While western North Carolina may be best known for the Smoky Mountains and the Blue Ridge Parkway, several little mountain towns are coming into their own as arts destinations well worth a visit.

I am standing in a dimly lit studio on Main Street in Waynesville, North Carolina, contemplating the mildly curious face of a black bear, his image carefully preserved on a weathered slab of chestnut. Notebook in hand, I begin to describe his careful look so I will remember it later, but I’m interrupted by a firm but not unfriendly voice: “That’s illegal, you know.”

I raise my eyes to see a gentleman with graying hair, a neat beard and a blue work apron tied around his waist approaching me from the rear of the studio. I discover he thinks I am copying quotations printed on some of the gallery’s art. We have a chuckle over a case of mistaken identity.

He is Gary Wagner, co-owner of the Blue Owl studio with his wife, Penny, and he begins to tell me how his wife’s quotations and sometimes even copied prints of her art end up on web sites and in other dubious places without her permission all over the world. It is, he says, part of the difficulty of earning one’s bread as an artist.

The Wagners have been in business in Waynesville for 15 years. They have seen local businesses come and go, but today there are 15 art galleries in town, “more per capita than New York City has,” Wagner notes proudly. And Waynesville is thriving, having come into its own as a major mountain arts destination in the shadow of the Smokies and the Blue Ridge Parkway.

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LINKS:

Haywood County Chamber of Commerce
Haywood County Tourism
Waynesville
Downtown Waynesville
Waynesville Gallery Association
Haywood County Arts Council
Textures on Main Street, Waynesville
Twigs & Leaves Gallery, Waynesville
Deja View Gallery, Waynesville
Teresa Pennington

Brevard and Transylvania County
Transylvania Arts Council
Number 7 Arts Fine Arts and Crafts Cooperative, Brevard
Bluewood Gallery, Brevard
Red Wolf Gallery, Brevard

Town of Sylva
Jackson County Chamber of Commerce
Arts Council of Jackson County
Inn at Iris Meadows