tribe of Oklahoma, she has seen enough of IHS hospitals to know the difference.

“Now when you go in there you get a sense that ‘Oh gee, this is my place,’” Jenkins said.

Room by room, Adams’ committee has targeted rooms for overhauls. They started with the hospice room, a place where patients come to live their last days in comfort surrounded by family. Then they found an artist to design a traditional Road to Soco Mountain pattern, and they filled a hallway with it.

The waiting area to the dental clinic has a wall-sized mural of a mountain stream. Another room shows the process of making river cane baskets.

“One of the things we wanted to do with every room is teach something,” Adams said.

Adams said the latest project is to transform the hospital’s inpatient rooms.

“Most of the inpatient rooms still have that IHS feel,” Adams said. “The research shows the rooms are a factor in the healing process.”

Adams wanted new ideas for the rooms, so she turned to Western Carolina University’s interior design program for a partnership.

“I wanted new ideas. I wanted to show the nurses and the providers that there are a lot of options. We don’t have to be a facility full of white rooms,” Adams said.

Candace Roberts, a WCU interior design professor, along with her students created a portfolio of potential design schemes for the inpatient rooms and along the way they met with elders to learn about the Cherokee culture. The first transformed inpatient room was finished last week, but Adams said the transformation of the hospital will continue.

Promoting culture

Filling the otherwise institutional walls of the Cherokee hospital with cultural themes is just one of many projects funded by the Cherokee Preservation Foundation. The Foundation was formed in 2000 with a mission to preserve Cherokee culture, enhance economic development and improve the environment using casino revenue. Since 2002, the Foundation has given out more than $47 million in grants throughout the region, which in turn have generated more than $100 million when combined with matching money.

By Julia Merchant • Staff Writer

When Paula McElroy is asked about the art scene in Haywood County when she moved here in 1966, she chuckles.

By Michael Beadle

Waynesville art gallery owners don’t just want to sell art. They want people to ask lots of questions about art, see how it is actually made and how all ages can create art.

It’s all about the experience of discovering art.