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And i don’t mind disagreeing with you once in a while either bill – it keeps us brothers on their toes! 🙂
and A to the P – Ok, i’ll make a reference you probably know – Fonzie from Happy days: "If you have to say you’re cool, Eeehhy, you’re probably not."
I made that one up too. :\
By "old zen saying" do you mean a saying that you, Zen, made up?
Those who know don’t tell huh? So much for schools, universities, parenting, etc etc…
zen… if you can’t vote with your actions on stuff like this, you have no voice.
Love your slideshow, looks like some good stuff there, stuff in which I would be interested
But
I ss this as part of a trend in marketing to make the hideous development there more urbane and acceptable.
We will have to agree to disagree on this one.
You know I will always love you anyway.
Whoever is to blame – I wont be going to see it. I can’t stand seeing clear-cut Reynolds Mt. and the picture Ash posted looks God-awful – whoever clear-cut this valley should be shot! To add insult to injury, didn’t John Cramm hold an "opening" at one of his establishments and charge $50 a pop?
Oh the greed!
I’ll continue to walk the French Broad River Park and look at the empty concrete slabs that some clever trickster has tagged "Art removed for your protection".
What a shame!
I’ve been following this with interest since I enjoy contemporary art of all types. That was a very interesting slide show Zen, thanks.
I visited the site this week and was hugely disappointed in the location and setting. As people have said before, there is very little intimacy and natural beauty in the setting. It looks all too barren — much like a new subdivision with straw and grass and hardly any trees. Very hostile and stark environment.
Some of the works are interesting, but most just seem to be take-offs of sculpture works and concepts that I’ve seen for decades. The layout design is not very viewer friendly as the pieces are way too far apart.
At least we don’t have the stacked iceboxes this time, but some of the work seems more appropriate for a junkyard.
Nice attempt, but the new location is a disaster.
Ash, i too hope that the dance and other people portions of the festival can draw people in for a more intimate look. I lived in DC when the Vietnam Memorial was put in and remember the huge uproar and hateful rhetoric that many spewed about it – how it was just a hole in the ground and how it didn’t honor the heroes or dead… and now it is sacred and honored ground where people reconnect with that failed war…
Anyway i hope that people can reserve judgement – though obviously not people like Bill who want nothing to do with it because of where it is and who helped make it happen after Asheville as a city failed them. But would people mind looking at the slideshow?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/zen/sets/72157607684085742/show/
There’s an old zen saying, A to the P: "Those who know don’t tell and those who tell don’t know."
The sculpture festival was a good the first years, but the move to Woodfin and association with Reynolds Mtn has absolutely ruined it. It does look like a vast construction zone and is not in any way intimate or inviting.
I know for a fact that the City of Asheville Parks Dept had a lot of serious issues with the organizers, Mr. & Mrs. Winkler.
It was not all about city bureaucracy, but it was absolutely about the outrageous demands the organizers made, as well as conflicts of interest.
The exhibit has become entirely too commercial for the City to be involved with.
Zen is not about a lack of visuals. It is about a subtle balance of negative and positive space, emptiness and substance.
A rock garden is Zen.
A desert with a few pebbles in it (i.e. clearcut central scultpture festival) is NOT.
And what idiot would think ashvegas users are kids? Do you even read ashevegas, annonymous? What on here appeals to anyone not out of hihschool?
In conclusion, you are as much a coward as you are a fool.
i appreciate everybody weighing in. i want to support the festival. i love the sculpture pieces.
but honestly, the current location, in its current state, is a bleak landscape for such work. zen, my reaction is the opposite of yours – rather than draw me in, the barren land pushes me away. the works get lost. it has an inhospitable feel. there’s no easy way to navigate the setting, either by car or by foot.
i’m still holding out hope that some of the upcoming performances will bring life and warmth to the cold construction zone. and that’s what this year’s RiverSculpture Festival is to me — still under construction.
scare you enough not to post your name, though?
This "kid" is 54 and has been around enough to recognize when an event is being seconded as a prop by interests, AKA astroturf.
I have been an active supporter of the River Sculpture project for years, as long as it was what it was.
I refuse to participate in the glorification of Reynolds Mountain, and I don’t care if those people have roots deeper than my 10 generations here.
Thanks for playing. So, kid… what do you say?
I’ve been to and photographed and (in full disclosure) have artwork there. It isn’t the same intimate space that Asheville had originally, but it’s a wide-open area that makes me want to approach each sculpture from many angles (i find i tend to spiral in to each piece), but sculpture is <i>about</i> space and its relationship to it.
A reminder that Asheville lost the previously used west asheville park because of Asheville city beaurocratic BS and their own need to micromanage, not because the organizers were at fault (or need to be looked into as someone suggested). They put time, their own money and a lot of sweat to give this to us and its fine not to like it, and i guess it’s your opinion to dislike it because you don’t like the patron who helps sponsor it. Even worse to dislike it before you’ve seen it.
As far as someone ‘cooking up a river’ the reality of that is that next year there is a good possibility that it will be beside the French Broad river again, though up near Woodfin and not West Asheville.
Does it really matter what a clique of middle-schoolers thinks about Riversculpture or Reynolds Mountain? Grow up, get out of your basement and join the real world. Reynolds Mountain wasn’t built by transplants and Lesley is a great gal. I’m heading up to Woodfin right now to check it out myself. You kid(s) don’t scare me.
What a shame they moved to Woodfin. It is really a horrible location.
And right, where is the RIVER?
sculpture is for everyone. The best sculpture touches everyone. The sculpture aimed at pretentious douchebags touches only the "cultured".
"Sculpture is for cultured people not the narrow minded.
Repeat sentence."
Only an ASS would make such a statement. I majored in Art/Sculpture in college. The thing people don’t like about this has nothing to do with the sculpture. This is just another example of how Asheville has been raped and ruined by developers and transplants.
Asheville – Paradise Lost.
Asheville – the Paris Hilton of the South!
That picture doesn’t even look real! How horrible – major clearcutting!
Awful, Awful, Awful!
You couldn’t pay me to go see it!
Of course Lesley Groetsch is going to be a cheerleader for this feeble attempt to "class up" Woodfin since she is the sales manager for Reynolds Mtn. I guess she has little else to do these days.
It does look like the location is a construction zone, or maybe a former landfill that has been partially cleaned up.
Why does the River Sculpture ask for donations when there are already corporate sponsors? Is this group a non-profit? If so, why is the web site a dot.com instead of dot.org?
Why are they also in the business of trying to lease sculpture to commercial companies?
Someone should look into the organizers.
It looks really barren and empty and resembles an unfinished construction site (which is very appropriate for Reynolds Mtn and Woodfin). The sculptures are totally lost! There is no sense of intimacy for the art work as there was at the previous location in West Asheville. 🙁
I took at look at it just yesterday. Ugh, what a terrible site. Looks so barren, unfinished and totally man-made. Given the fact that the developers raped the side of the mountain to build homes, it is not really a very scenic vista either. The other site was far superior to this one.
I don’t understand why this event is called "River" Sculpture any longer–there is no river at all. Some of the pieces were interesting, but I think this location will be very problematic. It is hard to locate if you are not familiar with the area, and with gas shortages and the like, I think this event will have a hard time this year.
I really dislike that the event is associated with Reynolds Mountain and its developers.
Sculpture is for cultured people not the narrow minded.
Repeat sentence.
Lesley
You can put lipstick on a pig…. it is still a pig.
"Cooking up a river" ??? is she God?
Here’s an idea… go back to cooking the books on what is left of Reynolds Mountain.
That’s not a very big ball of foil.
Well, we love the event, the works of art, Arlene and Robert Winkler, and all the people who have shown their support for RiverSculpture. Bringing large scale public art to Woodfin is a shot in the arm for this small community. We are just a stone’s throw from several schools and the Winklers are working hard to make RiverSculpture a tool for arts education. I understand that the event is in a new place that may be unfamiliar to some, but it is still in Buncombe County and literally yards away from Asheville city limits. And stay tuned, I think Arlene may be cooking up a "river!"
Lesley Groetsch,
Reynolds Mountain
hate it.
not going.
big loss for city
Is there a river?