CURVE studios & garden’s three studio buildings will all be open everyday including Christmas Eve for your “Shop Small” pleasure. Our normal hours are 11am to 4pm but this time of year, you will often find the studios open @ 10am and until 5 or 6pm in the evening… we are all so busy… we need to be in the studios. Call Pattiy for #6 @ 828.388.3526, Tina for # 9 @ 828.225.1762 or Maria for #12 @ 828.280.9262
CURVE garden seems to be the new place to have your portrait taken… several sunday mornings have found families & families to be making photos in the garden. Here are few things to remember. Professsional photographers, using CURVE as a location, must get permission from Pattiy Torno, the gardener, resident & owner of CURVE. Find her @ 828.388.3526. Friendly photos are fine anytime between dawn & dusk. Please pack out what you pack in & resist the urge to abscond with the garden’s bounty, with our thanks.
CURVE studios & garden is the brainchild of Pattiy Torno. When she purchased the three buildings on October 13, 1989, there was no River Arts District. ”We thought, hey, there is nobody around so we can make as much noise as we want,” Pattiy Torno recollects of CURVE studios & garden’s first few years as a punk rock club called Squashpile. Since 1992, CURVE has slowly transformed into a haven of live/work creative space.
Twenty years later, CURVE studios & garden has become home to a lovely garden and an amazing assortment of every kind of visual art and craft imaginable. The diversity and depth of the work at CURVE speaks to its mission of creating a place where beauty, business and the public, intersect. By helping to found Asheville’s River Arts District, CURVE studios & garden owner Pattiy Torno has helped create a new model for bringing people to art, art to life and a livelihood to the artist. CURVE studios & garden are open to the public 11am to 4pm daily, except Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, New Years Day, Easter & the 4th of July.
The sunsets are beautiful in the Asheville RAD (River Arts District) rivaled only by the work visitors find inside the three CURVE studios & garden buildings. The lovely handweavings of sutherland’s Barb Butler & Karen Donde, the superbly crafted glass, metal and ceramic works of Meagan Chaney and the extraordinary quilt work, fun fleece & eclectic clothing of Pattiy Torno can be found in #6 Riverside Drive.
#9 Riverside @ CURVE is now home to Constance Williams Studios & Gallery. On the first floor, the main attraction is the encaustic work of Constance Williams, a woman with her blow torch. Constance Williams also showcases the repurposed steel furniture of ex-CURVE wunderkind Cynthia Wynn, the silver & geode jewelry work of Mystery Masiello, the functional & sculptural ceramic works by Jenny Mastin, Cassie Ryalls, Greg Vineyard, Patty Bilbro, Fran Welch & wrought iron whimsy by Kelly Prestwood. Up the stairs, we enter ceramic heaven… working ceramic studio spaces for Jenny, Cassie, Fran, Greg & Constance herself, were art comes to life.
#12 Riverside in CURVE studios & garden shelters the ceramic studios of Maria Andrade Troya & Southern Highlands Craft Guild members, Kyle Carpenter (ex-Clay Space Co-op), Akira Satake & Linda McFarling bringing the added dimension of soda & salt firing to CURVE.
Although it did not start out as CURVE studios & garden, it was 20 years ago that Pattiy Torno bought the property at 6, 9 & 12 Riverside Drive. Squashpile, a drug, smoke & alcohol free punk rock club was the first incarnation here in 1990 & 1991. The mid to late 90’s brought a hot glass studio & the heavy metal phase. 2004 brought the flood waters of Hurricanes Francis & Ivan. 2010 finds working artist studios specializing in encaustic painting, functional & decorative textiles, ceramics & glass & some heavy metal remnants that you can visit every day. Please Do!