1: Hominy Creek Heron, Kimberly Hodges Stevens
Kimberly has been a professional artist and designer for over 26 years; her product designs, sculptures, and paintings have sold throughout the US, Europe, Australia, and Japan.
As a painter, woodworker, and mixed-media artist, my fundamental desire is to make work that brings pleasure to the viewer. Through color, pattern, and media my intention is to communicate joy, inspiration, and the finest of universal energies. Over the years, my studio has evolved into a color/pattern laboratory, where the histories of visual culture and harmonious patterns that have accumulated over the centuries mix freely.
My process begins with drawing directly on baltic birch and cutting it out with my scroll saw. Surface carvings are applied with a rotary tool, sanded, and then liquid acrylics are painted directly on the wood. Color and patterns embody palpable energies that can be channeled into images and objects. The dynamic range and subtle variations produced by these combinations are an infinite source of inspiration-I enjoy pushing the limits of these combinations toward greater complexity, vibrancy, and expressiveness. I think of color as a literal portal to the mysterious and miraculous.
By doing so, I believe my work can serve as a conduit for the creativity and spiritual wisdom contained in cultural history, while not referring explicitly to any one culture or period. Thus, my work is inclusive, contemporary, and open to interpretation. https://www.etsy.com/shop/GoldfishMarmalade
2: Hominy Creek: With Us & Without Us Max Cooper
Max Cooper is an Asheville photographer whose work focuses on the haunting and disappearing beauty of the North Carolina mountains.
Website: www.maxcooperphoto.com, Instagram: @maxcooperavl
I’ve seen Hominy rise more than once. Before the Greenway existed, this trail was just an unmarked path my wife and I followed on our evening walks. That was how I first discovered the bridges I’ve photographed here. In 2004 we lowered buckets from the older bridge and gathered floodwater to flush our toilet after hurricanes overwhelmed Asheville’s water system.
A decade later, during a troubled time, it was in Hominy Creek that I learned to fly fish. It’s not a pristine wilderness, but when you have only a few hours to escape, you choose waters that are close to home. I’ve explored every inch of this creek that is publicly accessible–and quite a bit that is not–chasing fish that refuse to die no matter how poorly we treat them. That’s how I found the second scene I’ve pictured here: An undisclosed location where sunfish hid in the submerged roots of an enormous tree. This scene is gone now, washed away in last month’s flood.
Only a few miles apart, these spots represent the dichotomy of Hominy Creek. Its headwaters seep from Mt. Pisgah, but its mouth opens in the city limits. It ends among us, but begins alone. The difference pictured here is us.
3: Reddenhollow Taylor Moses
Reddenhollow is the singer/songwriter project of Asheville musician Taylor Moses. At times Reddenhollow has taken shape as a band, duo, or solo act spanning from indie-rock to its current form: melancholic, acoustic-folk songs. Growing up in North Carolina, Taylor felt a sense of homecoming upon returning to the state after some time away. His most recent release, Crying Crow, was greatly influenced by walking along Hominy Creek. This collection of songs explores the unbearable beauty of impermanence through personal narrative and the tradition of storytelling in acoustic folk music.
Listen at reddenhollow.com or any streaming service.
“Reddenhollow songs have a way of wrapping around one’s life. Truly listening to them feels like stepping into a river. The separation between Taylor Moses’s melody, story and my own heart disappears and before I can articulate or understand it, the songs speak my own story – a witness to my secret grief and to my rising dreams. I would like to turn my body into smoke, mist, rain, light and let these songs take me somewhere sacred.
The unique timbre, grit and depth to Taylor’s voice sounds something ancient. In this collection of songs, Taylor takes us on one journey. The soft moments are so beautifully fragile that they allow me to walk through them while wounded, and suddenly throughout, Taylor’s voice takes us and the loving resolve and almost righteous anger become enough to pull us out of our suffering and onto ever present ground.” – Mimi Gilbert
4: WIND: a Collaboration on our AIR & How It Moves Lisa Smith & Students
Lisa Smith is enamored with the intersection of creative process, collaboration and technology. She began filmmaking as a teen, where she quickly came to love the medium for its cross between creative potential and technical challenge. Her first project at Carleton College was a multiple award-winning documentary about four goth teens in Northfield, MN. She immersed herself in the collaborative potential of movie production and has been making movies and teaching movie making ever since. Her documentary films have been screened twice on PBS, San Francisco & Ft. Lauderdale film festivals, and in the Walker Art Center’s Independent film series. She built a production studio in Key West and used it to make documentaries and commercials. More recently she works in mosaic stone & tile, and is embarking on a series of fiber arts collaborations with students in the coming year. She is a LEAF Teaching Artist & runs alternative education programs in East Asheville.
5: Seed/Nest Britt McDermott
Britt McDermott is a visual artist and educator. Her drawing and painting work is often inspired by folklore and nature, and has been exhibited across the Southeast. Originally from Atlanta, she has been based in Asheville since June.
“Seed/Nest” is a structure reflecting on the cyclical nature of Hominy Creek’s ecosystem and the ways we see some of the largest themes of life and nature even within the smallest spaces that make up Hominy Creek. Evoking the form and patterns of a larger-than-life acorn on top and a birds’ nest along its bottom, “Seed/Nest” lives among the various trees that provide life and shade to Hominy Creek visitors. The structure’s opening is an invitation to enter and reflect on both the micro beginnings and the bigger picture of this vastly-layered, ever-changing, life-filled landscape.
Sewn from recycled fabric and plastic, its covering contains illustrations of the many layers of life found in Hominy Creek because of seeds. These illustrations depict some of the flora and fauna that benefit from the seed’s life cycle as it becomes a tree, the resulting sticks, dead leaves, and detritus that insects and birds repurpose into their sanctuaries to prepare for new life. An allegorical mother figure envelopes the structure, and the inside of the structure is inspired by altars and wombs.
While creating, I tried to think like a bird or insect building a nest, working intuitively, steadfastly, and repurposing cast away materials into a new sanctuary.
BrittMcDermott.com BrittMcDermott@gmail.com @BrittMcDee on Instagram
6: Harmony Village
Created by: dragons, fairies and gnomes with the assistance of their human friends, the Bond, deBettencourt, Nabholz and Phillips families
Wander through the whimsical and winsome woods of Harmony Village, a land where magical woodland creatures have made their home. They welcome you to gently explore and discover their enchanted homes and gardens. Beware, the dragons are fierce protectors of their harmonious way of life.
7: Trees are Royal
Jenna Jaffe (performed with dancers and vocalists Keely Flow Lau Magie, Simona Rock, Anne Wainer)
Jenna Jaffe is a creatrix who has been living in the Asheville mountains for 17 years. She is a performer, mixed media artist, composer, multi-instrumentalist, music educator, gender voice/life coach, ESL instructor, Energy Healer, and amateur gardener. She is passionate about saving our planet, worshipping GAIA, striving for equality and social justice for all.
You can reach Jenna at: https://linktr.ee/jennajaffe and consciouscreating.org
The installation; “Trees are Royal” is intended to raise awareness of the essential need for trees on our home planet; Gaia/Mother Earth. We are here to worship, celebrate, revere, and honor these beings that we truly depend on. Trees will be dressed in royal fabric and each cove will have an altar where you can bring gifts and offerings to our royal friends. Feel free to dance around the circles, sing the trees a song, and realize the awe of their complex ecosystem and how we are all inter-connected. On the day of the performance, we will have dancers and vocalists bringing them gifts of love and admiration
8: Inner Space, Outer Self Lex Turnbull
Lex Turnbull (@hahahahahahastop + lexturnbull.com)
is a non-binary southerner who approaches art as a jack-of-all-trades. Since they work with concepts that range from how our body is capable of making musical scores to reimagining public space; they rely on video, printmaking, sculpture and everything in between. To sum up their work, Lex uses art as a tool for exploring and exploiting various false notions of safety, with all of their comedy and tragedy. Lex also runs Seether Bookstore, which sells used books, zines and other printed goods to raise money for buying + sending books to incarcerated members of the LGBTQIA+ and sex worker communities. As of recently, Seether has branched out to offer publishing opportunities to these incarcerated community members, as well as local marginalized folks. You can learn more about this at seetherbooks.com + @seether_bookstore.
“My work in Hominy Rising, Inner Space, Outer Self, focused on how we navigate and build environments, as individuals and communities. There is so much tragedy in our environments, but there is also so much beauty in how constantly nature prevails. As we mimic nature’s resilience, we are able to replenish our environments and ourselves. There are unique landscapes and bodies of water inside each of us. Taking time to reflect on our ability to be resilient is crucial to creating the space where we do not need to be resilient. Making space for community rest and gathering is so important. I strongly believe that spaces have energy to share with us, through movement and sound. In addition to the mirrors and shapes that mimic the organic shapes of nature itself, the bells and chimes within the sculptures allow the space to be heard at a louder level. Community built spaces for community is how we can ensure that the space will be an inclusive, healing place for all.”
9: Natural Rotations Jason Rojas
Jason Rojas was born in Querétaro, Mexico and moved to the Midwest when he was six. For the last 15 years he worked as a professional actor throughout the US. Two years ago he and his wife decided to move from Minneapolis to Asheville with the intention of starting a professional theater company, Monarch Theatre Company. Covid put a pause on the theater dream. A silver lining of the pandemic was that Jason had the time and space to get back into pottery. THANK YOU to Odyssey Clayworks. Check them out!
The bowls are all handbuilt on forms with pieced together slabs. The movement of Nature, Earth as seen from outer space, and the prismatic pools of Yellowstone were an inspiration. They also make stunning wall pieces.
If you are interested in purchasing a bowl or checking out more of Jasons work contact him at his Instagram @artsyrojas
10: Ladybug Growing Wild Forest School
Growing Wild Forest School is a nature-immersion Preschool and Summer Camp located near the beautiful Hominy Creek Greenway in Asheville, North Carolina. Founded in 2016, the school serves as the region’s first and only not-for-profit early childhood education program that nurtures child-led nature connection and whole-child development across the changing seasons.
We’re grateful to provide the opportunity for children between the ages of three and six years old to establish and develop a deep relationship with the natural world through daily exploration of our private land and the nearby Hominy Creek Greenway.
11: Troubled Water Caro & Chri
Collab creatives Caro and Chri challenge life’s constant contrast and changes through movement design and structural performance arts. Based in AVL NC.
Website: https://caroandchri.com
FB: Caro and Chri IG: caro_and_chri
Caro and Chri tell stories through structural dance performance arts. “Troubled Water” honors the water of our region, specifically that of Hominy Creek, which is the most highly polluted waterway in our area. This piece explores the disparity between drinkable/touchable water vs. water that is contaminated and dangerous to our health and the ecosystems that depend on it. From dusk until dark, the audience will view this work from the beach as the performers float in the creek on home-designed and crafted rafts, constructed with repurposed wood and recycled 5 gallon water jugs. A third raft, made of recycled water bottles, will be tethered between them and will transform over the course of the evening. The performers will wear costumes that are designed to mimic water and fabricated using indigo-dyed recycled parachute silk. Long chains of water bottles and blue fabrics will be attached and flowing in the water surrounding the installation. As a participating element and unknown variable, the current of Hominy Creek will determine the course of the piece in real time. “Troubled Water” will end at dark with a magical illumination of the costumes and the rafts as new forms come to life.
12: Lullabies for the Wayfaring Soul Pagans & Androids
Once upon a time… the Forest creatures, the Mythical Creatures & the Human Creatures would sing together. the music they created, called the Symphony of Creatures, was a celebration of the many wonders of the world – a world in which they all shared & held dear. alas, in time, the Human Creature became enamored with their own voice, with their own gadgetry, with their own designs… & no longer could they hear the other creatures of the world above the din of their own making. the Symphony of Creatures was forgotten.
& yet, the Forest Creatures & Mythical Creatures have not forgotten… & they hold in their hearts that there are some amongst the Humans who long to hear the Symphony of Creatures once again. & so, when the veil is thin, the Mythical Creatures & the Forest Creatures shall appear once more, to serenade their estranged kin, to offer a lullaby for their wayfaring soul…
& perhaps, a Human Creature or two, may remember the ancient song that is their birthright.
Pagans & Androids is a collaborative troupe featuring Ronin J’in Pilla & Leaflin Lore Winecoff (& whatever other talented friends they can corral into their shenanigans). Through story, costume, music & dance, Pagans & Androids explore themes that lay in the juxtaposition of the ancient spirits of the past & the cyber-infused dynamism of the future. They have appeared in several Fringe Fests, clowned about in quite a few parades & festivals, & have created music videos concerning Monsters, Faeries, Time-Travel & other sensible tropes.
Their videos can be found on YouTube: Pagans & Androids
Email: pagans.andr01ds@gmail.com (the “o” is a zero)
Instagram: @pagans.andr01ds (the “o” is a zero)
13: Wilderman Claire Dima
I am Claire Dima, I’ve been a bellydancer for many years, a history and culture dork for a lifetime. I saw a photo essay of the pagan costumes that survive in cultural rituals across Europe several years ago, and was inspired to create this mask. All across the world we costume with masks and perform ceremonial procession and movement as the creatures that inhabit the woods we are surrounded by. I made a whitetail deer mask in appreciation of the animals for the food and shelter they have provided to the ancestors of all of us here in the Americas. This method of appreciating our fellow creatures strikes me as incredibly poignant at this time of mass extinction, we are trying to crawl inside their beings and look out their eyes. I see the deer as a unifying figure and seek to embody not only the Forest Lord Cerrnous of the ancient Celts, but the watcher in the woods that is the north American white tail deer who I have grown up around. Facebook contact: Claire Dima
14: Interweaving: Self, Story, Nature Tiffany Narron
Writer/Poet, https://tiffanynarron.com/ Tiffany is a writer and poet who allows the everyday flow of life to fuse with symbology, ritual, and spiritual reverence to create a dreamlike prose that holds reflections on nature’s teachings and prayers that capture the delicate details of living. inter-weaving them into self and our collective journey. This process is using story as medicine, to reconnect with nature and cultivate deep awareness and respect for her as we explore the land and waterways that nurture and sustain us.
This piece ‘Interweaving: Self, Story, Nature’ represents the feelings and words that find us in nature, the reciprocity of that feeling in return to her, and the hope that these words land and nurture and inspire you. As you walk, allow the words to interweave into your experience and take note of the words that find you. What is nature saying as you deepen your relationship with her.
15: Breeze Discourse Peter Speer
Peter Speer is an artist and sound designer based in Asheville, NC. His work explores the quiet stillness at the center of loud fast things. Working with both paper-based collage and voltage-based soundscapes, his work celebrates the ongoing and endlessly evolving symphony of the everyday. Speer received his MFA through the Sound Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is currently the Media Coordinator at Make Noise, a local synthesizer manufacturer.
http://peterspeer.com
“Breeze Discourse” is a conversational performance, staged alongside the bank of Hominy Creek, in which the environmental sounds of the creek are joined by synthesized ones created to support and correspond to the Greenway’s natural ambience. “”Breeze Discourse” is also a listening exercise, intended to highlight the sounds of Hominy Creek— the birds, the river, the traffic on the bridge, etc.— as an essential component of the space itself. Park-goers are encouraged to listen to as much of the performance as they wish before moving on, with the hope that the core intention of the work— a heightened awareness of Hominy Creek’s rich sonic tapestry— will carry with them throughout their time there. “Breeze Discourse” draws inspiration from Pauline Oliveros’ Deep Listening practice, Annea Lockwood’s “A Soundmap of the Hudson River,” Pierre Schaeffer’s notion of the “Universal Symphony” of environmental sound and John Cage’s experiments with silence.
16: A Force to Reckon With Jennifer Murphy
A Force to Reckon With represents the spirit of the Japanese Knotweed, a plant found all over Hominy Creek Greenway. The plant is considered monstrous and invasive by many but I cannot help but admire it’s adaptability and resilience. It spreads easily and grows quickly into dense thickets. It crowds out native plants and trees, disrupting riparian ecosystems around the world. The language of war is used to describe attempts at eradicating it (which usually fail). Yet it also has hidden wisdom. It is one of the best sources of resveratrol, a medicine used to treat Lyme disease and Covid19. Its spring shoots are edible and its flowers are a rich source of food for pollinators. It is a powerful plant that is here to stay. I have represented her spirit with two faces: one anguished, raging, insatiably hungry; the other beatific, wise, patient. The story she tells is not simply of good guys and bad guys.
Can we grieve what is lost, but also move beyond the paradigm of native vs. invasive? Can we preserve what we can, and also act creatively to work with what is here right now, like it or not?
The piece is hand sculpted from concrete, made with sand from the greenway, and painted. It is set in place with glass mosaics around it. Living knotweed from the greenway is her hair.
Jennifer Murphy is an artist and communitarian, involved in many local creative projects including the Fringe Festival and Street Creature Puppet Collective. See her work at JMurphyArts.com and @TruffulaTuft on IG
17: The Mad Vole of Hominy Creek The Warren Brown Household
Vivi and Zelda are sisters that live in a little house on Hominy Creek. They’re in first and fourth grade, and have been exploring Hominy Creek since they were babies. They enjoy creating stories with their mom about the animals that live along the creek. One such story inspired this piece!
The Mad Vole of Hominy Creek is a cartographer who’s occasionally confused about longitude and latitude, north and south, summer and winter, past and future.
Although he can seem a bit befuddled at times, he’s a friendly ol’ vole who amuses himself by collecting discarded items while documenting the forgotten areas along the creek. Take a peek in his burrow to see what he’s working on!
18: Cocoon J. Whales Kincheloe
J. Kincheloe Whales has a background in forestry and art. His creative exploits include but are not limited to painting, sculpture, and photography.
Appalachian crackerjack artist working on a micro/macro scale. His work is imbued with stygian humor, but tends to favor the chaotic beauty of the natural world. Microbes and Moonscapes haunt his dreams.
Follow on IG whalesinkart/